Hallelujah

And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the lord of song
With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah

-Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah

I could give you a list of excuses: I work a lot. I just started my own business. I’m a tutor and a freelance writer, and I have a day job. I went to Italy; I went to Vegas; I went to Giants games (and then cried), I spent the weekend at my best friend’s. I have a boyfriend and a family and a life that keeps me really busy.

And all of it is true. I have been too busy to write.

I have also been rejected.

I suppose it’s nothing to be particularly ashamed of: getting rejected by the New York Times. Twice. And losing several writing contests. And being asked for a revision from a fairly prestigious literary magazine before its editors ultimately said, “It didn’t really work for us.” Then being denied by The Rumpus editors. It’s not exactly like I’ve been aiming low. And I get it: being a writer/human means getting rejected sometimes. But it still feels awful.

So I quit.

It wasn’t a conscious decision. I didn’t stomp off to my room after the last rejection and say, “Well that’s it, I’m done. No more writing for me—it’s too hard.” It was more insidious than that: I just no longer seemed to have the time to write. Ever. It was the kind of decision you don’t realize you’ve made until you start to feel the effects of it. And in this case, the effects were subtle (until they weren’t); they were gradual (until they were all at once). I started to feel this low-level, amorphous anxiety that swam underneath everything I did. I felt, in the most general sense, off. And sometimes the nonspecific kind of melancholy is the worst kind—because what can you do about it if you’re not even sure what it is?

But then, slowly, it began to dawn on me: “oh right–y’know that thing that you feel like is kind of your calling in life? You’re not doing it.” So there’s that.

Same As It Ever Was

There I am, blending right in.

Picture this: a sprawling college campus with big, brick Gothic buildings. An ornate bell tower that sits atop the library, a kind of academic church. A small lake glistening underneath the April sun and a pedestrian bridge crossing over it. Seventy degrees, a cloudless sky.  Fraternity row overflows with young, enthusiastic college students—all taut skin and big plans—gathered at the school’s annual pig roast, laughter and loud music and the smell of booze wafting through the air.

That was the scene that greeted me and my boyfriend a few weeks ago, when we went down to visit his son at the University of Richmond. And it made me want to be young again. To go back to a time when everything seemed to be ahead of me–to the night of my 18th birthday party, as I drove down a windy country road in a tight, hot-pink, spaghetti-strapped dress: a best friend driving, a Big Gulp full of Diet Coke and rum, and all that freedom rushing through the car with the warm July air.

As my boyfriend and I walked down Richmond’s fraternity row, all kinds of memories moved through me and made me long to go back.

Then I went inside the frat house and the longing subsided a bit.

Coffee With An Ex

***Check me out over at The Washington Post. I wrote an essay about a day when I was a super grown-up.***

I was once told that I was the reason that stepmothers get such a bad rap in Disney movies. My crime? I’d written an essay about my complicated relationship with a divorced father of three, and in it I’d admitted to the occasional bout of jealousy in the beginning of our relationship. I wrote that sometimes, I couldn’t help but feel a little left out of the things I wasn’t allowed to participate in yet: vacations, the kids’ sports games, birthday dinners.

In the comments section, one reader said that if jealousy was a problem for me, then I was responsible for all the bad PR stepmothers get. Then she used some very colorful language to tell me to grow up.

I was just trying to be honest: As someone in her mid-30s who never planned on having kids, being the girlfriend of an older man with three teenagers is a challenging place to be. And in the beginning, it could be a lonely place.

Then last month — three years into our relationship — my boyfriend Kevin received a text from his ex-wife: I’d like to have coffee with Dani.

Oh what I wouldn’t give for the days when I felt left out.

Click here to find out what happens at coffee.

photo credit: CJS*64 7am via photopin (license)

Man-Cold 2.0

I rest my case.

Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like ‘struggle’. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now. -Mr. Rogers

When my boyfriend texted me last week to tell me that he felt a “vicious” man-cold coming on, I thought, oh good god—here we go again. The sad grey sweat getups, the lethargic responses to any and all questions asked, the air of quiet desperation as he sniffles his way through boxes of tissues. A fairly tough, athletic guy who takes decent care of himself, he melts into a puddle when faced with some congestion and a scratchy throat. “I’m shutting it down,” he’ll say to me when he feels a cold approaching—and that he does. He puts his hat on or his hood up, drinks a lot of fluid, and sinks into the couch for the remainder of the battle. No grocery shopping, no errands, no favors, no dinners. Sometimes no return-texts or family functions.

And it’s all a little much for me.

I’m not exactly what you’d call “maternal.” While I love working with kids and I feel fiercely protective of those I love, I’m much more likely to show that love with a little elbow or a punch in the arm rather than a warm hug. Think Elaine from Seinfeld (unfortunately, complete with her rockin’ dance moves). Which is not to say that I’m not a good girlfriend—I believe I am. I can be thoughtful and patient and compassionate. I try to listen and put myself in his shoes, and consider what Mr. Rogers would tell me to do.

Except when he’s sick. No, when he’s sick, I lose all capacity for that “beautiful-day-in-the-neighborhood” kind of mentality. When it comes to illness, I’m not a coddler. I’m more of a “grin-and-bear-it”er. And so, when my boyfriend first got sick, I gave him my usual level of support: I tossed him a bottle of Vitamin C and asked him to pass the remote.

A Sad Super Bowl

I love sports. I find comfort in the clarity that they provide in an otherwise muddled world: there are good guys and bad, clear lines drawn, a known set of rules, and people who keep watch to make sure those rules are followed. Generally speaking I’m a very cynical person, but for whatever reason, I place some weird faith in the the process of athletic competition. And I want there to be beauty and fairness and goodness in it. I want to be able to believe that what happens on the court or the field is emblematic of something bigger. The backstories matter to me.

Which is why I found myself profoundly disappointed when the New England Patriots came from behind to pull off the biggest Super Bowl upset in history last Sunday. Like the kind of disappointment that’s usually reserved for when the Giants lose. And I will neither confirm nor deny whether or not the post-game drive home was filled with some pointed expletive-laced remarks, to which my boyfriend wisely chose not to respond.

I felt like the bad guys won.

A Requiem for Aunt Sara

*So I’m going to stop promising to post on any kind of fixed schedule. Clearly, I can’t keep those promises. But I will try to do better than I have been—I’m aiming for a post every two weeks. Not that anyone asked.

It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things. -Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid

A few weeks ago, my mother’s maternal aunt—my 98 year-old great-Aunt Sara—came down with pneumonia, became disoriented, and was admitted to the hospital. And I saw what dying looks like.

When I walked into the hospital room the first time, Aunt Sara—frail and bone-thin—was moaning in pain while her children and grandkids sat all around her and tried to make her comfortable. And I was immediately struck by how both ugly and intimate death seemed to be. Her sallow face and bony chest and missing teeth. Different hands taking turns holding onto her. The shrill, bird-like noises that came out of her as she asked repeatedly for something to drink, only to push it away whenever anyone brought one to her mouth. The not quite knowing what she wanted—thinking something would help only to realize that it didn’t.

That disorientation that life is full of, death is full of too.

Growing up, whenever my sisters or I would have an overly dramatic reaction to something—a loud gasp or high-octane oh my god—we’d say to each other: “whoa, you just Aunt Sara-ed that one.” Of course, my sisters and I were just engaging in adolescent drama— spilled milk and all. But for Aunt Sara, those audible reactions—sometimes heart-attack-level sounds for skinned-knee situations—came from a primal place of genuine concern. She just loved everyone around her too damn much, and didn’t like to hear about bad things happening to them. And so, in my family, Aunt Sara became a verb.

And I don’t think Sara worried about anyone more than she did my grandmother—her younger sister Molly. Sara helped raise Grandma when their mother died when they were both very young, and the two sisters lived together for over 50 years, raising their children on different floors of the same two-family house in Elizabeth, N.J. And Aunt Sara was so concerned about her sister that she fought her kids for years on moving out of Elizabeth—how could she abandon her little 90 year-old sister like that?

The Yutman sisters.

And even when Aunt Sara was finally convinced that it was time to leave, and her kids helped her sell her portion of the house and made arrangements for her to move, she gave it one last shot: she told her son and daughter that she’d “reconsidered” and wouldn’t be leaving her sister after all. (Her children promptly told her that the time for “reconsideration” ended when she sold her part of the house.)

She just loved everyone too damn much.

***

I’m smart enough to know that I don’t have anything original to say about death. It just is, waiting for every one of us. And seeing Aunt Sara’s whole life crowded into that small, hospital room with blank walls and padded chairs and LCD screens displaying all the information her body was giving away—I didn’t know what to think. I wanted it to have this immediate, revelatory effect on me. Wanted it to teach me something profound about life. But the truth is, I walked away from all of it with just a few “simple, unprofound scraps of truth,” as Tim O’Brien said in If I Die in a Combat Zone: Life is short. Family is important. Seize the day. Nothing is permanent.

I often forget how impermanent it all is. Well, not so much forget as much as allow all the things in my life to crowd out that knowledge: Deciding whether or not to keep the kick-ass pair of winter boots that I just spent too much money on. My machinations to get to someplace warm next month for a few days. Ideas about decorating my study. Questions about when I’m due for my next oil change and how long it’s been since I published a blog post, and has my boyfriend remembered to exchange that velvet blazer I got him for Christmas.

All kinds of noises, some more stupid than others.

And it occurs to me, especially at this time of year when we’re all so busy making enormous resolutions to be better and thinner and healthier, that the hardest part of things is often the middle—when you’re right in the thick of it and it’s so easy to get lost.

I’m sitting here in my living room in the middle of January—when mild temperatures have long since disappeared, and they are nowhere on the horizon. I’m 35, which is on its way to being some kind of midpoint. I’ve been writing a book for two and a half years now, and, though approaching the skeleton of a rough draft, I’m still many many cycles of revisions and rewrites away from a finished product. I’m a few years into the best relationship I’ve ever had. I’m in it, all of it—right in the middle of this big, messy, brilliant, baffling, surprising life of mine. And that’s a hard place to be, I think.

It’s a place where there are no enormous resolutions for me to make—where all there is to do is keep going. Keep doing what I’m doing, keep showing up to my life. Keep writing and editing and re-writing. Keep caring about the kind of person I am and how I choose to treat other people. Keep being honest and flawed and spoiled and selfish and scared—and keep trying to do it all with a little more grace than yesterday.

How do you keep pushing yourself when there’s no big payoff right around the corner? When the end is (probably, hopefully) too far out to be either the carrot or the stick?

I find it all quite difficult, especially right after seeing a life shrunken down to its bare essentials: a woman in the middle of a hospital room with all that florescent sadness and love and fear—just asking for a drink and a little comfort on the way out. It makes me want to change everything, Right Now: get closer to everyone so that my hospital room will be filled with people one day; finish my manuscript tomorrow, see the world, run for days, spoil my nieces and nephew. And while those are all admirable goals—and there’s nothing wrong with reaching to be better—I think the real heroics are in the grit and muscle of the daily grind. I think trying to conquer the world all at once is naive and self-defeating.

I think that if I want to honor Aunt Sara’s memory, I just have to keep showing up, keep caring about people—and keep gasping wildly and dramatically with them when the need arises.

No Mistake By the Lake

When I was 23, I left my hometown in upstate New York and never looked back. I was terrified of life and unhappy with who I was, and I figured the best way to become different was to run. And so I ran. I spent most of my 20s putting in substantial and dangerous efforts to forget what I didn’t want to remember.

Which meant that anyone I’d once been close to had to go as well—those were the people who were most capable of reminding me who I’d once been, and more importantly, who were most likely to believe in me. I wasn’t interested in anyone’s faith. It was a slow and gradual purge of anyone who had meant anything to me.

Then recently, I made some changes—I began to let my past breathe again. I began to miss some of the people I pushed away.

A Little Giant Victory

To write about anything right now other than the election and its aftermath seems small and irrelevant to me. It’s felt that way for a while, so I let the blog go dark. Sure, I have some thoughts about the current state of the union, but mine wouldn’t be anything other than another voice bouncing around in the echo chamber. I am profoundly sad and very scared. Nothing original.

Since the election I haven’t written a thing.

But this morning I got up and had a thought: the only way to move on is to move on. Which for me is to write. That’s what I do. I tell stories. I believe in the power of storytelling—in its ability to take you from one place to another—and that remains true, even in a world that’s been turned upside-down.

There’s a story that I’ve been wanting to tell—a small one, that doesn’t involve any apocalyptic predictions or course-correcting diagnoses for the world. It’s just about this one perfect day I had last month, and it won’t unwind the clock or make me any less scared about where this country is headed.

But I’m going to tell it anyway because it’s all I know how to do.

Trump-Shaming

Alexandra Petri was dead-on when she called the first presidential debate “the mansplaining Olympics.” We watched as Donald Trump continuously interrupted and patronized Hillary Clinton, embodying the very essence of what it means to mansplain. He was that awful uncle everyone tries to stay away from at Thanksgiving dinner.

And it got me thinking about some other mansplaining that I’ve noticed recently.

As the country descends further and further into Trump-related madness, I’ve noticed a pattern emerge on cable news shows, whereby men on the left have decided that when it comes to female Trump supporters, mansplaining is the only way to get through to them. I’ve watched as they have interrupted, condescended to, and outright laughed in these women’s faces—and the truth is I haven’t cared. Actually, until recently, I haven’t even really noticed.

Some Notes on Letting Go

{a rerun}

When I was 8, I saw a pair of white gloves in a toy store that sang to my soul. They were long and satin and gorgeous, and I knew immediately that my life would never be complete without them. So when my mother wouldn’t buy them for me, my mission was clear: make her life a living hell. I begged and I whined and I sulked, and it soon became clear to my mom that she could either buy me the damn gloves or live the rest of her life being tortured by a freckled pain in her ass. She chose wisely.

Every night I’d put the gloves on very carefully—pulling them slowly up past my elbows—and I’d slip into my black mary janes that made the most satisfying clicking sound on the tiles of my bathroom floor. I’d spend long swaths of time click-clacking around that bathroom with those beautiful satin gloves on, and I felt positively regal. The fact that the bathroom was so small that I could only take a step or two in any direction, and that I was in my pajamas so I looked like I’d just fled the “special” ward of a hospital, stepping back and forth in place and gesturing wildly with my gloved hands—well that never occurred to me. It all just felt so right.

That memory has been hovering over me lately, and it’s made me realize 2 things: 1) My inclination towards madness is nothing new. And 2) What if I was willing to be a bit more like that little idiot, tapping back and forth in front of a bathroom mirror for no other reason than the fact that it made me happy? Ok the second one isn’t so much a realization as a question, but whatever.