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Ellen
Portland, Oregon USA
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I don't know what the weather was like on the day I was born. I do know that my parents have a saved newspaper from that day. It was either the Rocky Mountain News or the Denver Post. I was born at Humana Hospital in Aurora, Colorado on a summer afternoon in 1981. July 15, 1981 to be precise. My Mom was in labor, I think, for 22 hours, and we stayed in the hospital together for 3 days. My Mom told me a few days ago by chance that she was actually in the hospital one more day than normal because she had to recover from her long labor and intenseness of birthing me, Ellen Lee Wyoming.
From the story, my Dad was the first person to hold me, and for that reason I feel like I've been able to communicate more clearly with him my whole life. This does not mean that I love my Dad or Mom any more than the other, it just means that, we had a connection, we fused our mental capacities and through all the toil and pain that we would put ourselves through in the future, we would always have a fundamental and clear understanding of one another, and we would always communicate well, even if were not always correctly.
Obviously, I don't remember much from these early days, I've seen photos of my Mom, who is a real beauty, with me as a baby. This being the early 80's with short jogging shorts and little tank tops as rule of thumb during the lazy summer, I always think my mom looks so young with me on her hip, her matching 1981 red and blue shorts and tank top outfit, and a really sweet pair of wooden platform sandals. She had great legs. She actually still has great legs which is an awesome thing for me genetically.
My earliest memory which my Mom insists came from me seeing a photo but I know was a real memory in my head, was my Dad picking me up out of the crib for a few moments, holding me, and then putting me back in the crib. I grabbed and grabbed for him wanting him to pick me up again, but I don't remember what was next, either someone else came to pick me up, and that was okay, but I really wanted my Dad to pick me up, or I fell asleep or something. Anyway, years later I found a photo of my Dad holding me, looking at me and smiling. I couldn't have been more than a few months old at that point, and I knew that that photo was my memory. He had held me, in my memory just long enough for a photo to be taken, but being an infant, the concept of a camera was beyond me. I just wanted to be held.
This is not to insinuate that my Dad was a Dad for camera photos only, no no, he was probably on his way to work in the morning or something. He definitely spent a lot of his time with us growing up, as much as he could until he went back to school and worked full-time, which was a lot of our early childhood. He got his bachelor's and master's degree while I was growing up! Think of how intense that must have been! Whoo-ee!
Good job!
One of the next memories I have is sitting on the couch in the living room with my Mom and her big round belly. She's wearing a purple tank top tunic and her hair is so so long. Long and dark and she is beautiful and 28 years old and pregnant with my little brother. I'm sitting on the couch in a purple and white striped t-shirt and pink corduroy pants. We are in the sunshine at the front window of the house. In the newspaper in the early 80's there must have been magazine subscription stickers that would come with all the shiny advertisements in the center of the paper. The stickers weren't yet the peel and stick kind you could then stick to the card slot indicating which magazine you wanted (or book, or whatever it was) but the pull apart along the edges-lick-and-stick kind. It was an awesome craft project for me. My parents weren't going to buy all the magazines or any of them as far as I know, so they let me pull them apart and stick them all over the place. My feet, my arms, my legs, my mom's legs, everywhere! Gosh! How cute! I loved the magic of how it could stick and I wanted something to be created out of the stickers. I wanted the thing I fastened the sticker to to transform into something magic! And maybe it did and maybe that's why I kept doing it.
Fast forward a few months, and I am at the hospital to meet my baby brother. New person in the family! And I don't really know quite how I felt about it. Because my Dad emphasizes that I was really jealous and I just remember being yelled at about being jealous that I wasn't the only child anymore and somewhere in there I still feel guilty about it. I wish that I were somehow taught that it would be fun to have a little brother to share and play with, but maybe that's not what happened. I must have really be bent on being the only one because there are drawings that my parents still have that I remember them making me draw my brother in them if I just drew my Mom, Dad and Me, and this was when I was probably 5 and so he was 3 and so apparently I still felt that way then. Was this normal? I was totally in trouble I remember, when I didn't include him forcefully, if only they knew how to say the right way, "Ellen, why don't you draw in your brother too? I'll bet he would like to be in the picture?" Or, just patiently kept saying those things until I grew out of it. The forcefulness and the yelling and the making me feel ashamed I don't think were the good ways to work with a five year old.
But back to the day I met my brother. My Mom was at the hospital and she was tired and I could tell she was happy to see me but distracted. Someone brought my brother in, or he was already there and I wanted to hold him, or someone asked if I wanted to. I sat down and someone put him in my arms, but he was so heavy! I was so afraid that I was going to drop him that in the photo I have seen of this moment I look terribly pained and frightened. It isn't that I have a new brother that makes me scared or sad looking in the photo, it's that I can feel him slipping and I'm so afraid I'm going to drop him!
Someone takes him out of my arms and I am relieved, but I am also not at the center of attention and so I go wandering out the room unnoticed. I am ready to go and see and do other things and this new person is taking up all my precious time. I remember finding a janitors closet and then walking back and forth to the room my Mom and Dad and other people are in. I walk back and forth, someone comes to bring me back into the room and keep me from wandering, and I try to wander again. I remember a Styrofoam cup of something to drink or maybe it was ice. Maybe this is a memory of bringing a Styrofoam cup of ice to my Mom, something that I could do. I just needed a job, a purpose! Ah, even at two years old, this is what I was looking for.
I don't remember much more than that of Tom's early first year. We still lived in Aurora for a little bit longer and then my Dad, always thinking of wide open spaces and unhappy in the confines of the growing suburban Denver landscape, found a piece of land to build a home.
We moved in Elizabeth, Colorado in 1985 or so. We actually moved to the country with Elizabeth being the postal address but us being out in the country on 5 acres of land. Ponderosa pines, yucca and high desert scenery, big wide open skies and lots of space for little kids to roam.
When school started the school bus came to our each kids house individually, that's how "country" it was, it was a door to door driving service. On my first day of school I was all dressed up with a cute paisley printed backpack, a shirt with little apples on it and probably pink corduroys again. Our two Brittney spaniels, Rusty and April, came down to the end of our driveway, about the length in my memory of a football field to wait with me and my Mom for my first day of school. When the school bus came I asked the bus driver is she was also going to be my teacher, and she laughed and said that she wouldn't be my teacher but she would take me to and from school everyday. The dogs got excited and thought they were coming too and they jumped up and ran on the school bus and my Mom, embarrassed, called them off and wished me a good first day of school.
I don't remember much of Kindergarten. Ms. Hinnegan was my teacher and I remember she was a big bumble bee for Halloween and I was a pretty Korean princess and had the best and most authentic costume of all the kids in the school.
But going back to then I don't remember too much, I remember bumping into one girl when I turned around and she was blond and kind of chubby. I remember not wanting to share my crayons and put them in the community collection of crayons. And I remember how my Mom had taped my name to each pencil or pen that I had so it could be returned to me if I lost it.
I also remember coming home from the first day of school and my brother had a big cut down the front of his chest. My Mom told me that he was so upset that I had gone to school as wasn't home to play that he started to cry and got so upset that he fell over and cut his chest on the corner of the table. I think he had a scar for quite a long time and might still have a small mark today. I remember how that made me feel bad that he got hurt because I went to school and somewhere in there I thought it was my fault that he was cut because I didn't love him enough, or my Dad maybe told me I didn't love him enough. Maybe that's why I ignored him so much, my Dad kept telling me that I didn't love him enough and he would force me to do things I didn't want to like hold his hand, and maybe if he had just left it alone and showed me by teaching and talking and not forcing maybe I would have been a better big sister. I want to blame my Dad for this and not take responsibility because parents are the ones who are the teachers and they're supposed to teach their kids how to do things the right way, and his teaching was so often strict, dictatorial, unforgiving lectures, yelling, or spankings and so I learned to tune out and go my own way, and hope for a different life when I was an adult because, as a kid, I knew he was wrong so many times.
I have to take responsibility though, because I can take responsibility today. And I know that through the combinations of actions and our lives and our strife and how we all tuned each other out and dropped out of family cohesiveness, especially in Texas 1996 Š 2000, that it is still up to me to be a good big sister now, and in that, I have to be the friend sister and the loving sister because my little brother is now in Iraq on his second tour and working as a radiology technician in the army and even though I never see him and we rarely speak and have spare e-mails across the waves of the world... I love him a lot and it makes me sad that I don't know him more but at this point I'm afraid of getting to know him because it takes so long and because we're family there's more pressure and I just wish that we could already know each other and love and understand each other like our friends know us because then he would more easily see the good parts of me and the fun parts of me and not the angry, bitter, resentful, bitchy parts of me that are such a deep part of my personal past and have evolved so much into understanding, compassion, and love, but resonate most likely with him as the most recent memories that he has of me.
Back to the past.
We lived in Elizabeth for 5 years. The most we would live in any one place while growing up. My Mom was sick of living so far away from Denver, where her Mom and brother was (her sister was in Durango at this time with my Uncle John and Cousin Clifford) and so we moved to Arvada, Colorado.
In Arvada, we lived in a two-story home built in the mid-1970's that we bit by bit updated as we could. Green shag carpeting was replaced with plush tightly woven beige carpets. Wallpaper was stripped and fresh white paint put in its place. Dark paneled feux wood walls stayed but gave the living room a coziness that I still imagine and would enjoy having again. We had a good sized back yard and our swing-set came with us from Elizabeth to Arvada, and the dogs I can remember having in this house are Snoopy, Trooper, and... maybe that's it. I don't know. We had over 14 dogs growing up, our family just couldn't keep it together and keep one pet, they were disposable like toys to us and it wasn't until much later and getting to know the animals of my friends that I learned about the distinct personalities of dogs and cats and how sad the animals we had must have been.
I think my Dad loved the idea of a dog, but as he didn't know how to talk nicely to children he also didn't know how to talk nicely to a dog and his ideas of how to raise one were beyond him. My Mom is also not a big animal person because culturally speaking, dogs were not inside animals and so our dogs were always relegated to the yard where they were the lonely barking animals they were.
I now view having a pet as much as a commitment as having a child, with (possibly) maintenance.
We lived in Arvada and I went through Elementary School pretty much unscathed, and I think my little brother had a harder time because he was young and I think being half-Asian and a girl was different than being half-Asian and a boy in our Caucasian neighborhood. I got in a fight in 7th grade about being made fun of as an Asian and I choked a girl and threw her against a fence. She told her 8th grader friends about it and they targeted me at school. A few months later my friend Mandi, who danced with one of them, said that she would be scared if she were picking on me because I had a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. (I had a blue belt). That girl came up and apologized to me the same night. I don't know what ever happened to the other girl, Jessica Bava, I remember in elementary school she pushed me down on the playground, probably just because I looked different, and she was the one who kicked me in the hallway in junior high because I attacked her friend after her friend attacked me. I like to think that she's been an angry and miserable failure because if those were the only two incidents I ever had with her and I hardly knew her than I can only imagine what she did to people that she did know. And it makes me sad because I think of the home that she must have grown up in to make her such an ugly kid by the end of elementary school.
Anyway, we lived in Arvada for 5 years too, and my Mom had ideas about not living in a house built from 1970, my Dad must have been doing well enough so we moved two miles north to Westminster, Colorado, just far enough for me to have to change school districts, and my parents, thinking it just logical and fine for me to leave the people I had met and become friends with for the past 5 years, made me change schools. I was also going into high school so I was a brand new student in the 9th grade. Miserable as it was at first I fit in quickly enough and missed my old friends but saw and knew that they were moving on just as quickly with their lives and that to them, I was mostly a childhood memory. I played basketball, ran track, hung out with the jocks and the stoners and the skaters. I wasn't a prep. We did suburban kid things like went to the movies, rollerbladed and just hung out at each other's house when our parents weren't home, and sometimes when they were home.
Then, da da da duuum, we got news about moving again. I knew my Dad was worried about keeping his job. Lots of outsourcing I guess was starting to happen and computer programmers were kind of a dime a dozen. He worked really hard, got his Masters in computer information systems, got a program management certificate, and got a job in Houston. He moved at the end of my freshman year to start working and look for a temporary place for us to stay while my brother, Mom and I stayed in Westminster.
This was the summer that I fell in love with the boy next door. Matt Clark was a delightful boy. Quiet, artistic, musical, and totally attractive in skater-boy persona, he made me laugh and also made me tingle. He was in my Spanish class that spring in school and I loved to sit next to him. I didn't even know that I had a crush on him, but I loved to watch him. I watched him draw, I watched him be sarcastic with a smile on his face, and I watched him walk home while I walked a half a block back with my friend Adam, who had a crush on me. He told me later sometime that he knew I wasn't interested, he could tell by the way I always watched Matt as we were walking home.
I should give mention briefly to the street we lived on, in this brand-new neighborhood in Westminster, Colorado (good bye prairie dogs and plains habitat). On my street were tons of kids my age. Jennifer, who was Hispanic but not a part of the new wave of little educated Mexican immigrants but old school Hispanic that's been here longer than anyone else and her parents were working professionals. She actually went to my old school but her parents didn't make her change schools when they moved to the new neighborhood, plus they were really strict and she didn't come outside a lot so I didn't see her a lot. Then there was Matt, and skip two houses then there was me, and next door to me were Rhonda and Rochelle, two Latina gangster wannabe girls who didn't get good grades and were in trouble a lot. Their mom had remarried an Anglo and they had a new half-brother baby in the house which I think made them feel like they were yesterday's news. Across the street from me was Christina, another Latina girl from a working professional Hispanic family. She was a grade ahead of me and she also didn't do so well in school.
Two doors over to the left of my house past Rhonda and Rochelle was Tony, who dated my friend Jill. Oh! I forgot Adam, who lived next door to Jennifer at the end of the block and was also a friend of mine and was a really good basketball player. He was Mormon and had a huge family and they all seemed really athletic. He and Tony were good friends and Tony and Adam dated my friends Jo and Jill and I for awhile dated their friend Eric and we six hung out for awhile but I didn't really like Eric, I broke up with him after two months right around Christmas and this girl Kelly, who was a cheerleader and in love with Eric was oh so happy to have him to herself. I remember Eric stopping in the hallway once to kiss Kelly in front of me and I thought it was pretty stupid. Something similar would happen again at my next high school in Texas but that guy was kind of crazy and while he never did anything violent to me he did hit the girl he ended up dating after I broke up with him.
Anyway, back to the street, after Tony there lived a girl who was quiet and very much to herself but her last name was Book and I remember that but not her first name. She was a couple years older than me which meant I was kind of scared of her but all the same she was really nice to me (so I felt special) and we talked on the bus sometimes. I didn't understand her very much because she didn't try to fit in and she didn't seem to care weather or not she was popular. I also felt like she had a dark side which also added to her mystery and it was almost as if she wanted me to be a part of something with her, but I didn't get it. I think her name was Krista, or something like it. I think she had a younger brother too.
But back then, to the summer and falling in love with the boy next door. One early summer night, Christina, Matt and I were playing truth or dare, and as such games go he was eventually dared to give me a kiss. Rather than have to run around the block or something silly as our consequence for not taking on the dare, he of course said he'd just go ahead and give me a kiss, and we locked lips for much longer than we needed to for just a silly little dare. Christina, embarrassed, pushed us apart after enough time had passed and commented on how gross it was that we were still kissing. I think she was a little bit mad at me afterwards too because she probably liked him a little bit too but that was pretty much it anyway.
I loved spending time at Matt's house. It was a little smaller than ours, but Matt didn't have a sibling living with him. His house was neat and tidy and his room was so fun. He had so much of his art up on the walls and cutouts that he had drawn hanging from the ceiling. I also noticed with surprise that he had my school picture up on the wall about his desk, neatly placed with a thumb tack. My picture was the only one up amongst the art.
I really liked his parents but I think he had a hard time talking to his Dad. His Mom was a hippie and his Dad was a Vietnam War vet. In a silly way I asked casually (never having experienced war) if he had ever killed anyone. He didn't answer my question and changed the subject which makes me think that maybe he may have killed someone and fending off a dumb 14-year-old kids comment with no comprehension of what that means was the right thing to do.
Matt and I made out a lot like 14 and 15 year olds might do if you knew what they were up to, we went to movies, hung out at each others house and had our parents checking up on us once in awhile. I snuck over to his house every now and then in the middle of the night, well, maybe it was just once, and we made out in his living room for a long time until I was afraid his parents were going to wake up and so I went home. I remember the Olympics in Atlanta were on TV a lot and Jewel was just starting to gain popularity and I really liked her music and listened to 96.5 the Peak when it was still an alternative station.
We moved at the beginning of August so in retrospect I was only ever "with" Matt for a little over a month yet it affected so much of my young life. His musical taste and love of punk and ska turned me on to that kind of music. So when we moved to Texas I found the kids that liked that kind of music and for awhile fell in with sort of a random mix of druggies, stoners, Goths, theatre kids, and jocks until I fell into my own with the theatre group and made some great friends for life.
But before I get ahead of myself, we moved in August 1996, and if I read any of my journal from that point forward, I was pretty miserable for at least the next 6 months although I think I tried not to be.
I remember wishing so so so so hard that Matt would just show up at my school to hang out with me and take me away. I wished it so hard that I scared myself into thinking if it happened anything would be possible. I didn't get Matt but he did send me his jacket in the mail one day and it smelled like him. I held on to it for so long and didn't wear it because I didn't want his smell to come off of the jacket.
We came into Houston on the plane and the moving trucks took our things to our temporary house in Katy, Texas. My Dad, having been in charge of finding decent lodgings went cheap instead of quality and we were all kind of grossed out. I can't even remember how long we lived in that first house but it wasn't long before we had moved out (my Mom shaking off the memories of it immediately) and moved into one of the nicest neighborhoods in Katy, TX. Our house was a veritable McMansion in a "gated" community (of which at the time I thought was something of a status symbol as all good suburban kids do) of McMansions and homes ranged from $250,000 to over $1,000,000. This is the socio economic group that I went to school with. The kids I made friends with however, were not the ones that drove the Mercedes and BMW's. We were the kids with parents who were working professionals but in the world of oil, they were not the oil tycoons. Well, except for a couple of them. Going to Ash or Nick's house was always like a treat at a Saudi palace, they're homes were HUGE! But also always felt so empty and lonely. I don't know where their parents ever were but I always felt like they were in the recesses of the west wing and we had the grand marble entry ways and the built in movie-theater screens all to ourselves. I guess there were a handful of kids in the circle I ran with that had pretty big houses, so I took my 3000+ square foot home as something more or less normal and never considered myself to be well-off. That comes to much later in my life when I meet poverty for the first time.
In the mean time however, I go through high school, somewhat miserable but still escape unscathed and transition from Katy, Texas, which is just outside Houston (or more correctly, connected to the virus that is Houston on its edge) and was accepted amongst other schools, to the University of Texas at Austin. I moved to Austin after a summer of post-high school road tripping with friends and shortly thereafter, my Dad was transferred to Austin as well, so my family followed me to my college town and moved into an apartment while they built a house and tried to sell the other one in Texas.
Then he got laid off. With a house being built and a house not sold and a daughter in college my parents were stymied. But, my Mom, a faithful believer in a God that rewards those who help themselves put her faith into meditation and focused her energy. My Dad found a great job with a company in Austin after not too long a time, their house in Katy sold and they were able to move into the home that they built in Round Rock, TX, a suburb just north of Austin. I don't remember too much of the stress of all this because I was removed from it and in school. Thinking on this at the moment makes me think again of how hard all this must have been for my brother. He had so many more school changes than I did with the moves and after his first year in Austin he had done so poorly at that high school that he changed schools to get a fresh start. That fresh start quickly went sour too, he kept in touch with a couple other reclusive friends in Houston and eventually barely graduated in 2001 and moved out on his own to work for Dell.
Don't get me wrong, my brother didn't do poorly in school because he wasn't smart. He did poorly because he didn't care and he was lazy and he was lonely and preferred to spend time on the computer rather than socialize and saw apparently no point or value in doing any sort of academic work of quality. This attitude drives me crazy because he is likely more intelligent and better with words than I am and I found it to be such a waste of talent. Moreso when I came back from Brazil and having met so many people who didn't have the opportunity or chance to go to college, and there my brother was, failing out of the University of Texas at San Antonio too. But, again, I'm getting ahead of myself.
So my parents built another home (I didn't mention this, but they built their Aurora home, my first home, the Elizabeth home, my second, they bought a used house in Arvada, built a new one in Westminster, bought an old one in Katy (although old at this point is relative, the house was 5 or so years old when we got it) built another one in Round Rock, and now, they've since moved one more time and now live in Buda, TX in, the nicest home by far that they've built and it's wonderful because it's NOT a cookie-cutter home. I won't comment on the subdivided ranch plot that they've built and the overtaking of the countryside by sprawl either. I will just say that their home is lovely and I really do enjoy visiting and relaxing on the tiled back porch overlooking the mesquite trees with the warm soft Texas wind gently rushing by.
But where was I. Oh yes, college. Whew, this could be where I get really bogged down in memory lane because yes, this is where life seems to have started for me, the flourishing of my already stalwart independence coupled with the freedom that student loans and educational debt can buy. (Ignorance, at 18, is bliss. This is why I spent the $10,000 graduation gift my aunt sent me on clothes, a car, and climbing gear.)
So, to sum college up I'd like to put it this way. Austin made me love Texas. I made myself love Texas by exploring Central Texas on my terms, working for the outdoor recreation center and guiding hiking and backpacking trips in central and west Texas. I majored in geography and learned about the history of the southwest extensively and how that related to Texas. I spent my summers cultivating my love for adventure and the meaning of community and family with my friends Aggie, Chris, and Zach that I met working in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. I spent a semester studying in northern Arizona with the Grand Canyon Semester, a program that veritably changed my life. I ran around the plateau country, made a documentary, worked and talked with so many different people that all believed I would do something amazing with my life... I rafted the Grand Canyon, backpacked the Grand Canyon, slept under the moon and starry sky many many nights and fell in love with the desert, the space, the dryness between stones and a poet that I kept in disguise as a secret lover.
In Arizona I grew depth and breadth into my soul and my knowledge of the world.
During these times I drank in deep sunsets, flirted with words and poems, and made love with intellectuals that drank in my mind as deeply as I could drink of theirs. We ran together like naked beasts through the desert scraping our souls clean and finding the meaning in the smallest things. The cactus leaf and the green bark of the leafless tree. We wrote poems and made movies and cried and stretched our last night together deep past the sunset and pulled at the rays of light we could still grasp and begged them to stay longer, to continue to warm our hearts and keep our passions and our joy together, burning deeply...
Early the next morning we slowly parted ways, cold in the night of morning, frost on our breaths, steam curling away from our lips and toward the fading stars in the pre-dawn sky. One left by train, the other, on foot for who knows where or how long, and me, I packed my life into the car that carried me from the edge of the world and back, to take me again to Texas, but I left a piece of my heart in a canyon and it still beats there and that feels good and safe in my soul.
Upon return to Texas, I was miserable. No that's not quite true. I had a delightful spring, lived in a cooperative with 20 other leftist leaning liberal students of varying walks of over-educated life and was excited at 7:30 in the morning to go to class and embrace what the day had to offer. It was late spring that I became miserable. When I left my heart and energy in Arizona I died a little bit and lost a little bit. Or... I didn't know how to fill in the new parts of me grown in Arizona and so I scrambled for something I couldn't quite see or feel. I tried to fit into the city instead of being the exact same Ellen I was in Arizona. I didn't know that the two young women could co-exist in the same body regardless of space and time and so I tried to be someone I wasn't, tried to find the love I couldn't find, and tried to breathe hot and humid Texas air.
I did win a fellowship during this time to study sustainable development in the Brazilian Amazon. I had studied German while I was in college and thus had to take an intensive Portuguese class before heading to Brazil in January of 2004. I decided for the first time in my college career to stay in Austin during the summer. I had a good internship working with the Texas Water Development Board which paid well and would allow me to "save" for my trip. I say "save" because I don't think I've ever saved a substantial amount of money in my life and I'm not quite sure that I saved any more money than I would have if I had gone to Colorado or back to Arizona.. I also had met a boy right before I left that I was excited about being around during the summer but he took flight from me soon after I returned from my last guiding trip with the outdoor program and to this day I don't precisely know why, suffice it to say that I scared him off with my intensity. I became depressed and entered the funk that was to last until I landed in Brazil and was forced to reconcile myself and my mind to a more beautiful being. This is funny to say because I also met Alvaro during this time and fell in love with the kind of person he was. Kind, funny, gentle, gentlemanly, fun-loving, super-intelligent, and bilingual. Alvaro was my introduction to actually knowing someone that came from Mexico; even though he grew up in Texas... he's a true Texican from McCallen, Texas, along the Rio Grande in the valley, la frontera. His family has pecan trees and grapefruits on their farm in Mexico. Alvaro is now finishing his PhD in physics at the University of Texas.
I think I fell in love with Alvaro and maybe he really liked me too for all these qualities. And I'm glad I fell in love with the kind of person that Alvaro was because all of the amazing qualities that were in Alvaro I ended up finding in someone that I am with today who really helps to round me out and be my teammate at the exact same time. But more on him later.
Anyway, we were friends and we went climbing together a lot with another fellow named Dima physical chemistry professor at UT, which sounds like the best job title ever in some ways. And then I went away to Brazil for the spring.
I spent 5 months in the equatorial Amazon for one of the most challenging times of my life. Once the language anxiety had subsided sufficiently enough for me to feel I could communicate my drive to stay and find some project to work on dried up. I had no idea what I was doing and I made the best of traveling with academics and trying to create opportunities for myself, but negotiating a foreign land with few supports and a lot of unfamiliarity was quite difficult and I do not believe I rose to the challenge. I was weak in a lot of ways that I've grown stronger as a result of having gone through that but all the same going to Brazil was life changing in that I saw the effects of the world through non-American eyes and I began to understand just how rich Americans were even if Americans were poor. But then, now, I know just how poor Americans are even in they are poor and so in terms of poverty there are degrees of relativity and they cannot directly compare although each individual in poverty shares something with another in poverty, no matter the time, place, country or continent.
I left Brazil with an overwhelming sense of failure and came back to the US brimming with overwhelming desire to contribute and accomplish. I brought this knowledge back with me and the ability to speak Portuguese, which led to the easier acquisition of Spanish which has proven quite useful in the U.S.
I missed the desert but first I wanted to travel. I came to Texas for about a month then packed up my car for Colorado to take a Wilderness First Responder course. Of all the things I knew and liked, I knew I liked guiding and working outside so I decided that would be the first measure of priority if I were to start my life working in the outdoors. I ended up with 14 or so kindred souls over a 10 day period in Salida, Colorado where we learned how to keep our friends and ourselves safe in the backcountry in case of medical emergency.
I really clicked with a couple of the girls (and they would make appearances by chance in the future in my life) and I went with Tara, a fundamentally and deeply religious girl by coincidence, to her churches township and her hometown, Rehoboth, New Mexico, which is just outside of Gallup, New Mexico. Her family welcomed me into their home for a few days and Tara and I went climbing on sandstone near where she grew up and she showed me canyons and beautiful country she played in while growing up. It was amazing to be in a place that someone had spent their whole life. I wondered what it would have been like, living in a community bound by faith, living in the desert, watching everyone you know grow up and having all the adults in the town be your second parent.
I had a beautiful photo of a sunset through blue clouds on a cloudy day in the town that I remember really well.
From Rehoboth I went to Flagstaff hoping to find someone I knew in town and around, but alas Erin and Joe were out in the field and I didn't know anyone else I could just drop in on so I went up to Antelope Butte, wrote a post card or a letter to my grandma, thought about camping, got bored and then started to drive to Telluride. This part of my trip was hard because I so didn't want to be alone to discover and be in these beautiful places that my memory missed because discovery is so much richer shared with the eyes of another person. I couldn't decide what I wanted to do. I wanted to camp and hike but I also wanted to find a place to be. I decided to start investigating towns and places to live and always had considered Durango and Telluride so there I started my investigation.
On my way up to Durango I picked up a hitchhiker, an old Hopi grandmother going back to her village after looking for her son in Flagstaff, who she didn't succeed in finding. I felt like I touched on the past just a little having her sit next to me, mostly silent over the next 60 or so miles before we got to Moencopi (pronounced Mun-cup-ee).
I got to Durango later in the evening, the light turning blue after the sunset but before darkness had completely fallen. I came into a coffee shop and was envious of the comfort and closeness the patrons felt, their security in knowing that their home was just around the corner and they knew where they were in the world.
I sat at a table in the corner and mulled over the fliers and wondered what it would like to just settle in, get to know the yoga studio around the corner, work as a dog walker, a kite flyer.
I ordered a cup of tea and called home. I don't remember much the conversation but this reminds me of another phone call I made home a few years earlier that I forgot to mention.
The summer before I left for Arizona was the last summer I spent working in Rocky Mountain national Park, meaning it was also my third summer in the park. In between the end of my season and starting school in Arizona I drove up to Glacier Nat'l Park in Montana to see Russell, an ex who was an ex and at the same time wasn't but that I couldn't let go as I should of long ago because I was lonely and loved the attention I didn't seem to know how to find in any place that I actually was. Anyway, the end of that trip was finally the finale that needed to happen and I left Montana with such an incredible lightness of being (is that a book title?) that I felt like I was flying out of my body amongst the aspen trees and sunshine.
I pulled over somewhere along I-90 on my drive home to make a phone call at a phone booth. This is probably the last time I made a call from an actual phone booth in the United States and also the last time I probably used a calling card.
But I called home because I suddenly felt so free and open on the road and the mountains were deeply blue and rising up all around me and the fields were amber yellow or deep green grass and in my memory there were no cars, no people, just sky, and land and this phone booth in the middle of nowhere at a middle of nowhere cafˇ. I pulled over, put in all the digits and let the phone ring somewhere deep in the heart of Texas.
I don't remember what I talked about, probably everything that had just happened, but I loved calling home from that place and I loved how much love I had in my heart and I remember talking to my brother on the phone and being so happy that I was talking to my brother on the phone and just knowing that I had family that loved me and that I loved me enough to stop the nonsense that had been going on with this boy and to say yes to my freedom. I talked that time for a long time, at least in my memory it seems, but it may have only been 20 minutes. Every moment was deep and I sank into the words and feelings and colors all around me.
From here I drove down to Arizona going to Colorado for a brief pause to gather some things I'd left in Estes Park and... I remember stopping at the cafˇ at the top of trail ridge road on my way back into town and I remembered thinking that now this wasn't my place and that it was time for me to move on. The Harley rider tourists asked me questions because they saw me sitting and writing in my journal (where is that journal now? What did I write in those pages?) and I explained to them what they were looking down towards the old Fall River Road.
And then I left the mountains, went to the desert and was shocked at the dryness and at the red. And then, again, I fell in love with the Ponderosa's and that story begins again...
.... And so I'll bring it back to that phone call in Durango home. I don't remember what we talked about on that phone call either but I was tired and I'm sure I was talking to my Mom who was most likely really worried about me and the fact that I was just camping wherever I wanted and not staying in hotels (like I would have the money for that). I don't actually recall where I slept that night... Oh yes I do, I drove up a forest service road and camped like 4 or 5 other cars that I saw, on the side of the road, seats folded down, and curled up in the back with a book in my sleeping bag.
I talked to people in Durango about jobs and living and went on to Telluride and stayed there a couple days to do the same. I met some people in a theater camp and they invited me to their house for the evening after their play but I declined because of the camp reality they were living in and that I didn't want to handle. I talked to the librarian and I wrote long e-mails from a coffee shop about my travels and wanderings.
From Telluride to Silverton to a hike to a cold night in a tent to Ouray for hot springs to Denver to see Cathryn and then across the plains and heading East, a direction I've never gone before, to see Claire in Iowa and paint windows with her, then to St. Louis to see Jenni for a week before heading back to Texas.
... Except I almost moved to St. Louis. Suffice it to say I met a boy who was really nice but also happened to be Jenni's roommate, oh, and ex-boyfriend. So that situation got a little tangly. We had to have a conference. Jenni and Scott actually had to have a conference and then I was called into the room and we were all trying really hard, if I recall, to "be like the Buddha". I found a job and found a place to live and was ready to move... to St. Louis! But then it all came around and I decided to head back to Austin. I left. Got not very far and turned around. I came back. Jenni was annoyed. She said to me when I called her: "Are you in love?" In that totally exasperated voice she can use. "I don't know!" I said. I didn't think I was in love. I was in attraction. And I had already been there for like 3 weeks.
I left again, this time like a band aid, off in one long rip and back to Texas I drove with the money I had made cocktail waitressing one night at the Red Fez, an Ethiopian place on the main loop in St. Louis right near Washington University. I never showed up for my second shift.
That fall was confusing and decompressing. I remember reading Tonto and the Lone Ranger Fist Fight in Heaven during a heavy Texas rainstorm and just the energy of the book and the electricity outside made me erupt in my own crazy tears. I had made this big loop looking for a place to land and I couldn't decide on anything and nothing felt right. I had to finish the one class I had left via correspondence to graduate.
I lived at my parents' house for two months, waiting tables at a Brazilian restaurant to "save" money, and hated every minute of it. Professors and students would walk in and I was sure they were all just looking at me like... I was just some waitress or something. I wanted to be the student again, smug in their studies and like the professors, comfortable in their existence.
I'm smart! I wanted to shout. I went to school and have traveled and I speak Portuguese and I could save your life if we were in the woods and you broke your femur and I can teach you how to rock climb! I'm smart!
But I just took their stupid orders and listened to the micro-managing manager bark irrational commands all day long. I drank a lot of mojitos and started to frequent Monkey Wrench Books, the local anarchist book space. I read the book Nickel and Dimed and felt so much like that waitress. Wait, except for the part that I lived with my parents and I actually had a great big old safety net to catch me if I fell. I would learn the art of waiting tables later on in life, at the moment I was not cut out for it.
So I quit, started to canvas for Clean Water Action, moved into a shared home with three 20-something women in the Barton Hills and lived in South Austin. I moved in mid December. By the end of January I had dated a boy briefly, went climbing in Mexico, discovered the boy had a girlfriend when he also showed up at the same climbing area in Mexico with his girlfriend, not knowing I was also there (he thought I was going to Arizona for a backpacking trip that had actually fallen through), I also closed loose ends with a boy I avoided when I found out he liked me (I apologized) and was apologized to by a boy who I liked and he avoided me, not out of rejection I don't think, but out of deference for his budding Buddhist practice to which he needed to focus on purity and balance and perhaps I didn't fall quite neatly in those lines at the time... I understood. This spiritual boy and I spent 48 hours together before he left Austin and I felt so relaxed and happy around him and was happy for the short moments we had pieced throughout the past two years. I cried when he left and I think they were tears of relief that someone could show me compassion and love.
Then on January 31st, 2005, I took my final exam for my correspondence course and completed my degree! I was ecstatic and then I felt lost. I didn't perform as well at Clean Water Action, and then 10 days later, $2000 showed up in my bank account from UT. A refund from tuition paid while I was in Brazil, turns out because the University I went to in Brazil went on strike (this was another hurdle I had to overcome) I got my money back! Next thing I know I'm quitting my job at Clean Water, interviewing at a plant nursery and was accepted for the last slot on a volunteer invasive species removal Grand Canyon river trip.
On Presidents' Day 2005 I drove out of Texas with the plan to come back in two weeks.
I never went back to Texas.
Two weeks on the river as a volunteer turned into a fling with a boatman, a trip out to Springdale, UT where he lived in Canyonlands National Park, and also going to 7 or 8 different river companies to beg borrow or steal my way into a job. Can-X gave me the once over and since Richard Quarteroli, the former Grand Canyon River Guide Association President was an acquaintance of mine and had sent good tidings in my stead to the company, I was given the green light to come on the training trip and see how things went.
I had died and gone to Grand Canyon Heaven. Extra plus was that Joe and Amber (Amber who I must have met for the first time right around now) were in town and let me stay with them while I did all this wandering and job hunting. Erin and Luke also let me stay with them at their house so I surfed along, did laundry, hung out on the volcanic soil of Flagstaff underneath canopies of towering Ponderosa's and smiled.
I flew home for 48 hours to pack up my room in the house. Actually, I started to drive home, but was trying to be back in three days to go on a 40 mile backpacking trip through Sycamore Canyon before going out on my training trip. So as I was driving out of Flagstaff I realized that would be cutting it really close. So I called Southwest Airlines, booked a ticket for later that afternoon, and instead of driving to Texas from Flagstaff, I drove to Phoenix, (called Matt Peeples who was and still is a student at the University of Arizona in Tempe, to see if he could pick me up when I got back) and flew home. I think what I actually did was call Noelle at work, have her look up flight info for me online, look up my password for something in my e-mail account and then I called Southwest and booked a flight. Thank God for cell phones and friends with computers while sitting on the side of the highway mid-trip.
So, home for 48 hours. Mom helped me pack my room, I had already arranged with my roommates to have another roommate they approved of and it all worked out really well. I was in and out and gone before I could really even blink.
My Dad told me he was really glad I flew and left my car in Arizona because he thought my Mom would have tried to make me stay in Texas. He was glad to see me follow my heart.
I made it back in time to hike through the desert with Joe, Amber, Andrew (who flew in soon after me so after Matt picked me up at the airport and we hung out for awhile, I went back to the airport, picked up Andrew and we drove straight to the trailhead with all the shit I brought with me in the back of the car, it wasn't much but it was a mess since I had a mess of backpacking stuff strewn back there too.
We drove to the trail head and there was a guy named Clark who was going to take my car back to Flagstaff after we started hiking, we had parked another car at another location a little closer in so I could leave early to make it to my river trip while the rest of them continued the entire walk back to Flagstaff.
It was an amazing time and oddly enough at some point, I knew the weather was turning and I was worried and I wanted to turn back and hitchhike home because I was sure we were going to be stranded. At the time, however, we were all tripping on mushrooms and I could see the flight of the bugs and everything headed south, away from the direction we were walking which made it extra intense. The juniper trees also took care of me and the pinion pines were trickster trees.
Amber insisted I stay and of course she was right. But I was right too. A storm system moved in on us and it started to snow. We were cold, pushing it hard after a day off to play along the red rock sandstone fins in our amphitheater and when we got to the car everyone piled in because everyone was done. 5 days had passed; we drove back to Flagstaff, and went straight to the pizza place for food and beer.
I unpacked, showered, and then repacked for the river.
I went on a training trip with CanX, and then was given two assistant positions on two trips in a row. Then I was given a paid trip, and then another. All in all that first season I rowed 6 trips, got a lot better at rowing, had a hell of a time learning, cried, was frustrated, was scared, was cold, was hot, was pissed, and was blessed. Holy fuck it was amazing and because I'm writing this whole thing in 24 hours or less and I have to go to bed soon I'm not doing this part of my life any justice. But I grew and I blossomed and I loved once again and I also went home for 4th of July, to see my friends who all came to town and also to briefly visit my family. I decided to talk again with Gore Range Natural Science School, since they offered me a position to start for the summer but I declined because of the Canyon. They said they would have me for the fall since I was bilingual and they needed a bilingual speaker. No matter I spoke Portuguese and not Spanish it would be fine.
I put in notice that the last trip of the summer with be from July 17th to the 31st, the trip that Pat led, and that left me enough time to meet Aggie and Chris (my Rocky Mountain National Park Family) to go to Zach and Marcy's wedding. I didn't know if I would want to go to this wedding at first considering how my relationship with Zach was and how there was a small part of me that felt kind of funny about going. But then I realized that all in all he was still a friend that I loved and cared about and besides, hanging out with Chris and Aggie is absolutely amazing at all times. So to California I went to meet them in San Jose. Zach and Marcy got married in Aptos, which is basically Santa Cruz and we stayed with Chris's really really rich aunt in Carmel. Whew!
We also went south to see the Redwoods and after Aggie and Chris went back to San Jose to fly back to their homes I hopped the train to San Francisco, and this time called Natalie to mapquest directions for me so I could meet up with my college friend Charlie before hopping a flight later that evening to Mexico City.
Charlie and I met up, ate Indian food, talked about how amazing our friends are and how cool life is, I went to the airport, bought travel insurance, transferred in Los Angeles and ended up in Mexico City hours later with no luggage.
So, with my carry-on I hoofed it via the Metro to the bus station. Read the latest Harry Potter book and waited for my bus to leave to Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca.
Was in Oaxaca for two weeks, surfing and hanging out with local yokels and expats, learning how to make my Portuguese sound like Spanish and decided after hanging out with Gigi (Swiss pro-snowboarder) and the Italians from San Francisco, that I would go to Oaxaca city to see my friend Blake, also from college, also friends with Charlie, who happened to be volunteering with a non-profit in a small village outside the city and working at a bookstore for pay.
I stayed with Blake for 4 days or so, he got sick and I took care of him and also went with him to his organization and volunteered with the kids with him. While he worked at the bookstore during the day I entertained myself in the city, visiting museums and churches and my favorite, always, I went to the market.
Blake and I hung out amicably and comfortably, ate dinner in and went out to dinner once where I discovered that he had never met my friend Claire, and the two of them had so much in common!! So I told him all about Claire and I'm pretty sure he had a crush on her by the time I was done, but Natalie and I had both already kissed this boy and so 3 would be too much. Besides, at this time, Claire was seeing someone and also thousands of miles away in... either Atlanta and still working for the Carter Center or already up in Montreal going to law school at McGill. Man, Claire's life in 24 hours would be a total trip to read!
Anyway, I left there, headed to Mexico City to see Ingrid, who I had met climbing at the beginning of the year in Mexico, who I think also came to see me in Austin in January right before I left for Arizona and river trips. From Mexico City I flew back to Phoenix and was picked up by the friend of a friend I knew from climbing in Texas and ended up in a diner with an aspiring circus performer and a few other climber people at 2 in the morning.
I went to bed around 3, got up around 7 am, hopped in the car, feeling fresh and free and ready for the road and drove to Flagstaff to pick up my extra things. I wanted to say goodbye to people again or anything, but it was still field season and Joe and Amber and Erin and Luke were all out in the field. I stopped by the Fat Tire festival that happened to be going on and wished I had time to hang out, drink beer and lay in the grass.
Instead I drove out of Arizona and through Utah, crying and saying goodbye to the painted desert as it rolled away behind me. I climbed through canyon and plateau country and just before hitting the Rockies I stopped in Colorado National Monument for the night. I drove to a high point where I was far from the highway and safe near the Juniper trees and unrolled a sleeping bag on top of my Pathfinder and fell asleep on top of my car beneath a full moon. It spoke to me in Spanish while I slept.
The next morning I made the drive to Vail, Colorado where Cindy, my future boss, met me with a key to the apartment I would be sharing with Cody (Ko-cha) for the next few whiles.
He wasn't there, out of town for the weekend hiking or visiting friends or something, so I came in, sat down, opened the back door to let the breeze in and I watched the aspens flutter. And I wondered what would happen next after such consistent and perpetual motion.
So I decided to go for a run and the first thing that happened was that I was flashed on the trail by a migrant worker. I was so livid and shocked that I didn't know what to do. I didn't feel unsafe because there were so many runners and bikers, but just not for the moment that I was running past this guy. Gross.
Anyway, I lived, actually in Avon, first, the town just down valley from Vail, with Cody for a couple months while we got into the swing of things at work and we lived in the apartments (free Š b/c of a partnership with Vail Resorts, who owned the building for their employees, and the Gore Range Natural Science School, where I was now the bilingual environmental science educator). Until ski season when we got kicked out to make room for more industry employees and Cody and I found a house in Minturn, the tiny town between Avon and Vail up the valley that takes you to Red Cliff, the dying mining town where the school was based and all the way if you kept going up the valley, to Leadville, CO, elevation 10,225, highest incorporated city in the United States.
Anyway, down at 7,995 or so feet, in Minturn, is where Cody and I got a house with one of the interns (who we dubbed Sarah Who? Since she was never there) and Robyn, a sweet but slightly cracked out girl from Alabama.
We lived there relatively strife free through the winter. I was pretty lonesome/lonely, I dated a total alcoholic loser type for part of October and was over that by early November. By December Jenni came to live with us since she was in transition from Missouri to NYC but didn't need to be in NYC until Feb. Christmas she went back to Texas though and Mom and Dad and bro came to Colorado to visit family in Denver and also up to the mountains to see me.
Come January I was getting tired of working at Gore Range and then also waiting tables at Vendetta's and babysitting to make enough money to make ends meet in Vail. Vail is EXPENSIVE! So I resolved to quit waiting tables (okay, so I still wasn't quite cut out for it, but this time I also worked with Steph who I met at Gore Range and was super amazing so that made it more fun, plus everyone that worked there was pretty interesting.) Regardless, I started to baby-sit more and Jenni had met a couple dudes and had a couple jobs by this point so I went out with her and dude #2 one evening to an underground bar/club with a good DJ one evening.
Stuck as the third wheel I danced with the dancing duo or on my own until across the room I spotted a tall athletic guy dancing the way I was dancing. Meaning, he liked electronic music and didn't grind on people. Yea! I decided for whatever reason that I would go over to dance with him. He was with a group of people, a few of which were ladies and none of which moved in to stake a claim on him, and we actually ended up dancing the whole night. His friends even left because it was so late but he stayed to dance.
When the lights came on and we talked I could see that he was cute and we chatted a little bit. Turns out we both knew some of the same people and he was associated in the summer time with the US Forest Service and in the winter time he managed a ski shop in the village in the Cascade Resort.
I got his phone number (he didn't have his cell in there) and I remember him asking if I would remember which Michael was him, since I had one or two in my cell phone that he saw while I entered his number.
Needless to say, this is the man that I live with today, three years later, and there's a whole lot of history in there that we'll run over in a bit but that's the story of how we met dancing one evening in Vail.
During that summer Mike didn't want to stay in Minturn or Vail and so he moved to Portland (and felt lost and was unhappy) and I stayed to finish summer programs with the school. I left at the end of the season to visit Mike for two weeks in Oregon, which was amazing fun and I didn't have any doubts about coming to live there ASAP. We went climbing at Smith Rocks, went out to the coast, went to the mountains and saw huge trees and dipped in hot springs in late August and no one was there. It was absolutely magical. I didn't want to leave but I actually had a river trip planned in the Grand Canyon (to work) in early September and so I flew from Portland (my car and things were actually still in Denver, at my Grandma's house) to Flagstaff, went down river, had a great time but also thought I was going to die after flipping my boat at Bedrock (but stayed upright at Lava this time around), and I cancelled my second trip, called Mike and decided to join him, Aaron, and Levi on their climbing trip in Idaho, which would then take us to Leavenworth, WA.
The story of getting up there is quite a journey in itself via 24 hours on the Greyhound Bus. Regardless, I met a few interesting characters, made lunches for them in Salt Lake City, and got up to Burley, Idaho just in time for Mike to pick me up (he actually tailed the bus for a few miles) and make me smile.
It snowed at City of Rocks so to Leavenworth we went, and then back to regionals for Ultimate Frisbee (the boys were playing) and then to Portland, again. Except this time I didn't feel like I was supposed to be there, in Portland, so it was kind of strange. Mike and I talked and talked and talked and tried to decide where to move. I was ready to move to Portland and he was not.
We ended up in Jackson, WY against, at the time, my better judgment, but as I sit here, writing from Portland, Oregon today, it all worked out and it was a good place for us to learn and grow and get through some ugly growing pains.
We moved to Jackson, along with a lot of other people. Suffice it to say that I hated my first winter there. It was hard, Mike had hard hours, and I was really really lonely despite being with other folks. Turns out every single one of us was lonely because everyone left someone behind or was interested in someone who already had a someone (not me or Mike but we'll let that stay as it is). Blah blah blah. Good point was that I started to teach ESL at the high school based on my experience as a bilingual educator in Vail. Those kids amazed me and made my day. Truly the highlight.
(Also, the snow was really bad that year and I was still learning how to ski and was relatively still terrible.)
Summer. The group leaves, I feel relief; we backpack in the Grand Canyon. BEST BACKPACKING TRIP EVER. We spend the summer together in a different house with happiness in our schedules and jobs and take lots of weekend camping trips to explore and I feel like we get to know each other for real for the first time.
Fall comes, we decide upon another season, I find work I can manage, Mike stays on and grows in his work at Ciocolatto as a pastry chef, and we are happy, find a new house and live with new Dave, my co-worker from the summer at Jackson Hole Whitewater.
Winter comes; it is amazing, good snow, good friends, good times, lots of potlucks and dinner parties and everything good in between. I start to have girlfriends and really to enjoy the company of fellow Jacksonites. I come home from a visit to Texas at New Years and am so happy to be back in Jackson because, for the first time, it feels like this is my home.
Summer comes, we stay but I am getting antsy, I've worked again at the high school, this time as a translator and I started teaching ESL at the Teton Literacy Program, but I feel stifled and uncreative. I can't think imaginatively and I feel a vacuum. I can't just live to ski and play outside, but I don't know how to integrate the other parts of me.
I fly to Oregon and California in June to visit schools. I fly then to Spokane to play in a frisbee tournament in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. I drive back with ladies from the Boise team back to Boise where I've left the "Squirt" and come back to Jackson, ultimately killing the "Squirt" along the way. Jess and Jona do not mind. Thank God!
I tell Mike I have to leave Jackson so I can get back to school. He is hesitant and it is a hard decision. He's doing well at work and I know it and he's uncertain about work to be found in Portland that he will like.
End of summer, we say our goodbyes and we move to Portland.
More or less, the past six months has been an AMAZING period of growth for us, again. We're confronting our own demons and expanding our minds. We are actively pushing ourselves to grow and supporting one another in our endeavors. I am going through tough economic times and am waiting to hear back from grad school but I am happy in my life, happy in the creativity that I am helping to recreate in my life, and happy for my loving and beautiful man, Michael DeLoy.
I am almost at my stop now as I'm typing the end of this up while I ride the MAX, Portland's light rail train, so I'll have to go now.
As a final note:
I love my life. I want to continue loving my life for all its unexpected twists and turns.
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