picking up the storyline

It's getting weird seeing all the posts on Facebook and Twitter about finals, about people going home for the summer, about people GRADUATING.  My brother is home for the summer, looking for cars to drive to the job he's got set up, and my middle sister is in the throes of AP exams, put in her enrollment deposit to ST. OLAF (fram fram!) and is looking forward to graduating in about a month.

Meanwhile, my parents and Asha are looking at this huge house and thinking how empty it will be in a few months, with the two middle kids away at school and me (fingers crossed) in my own apartment somewhere in the city.

My friends, the ones I graduated with, are feeling the ends of their one-year commitments closing in on them, issuing ultimatums and maydays about the long-awaited "rest of our lives."  They are frantically scouring Craigslist for plausible careers, submitting resumes and cover letters and wondering what they really want to be doing with their time.  It's throwing into pretty sharp relief the fact that I am no longer a student (and perhaps nevermore) and that I have in fact been a graduate for almost an entire year now, and I have worked in my current position for more than 8 months.  My story has taken a different turn.  Maybe we're onto a sequel now.

This is making me think about the passage of time.  It seemed to take awhile to hit 6 months, but after that the months just fell like dominoes behind me.  Just as I start feeling tired because it's Tuesday, I'm playing Loverboy's Working for the Weekend on repeat and putting in my last posts on Friday afternoon.

Kristy and I measure the passage of time by Tuesdays and Thursdays and girls' nights.  We always laugh because when someone asks what day it is, Kristy looks at her watch, and I use relativity to figure out what day of the week it is, and then which week it is.  "Well, two days ago we went to yoga, and last week you were in Chicago, which is the week my parents went to Boston to pick up my brother..."  But looking back, the days and nights and big events and boring afternoons and the mornings I didn't think I'd make it through all melt together into this blurry, psychedelic GIF that is my life.

Between the two of us I think we create a pretty workable narrative.

I'm picking up the storyline now of this blog, of my life as a post-grad.  I'm picking up this meta-story from December 27, when I talked about the storyline of the history of fruitcake.

Here's a story I like, about watches making their way back into fashion after being shut out by the cell phone revolution.  I like it because it's tangible.  It's built out of images.  It pulls in history, economics, fashion, practicality.

It's essentially about hipsters.  I am haughty of hipsterdom, but I will be the first to admit that it's all a ruse because, in fact, I am the Worst of the Hipsters.

Also, the composite storyline is the reason I am so obsessing over public radio these days.  The long reports and interviews, the multiple subjective insights they reap over the course of days, weeks, or months digging into the same story.

I value this storytelling style as a counterpoint and a complement to the flash news we get as we go through the day.  To be fair, our brains really have an incredible capacity to process information.  Part of the reason we are able to take in so much is the fact that people make snap judgments that are completely and unavoidably subjective.  Sam McNerney (a classmate of a friend of mine) writes this often mentally-straining but always jaw-dropping psych blog.  In a post I read today, The Irrationality of Irrationality, connects subjectivity to the narrative in the passage below:

[M]ental shortcuts are necessary because they lessen the cognitive load and help us organize the world – we would be overwhelmed if we were truly rational. 

This is one of the reasons we humans love narratives; they summarize the important information in a form that’s familiar and easy to digest. It’s much easier to understand events in the world as instances of good versus evil, or any one of the seven story types. 

...In the process, hooking up my inner anthropologist to my inner writer for some serious intellectual fireworks.

Anyway, McNerney first raises our hackles and guilts us into recognizing our inevitable bias in every decision we make--and then promptly soothes our smarting egos with the assurance that "It’s natural for us to reduce the complexity of our rationality into convenient bite-sized ideas."

He wraps it all up with a warning: Take every new story as a new side to the same story, a new puzzle piece.  Life in society is complex; court cases are complex; arguments and fights between friends and lovers are complex.

And what do I get out of this?  Acknowledge your story.  Own it.  But let it change.

8 or more things making me happy

Yesterday I discovered a weekly talk radio show called Pop Culture Happy Hour on NPR.  Fortunately since I’ve never heard it before there are literally YEARS’ worth of past happy hours for me to listen to, so I’ve been scrolling back to listen to the incredibly intelligent crew discussing trendy cultural tidbits in a way that reminds me more than a little of my liberal arts education.

Each show ends with a segment about what's making them happy this week.  Something pop culture-related, of course.  It vaguely reminds me of All Good Things, the KSTO radio show I hosted last year with my girl Cassie, in which we played feel-good music and ad-libbed our list of the week’s Top 10 All Good Things.  Sometimes serious, often totally random, but always an exercise in not taking things for granted, in picking out the silver lining even of the toughest weeks, and a reminder to enjoy life always.

I have missed this show, and missed Cassie, so often since May.  And from time to time I feel that nagging urge to make that list.

But today, the urge is driving me to distraction, and I am unavoidably inspired to host my own Pop Culture What's-Making-Me-Happy Give-or-Take-an-Hour.

#1

The show is first on my list, since I have not stopped listening to it for 2 days (except to watch a video of Sophia Grace and Rosie’s return to The Ellen Show), and since I love pop culture, and intelligent people discussing pop culture.  Also, people laughing a lot and un-self-consciously.  They have really good laughs, too--good the way Audrey and Karin and I just feed off each other's really contagious laughter forever.  And just positive energy in general.  Here's a good episode (2012 pop culture resolutions) to get hooked on.

#2

Sisterhood Everlasting.  Since my original mention I have actually started reading this book, and it’s been, true to form, un-put-downable.  I can’t honestly say the book is a happy book, and I also can’t say that I haven’t cried or felt my throat close up at least a few times, and in fact it’s a really sad book so far.  But it’s deeply evocative, and when I think about it, any real depth of emotion qualifies as happiness for me.  There is something beautiful about empathy, about allowing myself to be touched by the world, which maybe neurologically is no more than a thrill, a hit of brain chemicals, but to me feels like being happy.

#3

California 37.  You may have realized that I. LOVE. TRAIN.  And I am not ashamed of this fact.  I've had this album on some degree of repeat since I bought it on Saturday, and I think it may be my favorite Train album ever.  Speaking of pop culture, the album features an incredible array of pop culture references; "This'll Be My Year," which people are calling a reprise of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" (except less tiresome to listen to); "Bruises," a collaboration with Ashley Monroe about the occupational hazards of living; and "You Can Meet My Mom," which just makes me really happy.

#4
Today is Poem In Your Pocket Day, and there's an exhilarating melee going on around the #pocketpoem hashtag on Twitter.  It makes me want to Twitter-jam, bad.

collage beginnings

Anyway, probably not one single person will be surprised to learn that my #pocketpoem is "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)" by e.e.cummings.  I'm sure I could finagle some horrible wordplay about carrying poems in pockets out of that line, but I will spare you.  I also have a line-by-line collage representation of this beloved piece in the works, but it's not done yet.

My fellow poet and Soc/Anthro major Julia may have stumped this holiday, though: "I dunno if I can fit 'howl' in my pocket..."

Asha, age 4

#5
Today my baby sister turns sixteen.

Yeah.  Sixteen.

It's hard to believe.  I swear I look at her (and Maria) every day and get surprised at how big, and grown-up, and mature they are.  And hilarious.  And beautiful, and smart as hell...  The list goes on!  If there is one reason I'm glad I moved home this year (and there are many) it is that the time I'm getting to spend with my sisters is priceless.  I even enjoy picking them up from school or dropping them off somewhere, or hitting up the mall together on a Saturday.  I value the opportunities I have gotten to share my experiences with them, and to hear about the things they struggle with and the things that make them happy.

It is a great joy and responsibility to be a big sister, and despite my complaining, I wouldn't give it up for the world.  And I wouldn't trade my sissies for any other sissies.  So don't even ask.

#6
The unbelievably delicious chocolate chip cookies Asha made to take to school for her own birthday.  They are so good, and I love how she loves to bake.  And also it reminds me of the time last year when Timmy got up at 8:00am on Lutefest to make himself a very, very chocolate birthday cake.  There is something bittersweet (but very tasty) about this style of self-celebration.  Something important, I think, something poignant with a Dust-Bowl-vignette quality to it.  I can’t say it’s sad because both Timmy and Asha have plenty of people who will gladly share their baked goods, and more importantly their company, but almost.

#7
As of tonight, my brother will be home from school for the summer!  I'm pumped.  He's got a sweet summer job using some of his architecture skills, and I'm hoping to take him out and introduce him to people--and maybe even meet some new ones!  OK, I'll be honest: I'm secretly plotting how to make him fall in love with Delaware too.  Plus, I just love him.  He's my first best friend and we've been in cahoots for almost 21 years now.

#8
Oranges.  (Is anyone surprised?)  I've had one for lunch every day this week, and every day I look forward to the orange at the bottom of my lunch bag.  It makes my fingers sticky but I love the smell of them and I hate the color orange but somehow I love it when it's on the fruit.  It's so bright and cheerful.  I love how juicy they are, how sweetly tart.  I love peeling them, both intrinsically and in anticipation of what's to come.  I love the texture, and how they're naturally packaged in little bite-sized pieces.  I love what I remember about them, and the people they remind me of.  I love vitamin C.  And for a whole host of other reasons I probably couldn't even begin to name or recognize, oranges just make me really, simply, bottom-of-my-heart happy.

Note the absence of oranges in this fruit bowl
(I have eaten them all)

scavengers

I spent yesterday--chilly, damp day that it was--blazing through the first book of The Hunger Games (written by Suzanne Collins, for future reference).

Let me first say I haven't been that taken by a book since The Help this summer.  And before that, probably re-reading the Harry Potter series over the summer of 2009.  This is one of those books whose writer is naturally gifted enough not to agonize over the craft of the language, which makes it easy to read, but not painful like some books whose writers have a knack for plot but just suck at writing.  I would give you an example but I'm finding I must have blocked them all from my memory.  I'll let you know if I think of one you might be familiar with.

Anyway, I was so absorbed that I finished the last 310 pages in a single Sunday afternoon, about 5 hours curled up in my awesome giant green chair, completely oblivious to the world around me.  The action-packed plot would have been enough in itself, but what really got me was the layering.

It's a YA novel, written from the perspective of a 16-year-old girl.  A 16-year-old girl who is the main provider for her family, but a 16-year-old girl nonetheless.  So I was roguishly delighted by the depth of the story.  I've heard very little outcry about the political undertones or societal criticism I found hard to ignore--thrilling, in fact.  Its post-apocalyptic setting inevitably carries the values that led this society to its demise, a demise that terrifies those of us who take democracy for granted--a la 1984.  I find it hard to believe that there has been no debate on the perpetual leftism of implied apocalypse--I may have just missed it, but that would be uncharacteristic of me.  Maybe I'm just reading into it too much.

I was also impressed at how well-researched it was, and how insightful.  There was a lot of anthropology woven into the story's social scheme, and a lot of psychology.  And while Collins alluded to fairly complex concepts and theories, and in fact based huge chunks of the story on these theories, they did not interrupt the flow or drop heavily into the narrative.  She explained huge ideas, like biopower, hegemony, and cycles of poverty, in terms the YA audience could grasp fairly easily, on the ground, in a way that was important to the story.

Yes, I am a nerd, and also far too academic for my own good.  I don't blame you if you got stuck in the middle of that and stopped reading.  SKIP TO HERE: READ THIS BOOK.  It's much less dense than my review of it.  Can't wait to get my hands on #2.

I should track it down now, because I will no doubt have to reserve it or wait for it to turn up, and I already have another book lined up that I'm pumped about: Sisterhood Everlasting, by Ann Brashares.

Sounds familiar?  It should, if you are or have ever been rightfully obsessed with the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.  This is the adult book follow-up to the last college-freshmen reunion we witnessed of the famous foursome, Tibby, Carma, Bea, and Lena.  So I can't wait to start this.

I stumbled upon this book on Saturday while looking for a Nicholas Sparks title at the New Castle Public Library--no, I am NOT trying to READ a Nicholas Sparks book (but if you asked me if I ever have read one and I was hooked up to a lie detector, I couldn't say no).  He has a book called Safe Haven which fit the bill of "A book with safe in the title"--an item on our list of things to scavenge and hunt.  (For a scavenger hunt...)

Scavenger hunts have unintended side effects, like accidentally learning historical facts about the place you are scavenging, or finding used syringes in the sand at the public park.  Sketchy.  We added it to our list and carefully (without touching it) removed the needle from the beach, where there were tons of little kids running around.  Kind of a rough awakening.

American flag from another era

Coin from the year someone on the team was born

Out-of-state license plate

Help Wanted sign (a little outdated...)

Business cards from REAL working professionals!

Date/time marked with Roman numerals

Animal made out of glass

Picture with someone dressed from another era

Sign with the name of a team member

Birdfeeder (bird not on the list)

Group jumping photo

(Really awkward) group picture on a slide

On a lighter note, I have some more Delaware historical tidbits for you!  Someone asked me once why Dover is the capital of this lovely state, if most of the action happens up north in Wilmington.  Turns out, after the American Revolution, the Brits were parked in the Delaware River, pointing 400 guns right at Delaware's capital: New Castle.  Now, the rebels, traitors to the crown, understandably felt very nervous about their vulnerable position; so they moved the whole operation inland, out of the way, in the middle of nowhere--to Dover, where it still operates today.

Operating from the new, non-centrally-located capital, Delaware has always been revolutionary.  The First State to ratify the U.S. Constitution, may I remind you, was the last state to ratify the 13th Amendment.  You know, the one that freed the slaves.

That story, like every other story, history or Hunger Games, is a lot more complex than just that.  But I'll leave it for now, because I could never hope to address, or even comprehend, the full scope of pain surrounding slavery and its prohibition and the years that have followed.

Speaking of pain, flogging (by bull-whip) was a legal punishment in this state until 1972.  The last incident punished this way, though, was in 1952.  Wife-beating.

Sometimes it takes awhile for things to change in law, on the books, after they have already changed in the world we live in.

And sometimes it's the other way around.

In 1970, two years before flogging became illegal in the First State, Democrats and Republicans in Washington cooperated to instate Earth Day.  Things were changing.  And now, 42 years later, things are still changing.  This year, people are still writing about the good of the earth, and about fighting for the good of the earth, and about fighting to preserve what's left of the earth.  Things are better than they were in 1970, or so I've heard, but they're still changing.

The longest-serving member of the House of Reps wrote an Earth Day post I really loved.  "This world is not ours," he wrote.  He says we borrow this earth from future generations.  I see that we're sharing it, with too many people and organisms to ever conceptualize.

What I love is that he places us "at a vital point in history. We lead, but if we fail in our leadership, we will fall into the dustbins of history."

The dustbins of history.  My favorite place to play.

a study in touch

Today I'm thinking about phantom limb syndrome and other phenomena of touch.

About a month ago I noticed this little lump in my palm, right below the base of my right ring finger.  I lived with it for a week, freaking out the whole time, of course, and finally made an appointment with a hand specialist for a month later--this morning.

During that time I had to learn to live with my little lump.  Got a new mouse at work.  Started thinking differently about how I distribute pressure and movement around my hand, how I use my fingers and my wrist and how all the parts fit together.

And it stopped bugging me, almost disappeared completely except for a tiny reminder on the tendon in the ball of my writing hand.

So I went in this morning for a consultation with the hand doctor and had my first-ever X-ray.  The X-ray technician took X-rays of my right hand in a few different postures, like thumb and forefinger pinched together, the other three fingers fanned out beneath.  "You should be my hand model," she said.  "Most of these guys don't get it!  ...Most of the women don't either, in fact."

So I sat and waited for the doctor, and he came in and felt the lump and said it is a ganglion cyst and that since it's not irritating me right now I could either leave it alone until it starts bugging me again...  Or I could get a cortisone injection that will make the tendon casing scar over and not fill up again.  Nip it in the bud.

I went for the injection, which also had some Novocaine in it, so my right ring finger and half of my pinky are numb like they dropped off somewhere and I've been at work all day with only 3 working fingers on my dominant hand.

Thus the phantom limb sensation.  Or phantom digits, I suppose.

"You can go about your business, but you won't feel anything for a few hours," the doctor said.  "Papercuts, hot, cold...  You won't feel any of that.  So just... be aware."

This has been an intensely weird experience for me, who has never had a surgery or a broken bone or a concussion.  Me, who likes to be barefoot and/or naked just to keep my senses sharp, to minimize the buffer between my nervous system and my environment with its endless stimuli.  Me, who hasn't taken a painkiller in two years.  Me, who types and clicks all day as a basic job requirement, and for whom writing (right-handed) is an identity.

Of course I am also mulling over the possibility that the Novocaine will have a permanent nerve-dulling effect on my fingers, which would be unfortunate and also a very strange scar to carry with me throughout my life.  And exploring the possibilities of living with some kind of sensory void.  The way I used to ask people I cared about to let me explore their faces with my hands, eyes closed, so that if I ever went blind, I would be able to recognize them.

Touch is a two-way sensation.  This is suddenly mirror-clear to me.  My fingers feel completely different in texture when they can't feel back.  The senseless finger feels like an alien, inanimate object attached to my hand where my really useful fourth finger used to be.  But the weirdest part is that it's not inanimate at all.  In fact, I'm using it to type as we speak and it still has weight and the tendons are still connected and it still bends and it still grips things.  It's just alienation of labor, and I am suddenly strangely aware of the physiological middle man that comes into play with muscle memory and contractions and response to environmental stimuli.  I feel like I'm playing the claw game in the arcade.

My mom once told me (when I was like 15, like she didn't think about how dangerous this wise tidbit could be falling into the wrong hormonal teenaged hands) that "Human beings need skin-to-skin contact to survive."  And in the current state of my hand I am profoundly struck by the mutual connotations of skin-to-skin contact.  Touch creates the most physical connection we can have with anything that is not ourselves, the most tangible, the most visceral, the most real.  And to share that connection with someone creates the intimacy of shared space, of intermingling, colliding surface atoms.  Poetically, the blurring of boundaries between two separate entities to confuse their separateness.

So touching ourselves is reflexive and similarly intimate and important in establishing our individual wholeness.  (Yes, some erotic undertones intended.)  And when I can't mutually intermingle the atoms of my separate fingers, the wholeness of my hand becomes confused.  This is why check-ins, and goodbye kisses, and hello kisses, and hugs are so important and keep us all from falling apart.

I'm arguing for a literal interpretation here.

smiling meditation: war stories

Last week I was driving home, touting my characteristic meditative (plastic) smile all over the place.

Note to potential smiling meditants: I know it's hard to smile for five whole minutes when you're starting out.  But after a couple of days--seriously, less than a week--your face gets used to it and the five minutes are over in a flash, and then suddenly you look at the clock and realize you've been grinning like a ninny for 10 minutes... then 15...  Trust me.  It's good for you.


In fact, my girl Kristy was telling me a pretty traumatic story the other day and I'm sitting there thinking, "When is this going to get funny?"  Because her eyes are sparkling and she just has this cute smile playing at the corners of her mouth through the whole thing.  But then the story is over, and I burst out, "That's awful!  I kept waiting for it to get funny because you were laughing the whole time!  But it never did.  If it had happened to me I would be so serious, tormented even."


"Well," she explained, "my natural face looks really angry, so I just trained myself to smile instead.  So now everybody thinks I'm just really happy all the time because a smile is my default face."


How much nicer this is than my default grimace.  Everyone probably thinks I'm a huge bitch (I have some testimony to back this up), or that I am the most unhappy person ever, or that I take myself verrrry seriously.  On the contrary, I am quite a sweet girl, if I do say so myself, and I'm actually one of the more existentially happy people I know, and I don't take myself THAT seriously.  I should work on this.


Back to the story.  So last week, as I meditated the shit out of my forced smile, I got cut off.  Twice.

Now, my normal reaction would have been to start (harmlessly and good-naturedly) cussing out these incompetent drivers under my breath.  But my road rage was surprised to find, instead of a ready glare, a silly grin in its place.  I could feel my face contorting as the two expressions battled for the front-line real estate of my visage.  But the smiling meditation, with the element of surprise on its side, sent the anger scurrying off into a dark alley somewhere with its tail between its legs.

This all happened very slowly.  I got this really odd out-of-body feeling that I had just witnessed a crucial turning point in history, like the Shot Heard 'Round The World or the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.  Or maybe the invention of the internet.

The compound effect of this bizarre phenomenon was that I started laughing at myself, which totally dissipated the entire idea of road rage, and even sparked a hint of sheepishness about the fact that I'd gotten upset about unknown idiots who can't drive properly.

Aside from the shock factor, I maintain that smiling is a superior facial expression to the poor dejected glare, and that in a power struggle Happiness would win out over Anger.  I am not by any means downplaying Anger's very real potential to consume, and perhaps this is just another facet of my "happy endings depend on where you put the period" theory.

Either way, in my life, I accept this as one of the Obvious Universal Truths.  As you have probably gathered by now, I am a firm believer in the healing properties of laughter.  Also, if I had to choose one weapon to vanquish all the world's forces of negativity, laughter would be my first and instantaneous pick.  Call me naive, happy-go-lucky, idealistic, and I will laugh it off and move on with my life.  It's really a win-win situation.

***

Speaking of happiness, Kristy and I discovered on Friday one of Wilmington's most famous happy hours, at Dead Presidents.  A great way to end a universally weird week, with half-price appetizers from 4-7 and $3 rail drinks after 6pm.   We actually missed the half-price apps, partially because Kristy set her ID on the computer desk at my house and we had parked in the Dead Pres lot before she realized it was missing.  Partly because we weren't really looking for food anyway.

The drinks, though, were strong.  This bartender kicked my butt on the heavy-handed scale, which is saying something.  Nobody's complaining.

On the way home we stopped at this bakery we'd passed earlier, and noted for the delicious baking-bread smell hanging over the whole neighborhood.  We stopped there at 9:00, looking for pizza--but it closed at 6:00 and didn't have pizza anyway.  Just your standard bakery fare.

So we hit up Yummy Pizza instead, on the corner of Old Capitol Trail and Newport Gap.  I ordered a small Hawaiian pizza, and 10 minutes later the girl at check-out waved a box at us.  She told me how much I owed and as she counted out the change, she said, "You ordered a medium, but they gave you a large.  But we charged you for the medium."

I tipped them well, and smiled at the guys peeking out of the kitchen, and as we stumbled out into the street I asked Kristy, "Did they do that on purpose?"  And she replied, "Yup."

Again, nobody's complaining.

a delaware love affair

And again, you've caught me being remiss in my writing.  I am still excited about Kyle's list from last week, partly because it gave me a post off, but mostly because I can never get enough of hearing my classmates' reflections about life before and after graduation.  As Nathan Soland commented, "One of the most important things St. Olaf taught me was to reflect; [Kyle did] that here with honesty, wit, and thoughtfulness."  This is something I seriously appreciate about my college education: My fellow Ole alumni reflect thoughtfully, intelligently, self-deprecatingly, on our shared circumstances and on the circumstances we no longer share.

That being said, and in the wake of Kyle's thoughtful, funny and true list of life lessons, I am growing weary of my play-by-plays and reviews of cool pubs and restaurants.  There are a few things I'd really love to share with you all, but I don't want to lose sight of the underlying exploration of this new life.  Plus, things have lately been thrown into an interesting new light.

I took Good Friday off from work and drove up to New York on Thursday night to meet my usual crew, Karin and Audrey, plus a delightful extra: My beloved Boo and one of my best and oldest college friends, Lisa, who was on spring break on the East Coast.  (Yeah, she works at an elementary school, and I'm betting she's really good at it...  But it means she gets spring break.  Jealous.)

Lisa: "Thanks! Just press the big button on top."
Jorge the Waiter: "Oh, I thought it was different from every other camera."

We met up with Heidi, who lived in Pod TMI with Lisa and I last year, and Mariella, Heidi's host in Brooklyn.  While Karin was at work the 5 of us went to Da Gennaro's in Little Italy for a delicious lunch, and it struck me that most of my beautiful, incredible friends are in one-year service positions: Episcopal Service Corps, Good Shepherd Volunteers, Minnesota Reading Corps...

And I have found something permanent.  Or at least long-term.  This puts me in a different mindset than a lot of my friends, especially those who are now in a similar situation as we all were this time last year (although most of them are freaking out less right now than we all were last year).

That being said, the four of us headed up to New Haven to stay in Audrey's house for a couple of nights.  In between sneaking into Yale dorms in search of a bathroom (unsuccessful), a smoky Episcopalian Easter vigil, throwing back a pitcher of the world's best margaritas at Viva, and chasing down cherry blossoms with bread, hummus, and strawberry picnics, Audrey gave me a gift she'd found at New Haven Reads, where she works: Delaware, a hardcover picture book produced by the State Quarter people.

I was pumped.

I love state quarters, and history, and Delaware.  (Who woulda thunk?!)

Lisa watched as I flipped enthusiastically through the pages, reading aloud facts about Delaware being the first state and explaining the perfectly round northern border.  Audrey and Karin laughed at me with the same expression they reserve for my professions of skepticism and everything else over-the-top that I do (which is a lot of things).  "Clara loves Delaware," they said.

"Why?" Lisa asked, looking very solemn.  "What do you love about it?"

I thought about it for a moment, and the first thing that came to mind was, characteristically, the robbery.

Which is kind of funny considering that the robbery typically tops the list of reasons to hate this state.  On a psychological level, though, those kind of intense experiences create intense emotional reactions that associate heavily with a place, person, or situation.  And then they mutate and skew in a way that can cause some pretty unfortunate circumstances, for example, addictions to unhealthy relationships.

I'm definitely not comparing my growing love for Delaware to an unhealthy relationship; the connection is that in the wake of the pretty serious trauma of having my home robbed within three weeks of moving into it, I experienced some incredible grace, love, and compassion.  To this day I am awestruck at the mental image of packages addressed to me and my family, full of love and other, more tactile things.  The address on these packages was in Wilmington, DE.  Reason #1.

Also in the wake of the robbery I moved into my own space and set it up the way I wanted.  I got a new bed, put up posters and photos, set up my books and mugs.  Invested in my living area.

A few months down the line I had my first visitor: Audrey, back in December.  This visit was an important milestone both in that I got to own my space, show it to someone, and because it was my first real foray into the history of the First State.

I love that Delaware is the first state.

I love my Delaware license plate, and my Delaware driver's license (even though I got really sad for a second when I saw a New York license this weekend) and the fact that there is no sales tax.

I love cherry blossom snow outside my window at work, and how close I am to New York, and that we are close enough to the ocean for fresh seafood.

DE pride at Two Stones!

I love Wawa.  Like, LOVE Wawa.

I love Delaware craft beer.  Even though Dogfish Head mostly makes IPAs.  Last week was Delaware beer week at Two Stones Pub, which has 25 taps of all craft beer at any given time, and last week served only Delaware beers.  We went on Old Dominion night.  You know I love it.

I love my job, and my friends, and my man, the bars and coffeeshops, and the creek behind my house, and I love being close to my family.  I even feel at home at Hope Church, despite the fact I don't go that much.

When I really boil it down, it mostly all comes down to this: I have settled.  I have put down roots.  I am investing my time and energy (and tax-free consumer dollars) into my life here.  I am making friends.  As Ann says, we'll find people to love anywhere, no matter where we go, if we stay there for awhile.

I miss my far-flung loves, of course, and I cherish every hour I can spare for a conversation with each of them.  As Kyle said, a random 10-word text from a distant friend is better than pretty much everything else.  Because, as Kyle also said,  friendship isn't measured by how well you stay in touch.

I realized a few months ago that love is a decision.  Among other things, of course.  And I'm definitely not trying to say that we don't ever fall in love with people or things we shouldn't or don't want to fall in love with.  If I told you that I would be a big-time liar.  But for love to work, you have to let yourself fall into it.  You have to decide that you're going to do everything in your power to let it happen, to make it work, to make it work well.

Delaware and I had a slow start.  In fact, I'll say we started in the negatives.  But slowly, we've decided to accept each other.  Slowly, we've decided to love each other.  Slowly, we've decided to put our all into making this work.  And now, I'm attached.  Like a tick to bare ankles in the summertime.

Aaaand we come full-circle.  Love them ticks.

I'm sure the feeling is decisively mutual.