Flaws and Charms

I've been thinking a lot about how when you love someone, their flaws can become their charms. The strange, quirky, and even the most irritating things that they feel most self-conscious about, and what others, too, may find off-putting, can become exactly what you adore most.

I tend to talk too much and think too much and write too much. I hog the covers. I'm compulsively, unnecessarily early to any and every event. I have a fear of sleeping alone. I'm allergic to dust, I can't help but comment on every preview in movie theaters, and I'm so afraid of cockroach, I won't even watch Oggy and The Cockroaches.

I'm picky about certain vegetables, selfish about sharing my favorite foods, and stubborn when it comes to ordering anything but my go-to meal from familiar restaurants. I'm scared of driving and in theory, I love gardening, but in practice, I'd rather just lay out in the sun with a good book and a orange juice.

Ifo forgets to close wardrobe and put down the toilet seat. He trims his beard on my mirror desk and he lets his dirty clothes make a mountain on the floor. He gets lost in YouTube black holes, watching trailers or learning about weird addictions or the latest conspiracy theories. He can be easily distracted and also easily charmed, for better or for worse.

And despite, or perhaps because of all this, he loves me, and I love him, and our relationship feels stronger. Neither of us is perfect, to be sure, and every once in a while, we'll feel the need to point that out. If you asked us, though, we'd both admit to loving it all. To loving all of each other, even the worst parts, because we know those pieces and understand them and we're proud that we've learned to navigate those darker patches because that effort marks the difference between love and marriage.

The Middle Ground

There are 84 blog posts sitting in my drafts folder. There's one about a difficult day 4 years ago, another about having, for the 1st time ever, just one New Year's resolution instead of a laundry list. There's a post about a strange, sunny day on the bay, a post about an adventure with my friends, a post about something Ifo said that stopped me in my tracks, surprising me in a way, a good way, that words haven't surprised me in years.

Sometimes this happens. I have so many things to say that I don't know where to start, and I end up saying nothing at all. Do you ever have that dream? The one where you're trying to talk to someone, and although you hear the words in your mind, muffled, as if you're underwater, you can't speak?

Hard to imagine that? Forget it then. So this is a few pieces of the drafts I've been saving for a long time. 

**********

It's been a good month. A really, really good month. The kind that's so good, you have to force yourself not to grow suspicious that something difficult must be around the corner. That feeling has been nagging at me, though, and there's nothing worse than that train of thought, the when-will-the-other-shoe-drop kind. It comes from a place of such fear and guilt, as if you have to pay for your happiness, as if joy will always be followed with some kind of inevitable sadness.

That's a defense mechanism, of course. When things feel like they're moving in the right direction, you can't help but brace yourself for whatever challenge will come up first.

**********

I hear my dad's voice in my head a lot. On a revision night after getting bad grades in mathematics and he bought me a lot of practice books to improve my maths, he'd say, "Do it correctly!" He sometimes sounds like yelling, the kind that intimidated coach but motivated me, pushed me to work harder and work smarter. He's the best teacher.

I hear my mom's voice in my head, too, a much softer one. With 6 kids, she's the kind of mom who always carries not just a first-aid kit for medical emergencies, but a first-aid kit for, well, life. From her purse, I've seen my mother pull out everything from Vicks to biscuits, just in case. She's a big just-in-case type, and before I ever did anything (go to school, take a test, leave for a night out), she'd repeat, "Be prepared."

Do it correctly. 

Be prepared.

 So much of parenting boils down to readying your kids for what's next, and helping them learn how to ready themselves. My parents instilled in me a borderline-ridiculous affinity for planning, and it's one of the passed-down habits I'm most grateful I adopted. There's something to be said for training yourself to anticipate what's coming, and to be prepared for your next move. 

But here's where I've sometimes mixed up their message: You're not always anticipating a blow, sometimes you're preparing for something great. You can't know that, of course, but you can learn to understand that good can follow good. There are ups and then there are downs, but sometimes there are ups, and then more ups, and then the down isn't so far to fall, after all.

**********

The words come quickly when things are really hard, and when things are really good. Maybe it's because the emotions feel more extreme, the thoughts more defined. It's the middle ground that's tough to sort through, I think. Even easy joy can be hard to navigate sometimes.

Playing the Part

Several years ago I sought the advice of a woman who was so very together. Quick-witted, sharp, successful, and gorgeous, she was hard-working and well-respected. Somehow, she was the sort of person who managed to work late, cook elaborate dinners, start book clubs, organize happy hours, try all the coolest workout classes, and, I don't know, probably save lives in her spare time. In any case, she was damn impressive. Meanwhile, I was 23, regularly eating cereal for dinner, and feeling not at all like an adult. I was an adult-in-training, and I wanted step-by-step, detailed instructions.

"How do you do it?" I asked her. "Seriously. What do your days look like?"

When she replied, I expected her to be overly humble or dismissive, but she wasn't. Instead, she laughed and shared her tricks. And that was part of it, I realized: She was awesome, she knew she was awesome, and even better, she knew it was okay to know she was awesome.

"I pretend to be the person I wish she was," she said. "I act like a better version of me."

I was confused. "But isn't that still just you being you?"

She nodded. "The lines blur." 

It basically starts as an act, she told me, like you're playing the part of your fantasy self. You dress the part, act the part, and before you know it, the habits are yours, and you're you, only better. 

That all sounded great, in an abstract sort of way, but I demanded specifics. What did she do?

Well, to start, she asked herself the same question, day after day, again and again: "Do I want to be the kind of person who [blank]?" And then came the second part, the harder part. She promised herself that 90% of the time, she'd let her answer to that question guide her. Almost every time, if the answer was yes, then she'd do it. And, of course, if it was no, then she wouldn't.

In other words, it was really, really simple, and also really, really hard.

I'd like to say that I quickly took her words to heart and shifted gears, but I didn't. Not completely, anyway. I did ask the question, though, and I learned a lot from my answers. I figured out, moment by moment, in a series of situations, what sort of person I wanted to be. And sometimes, on good days, I'd mostly be that person. Or, at least, more like that person. And that feels like enough.

Since then, I've watched her climb higher and higher, personally and professionally, toward her best self. And she's made me a believer in the fake-it-'til-you-make-it philosophy. I think it's okay, every once in a while, to let things change from the outside in. Sometimes, it's your best bet.

The Life you Keep Saying you Want

What's not to love about Elizabeth Gilbert? She's whip-smart and hilarious, sarcastic and self-deprecating in a way that's still self-loving. I adore her, admire everything about her. When I finished reading her book, I felt the same way I did after watching The Oprah Show: awestruck, energized, and ready to save the world or something.

Like most people, I first fell for her writing with Eat Pray Love, and her most recent book, Big Magic, has become a permanent fixture on my desk. She has said that Big Magic is her manifesto, and much of the weekend's workshop was shaped around the ideas her book lays out on creativity.

My notebook is full of scribbled phrases I jotted down as I read, but there was one line I didn't even need to write down. It stuck with me, and I honestly can't stop thinking about it.

"What are you willing to give up to have the life you keep saying you want?"

After Elizabeth asked the question, it sort of hung in the air, shifting the energy around me. She went on to explain the hardest part, that you don't just have to give up the things that are bad for you, or the things that are a waste of time. You have to give up some of the good things, too.

This is the part that really got me: the life you keep saying you want. It's so pointed, right? It forces you to compare the life you claim you want to the life you've actually created for yourself. What's different? What's not? How much are you willing to bend to make the two look more similar?

I'll leave you with that. Oh, and my favorite line from Big Magic, which is actually a line by Jack Gilbert, a poet: "We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world." 

Stubborn gladness. So perfect, right?

Those Days

You're six years old and lived next to your grandparents. Time was a smudged glass in a summer haze. You spent your days without shoes and watched your feet, praying callouses form on your heels. Your mother had a hard brush to rub hers away but you waited for the day when you'll be able to boast, "look how far I've walked. Look how many layers I carry."

Six was a small age. Six was sweet potato and tea in the evening. Six was cold ice cream tube from a rusty freezer. Six was polka-dot pants and pink cotton t-shirts. Six was leaning against your grandma's knees as she braided your long, wet hair. Six was a singing time.

The evening smelled like grill smoke and wet dew, burned wood chips and yards of flowers. People stood outside in their yards. Fine day. It was. The tree branches formed shade over the yards like a suburban rain forest, and sunlight slipped in rings onto the tall grass through the green leaves. You sat in your backyard, on the edge of the sandbox. If you're not careful, you'll get a splinter on the back of your thigh. You're always careful. You made a path in the grass from your house to your grandparents. Home was communal, a haven. You watched for smoke to rise over the brown roof of your grandparent's home. Tuesday, there was nothing. Wednesday, you waited. On Thursday, a puff of white settled into the air, a balloon rising with a halfheartedness like smoke from the hookah's the caterpillars in Alice in Wonderland smoke with a lazy ease.

Hookahs. Alice in Wonderland. You went to town with your grandma and picked out a coloring book with Alice in it. You carried it to grandma and presented it with a proud smile. "This is what I want." Later, you struggled through the pages, confused and unhappy by the incomplete color pencils in your stationery box.

That Thursday evening, you climbed the stone steps to the small backyard patio where your grandpa stood in front of the grill. He had on a white thin shirt and his hands were on his back as he watched the chicken on the grill. "Hi", you said. He gave you a look that means, I know what you're up to, and with the tongs, snipped a bit of the skin from one of the wings. "Be careful, it's hot," he said, and your fingers burnt when he handed you the piece of skin. It melted on your tongue, the fat sizzled and formed a fire in your belly.

He turned a chicken wing over and one drops into the embers. You knew what comes next. He picked the wing up with the tong, brushed the charcoal from the edge, and winked. "That's your grandma's." It came every time and you still laughed. It's tradition, in the smallest sense. He gave you another piece of skin before you walked on the cool stones making up the steps down from the deck. You ran barefoot back to your house.

Those good old days..

My grandparents died so many years ago, when I was in high school. And I dreamed about them recently. How I wish they were there on my wedding day. Well..I'm sure they're watching over me. I miss them so much.