Letters From the Box

I pawed through the contents of my father’s lock box—the walls of steel that keep our birth certificates and social security cards and the like safe—short on patience thanks to the end of my first week at “real” work. 

The 9 to 5 thing. You know.

There I was, sitting in the hall of my upstairs, muttering choice phrases and letting a few curses (okay…more than a few) slip from my tongue as my search turned up nil. No passport? No trip to Ireland. That’s what it meant. And that made me want to toss this box and run to my attic and lock myself in, where the wails of my stressed out being could be released without scaring the neighbors.

Before I could start throwing things, I came to the bottom of the lock box. No, it wasn’t my passport. It was something much, much better…something really nice. Really really nice. On the border of vomitrocious, but honestly, it made me so happy.

It was a small collection of letters, hand written by my very own mother, all addressed to my father. Mom & Dad. In letterform. Christmas cards, just-because letters, love notes, etc. All saved by my dad, and placed in the same box that houses our birth certificates, social security cards and passports—the single most important documents in a person’s life.

I read them. Not all of them, but enough to be reminded of the rarity that is their marriage. The 30 year kind, the I’ll-let-you-snore-if-you-let-me-have-all-the-covers-kind. A part of the other 50%, the percent that is still sharing their lives together, fights and lacking patience and irritation included. And yet, somehow, this 50% has managed to get through it, and come out the other side still holding hands. Okay, maybe the hand holding is at a minimum, but metaphorically speaking, they haven’t stopped holding hands since the day they were married. They drink their morning coffee holding hands; go to work with fingers entwined, and come home for dinner, hand in hand.

I know the risks involved with marriage, the possibilities of divorce and all sorts of other terrible things, but it’s finding the love notes my mother wrote to my father 30 years ago secured in the same box that contains our identity that lifts my heart.

       These two are the reason my heart will someday find & keep another, hand in hand, for all eternity.  

"Write it all Goddamn Down," he said.

“Ah, it’s late, isn't it, dreamland the only place left to go? So, this: write it all down, Kelly. The spit and string and sweat of us, the purl and sweep of our condemned kind. Write it all down. The hopes and fears we are, the yip and yike we are in the dark. The hand and head and heart of us. Write it all down.

            Write it all goddamn down.”

These the words of advice from Lee K. Abbott to his twenty three year old son who had just admitted his heart belongs to the passion of writing; that he, too, wanted to be a writer, much like the likes of his father.

I’m reading a book that is going to change my life. And I realized it after I finished reading Abbott’s words. This book is going to change my life.

And then I placed my library slip bookmark in it and walked away from it. To write this.

I’m afraid that, as a young 22 year old who prefers the ideal to the real, I’ve walked away from one too many a dream. Living in Paris. Teaching English and living in Florence, Italy. Becoming a writer.

I think it’s high time I admit to myself that I’ve walked away from the one dream that hasn’t changed since I was in fifth grade: Kerry Rose, the writer.

Kerry Rose, the girl in love with prose, easily put above the silly want for a life companion. The girl who drinks four cups of Early Grey tea, milk & sugar please, locking herself in the den until she completes five more pages of chapter two. The girl who is always, always writing, paper or not.

I recently wrote a much admired English professor from college professing my inescapable frustration with my lack of writing these days (a man who, I can only hope, has some kind of belief in little old me to become the writer that I always wanted to be). After reading his reply I ran to the local library to check out the book he suggested I read: Letters to a Fiction Writer, by Frederick Busch. Between the plastic covered goodness lingers dozens and dozens of letters from several authors, from the likes of Ray Bradbury, Raymond Carver and Joyce Carol Oates. To say I am in heaven would be an understatement.

I am in reality, here. A reality much better than anything I imagined. John Steinbeck seems to have caught on to my not so sneaky ways of procrastination: “Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.” And boy, he’s got me down to a T.

But I’m not here to rehash everything and hand out key phrases that I think are important—I’m barely half way through the thing and I doubt that would make for an enjoyable post, anyway. I’m just here to prove to myself that I can still do this thing, this becoming a writer mission, that this dream of my mine is s t i l l in my heart.

I’m here to say that if a dream is worth chasing, it will never dare to leave your heart. This kind of a dream becomes your heart, and so long as you are living, the dream will always beat. 

"I hit a snarl," she said

            “I hit a snarl,” she said, tugging roughly on the comb that stopped moving through my hair. 

I sat on the couch, my back facing her, as she stood on the cushion to get a better handle on my thick, brown collection of strands.

“Does it hurt?” She asked me, placing a little hand on my head to more steadily yank the comb.

“Yes,” I said. “But keep going. Sometimes it has to hurt to get through it.”

It might have been the exhaustion talking. After a long week of work and night classes, I was too tired to take the comb from this little five year old and work the snarl out myself. And after rushing home from work to babysit this little charmer, I was sure there were more hair knots to be discovered.

But I meant what I told her. The most snarly, tangled up things in life have to hurt—and probably for a while—in order to properly get through them. And when you finally do get through them, you know. You’ll know because the comb will start moving again, and things will get easier, take less strength, and flow with ease.

The thing to remember is this: you have to keep going. No matter where the snarl is, how knotted up things are, or how much muscle it takes to continue, a l w a y s move forward. Have heart. And keep it.

            Comb through the snarls. Let yourself hurt. And remember that you will get through it.

            You always get through it. 

The United States of D-Bags

            I know a D-bag when I see one.

And I see them around entirely too often. When I meet one, when I walk by one, when I am offered a drink by one—I know. Quel rat.

I don’t mean to be harsh in this post, or exceedingly girl-powery {okay…maybe I do}, but I know I’m not alone when I say I’ve had my unfair share of dealings with the typical D-bag(s). While most are akin to the backwards hat, sleeveless shirt and white sunglasses wearing Jersey Shore cast member who is more than impressed with his “situation,” there are those that don’t stick out quite as easily. Take, for example, the undercover D-bag. This guy is actually convinced that he’s not a jerk. He’s nice, he’s cool; he knows how to woo you. He’ll do cute things for you while you’re dating a guy from high school. And when your boyfriend decides to end things with you {only because of the distance, surely}, this smooth college boy will tell you you’ve got two weeks to get over the high school ex-boyfriend before he starts pursuing another freshman girl. And he’s pretty smug about it. So sure of himself that it makes you want to puke on his Sperry’s.

But—hold in the bile. He’s such a girl he’d probably take one look at your puke and then vomit all over himself.

He hides the D-bag so well, sometimes you wonder if maybe he’s not a terrible person after all. Just harboring the tendencies of one. You fall for his good side, meet his foul side, and six months later he’s the one to break things off, and still manages to string you along for another six months. 

           

Typical.

This summer whilst bar hopping with my cousins, a skinny guy, probably in his thirties, approached me in an attempt to get me to dance with him and said, “Are you done with this whole ‘innocent and shy’ looking thing?” To which I replied: “Are you done being a jackass?”

Obviously not.

So my point is, the D-bags are everywhere. Bars, restaurants, shopping malls—wherever you go. They’re a sad excuse for men, if you ask me. They’re a disgrace to the gentlemen of today, the small population of guys that actually are decent and have a kind and caring heart who aren’t hiding it. These are the kind of men I’d like to see out and about. I only see them in the media it seems like—on TV, the movies, on the Internet. I want something tangible, here! Is it so much to ask to actually meet a nice, genuine, I-mean-business-about-loving-you kind of twenty-something man instead of just hearing about them? I’d like to bring home one of them to my mom and say, “See! I told you I’d find one, just like you did.” Or are all the good guys gone?

One of my best friends and I are newly single {actually, it's not so new...we're just kind of starting to embrace it I suppose}, and I recently realized that this past summer was my first single summer since my junior year of high school. I know, I know—I was also very taken aback. Here I am, a graduate from college, single and ecstatic. Who knew? 

My friend and I like to joke about our "husband hunt," about how we plan to approach practically every good looking and professional man we encounter {specifically at the grocery store}, but to be completely serious, I ain’t approaching n o b o d y. I’m just hoping the last non D-bag on earth will marry both my friend and I, together. Either that, or I shall embrace the meaning of cat lady to the fullest.

Who’s with me?

Crumbs of Hope

            I woke up this morning feeling ready to be my best self (I was so close to pulling a Ke$sha/P.Diddy joke, but I didn’t, for your sakes). 

Maybe it’s because it is raining outside, the temperature is cool in the sixties, and today is the first day I start learning how to get through to high school kids as a teacher. I’m listening to jazz by the fireplace in my favorite coffee shop, and I’m so ready for it all. Give me whatcha got, Life. I’m so ready for ya.

It’s a full week ahead and I honestly can’t be happier about this. A schedule, at last! It’ll be wonderful looking at my watch and seeing that time is going by at a steady pace, rather than the dragging speed it tends to favor. I have a fantastically full to-do list, and to be honest, people, there’s nothing I love more than having things to do. I mean, obviously not all of these things are the kind of significant I’d like them to be (like, world-changing-significant), but I’m taking heart, here. We all start somewhere. Everyone’s mission in life starts out small. Am I right? I hope so.

What is my mission in life, you ask? Ah, yes. I ask myself this, too. The simplest way I can say it is like this: I want to help people. And I’ve always said that.

            “What do you want to do when you grow up, Kerry?”

            “Help people.” Simple. As. That.

For a while, it was medical school and wanting to learn to be a doctor (Holy crap, thank you God for not letting that be). Then it was writing…well, now and forever it is writing. And soon to be: teaching. Yes, the one profession I always promised, to myself and surrounding folk, that I would never touch, I am currently pursuing. In all seriousness, I couldn’t be any more certain about this decision. I’m so excited, to spread my excitement to a younger generation about literature and writing and expressing oneself. And to give out detention!....Totally kidding. I’m not in this for the power. I’m in this…to help people. To guide, to educate. To o p e n some eyes.

Five—heck, even two—years ago, I would never had guessed that I would be taking classes for my teaching certificate. I never paid attention to God’s signs, the clues He was giving me, in an attempt to tug me in the right direction. I brushed it off like crumbs from my morning bagel. Back then, God was just another minuscule part of my life. I didn’t have time to see that God was just trying to help me when I needed it most. He was trying to tell me something, and what did I do? I ate the bagels and paid the crumbs no attention. Great, Kerry. You silly bagel fiend.

While I could have come to this realization that teaching high school is what I want and am meant to do years ago, say, while I was still in college, I didn’t. I ignored God’s tug, like a busy mother ignores her child’s pull at her elbow. And that’s how God is, I think. He’s subtle, like a child; He pulls at every elbow, and sometimes we’re too busy to feel it, myself included.

So, let’s make our elbows available. Let’s follow the direction of that tug we feel every now and then. Let’s make something of the crumbs we brush off of ourselves.

            And, if we do anything right, let it be the openness of our hearts, rather than the fullness of our to-do lists. 

Waiting for My Train to Come

            I’m sitting here, iced water in my iced coffee cup, tapping my ungracious fingers on my keyboard…w a i t i n g…for something to write to you.

Despite all the happenings in my life, all the inspirations from my day-to-day adventures I’ve been stocking up on…I’ve got nothing. I used to be so good at writing about nothing, making it into something. It’s one of the best things about writing.

 The past week or so has been a whirlwind. Irene made sure that whirlwind was literal for about a day or two, and after she left, so did my sissy. Little sister’s on the Emerald Isle for about the next three and a half months, and I have to wait that long until I get over there to her. Waiting has never been in my deck of cards.

 However, waiting is the adjective that’s been stalking me lately. Lingering. Wandering. But not lost. Never lost. The days I feel lost, I look up to the sky and remember that we’re all under it—it’s one of the few things we all have in common these days. I’m waiting, under the sky, for a lot of things. And that’s what I’ll share with you today…my waiting list.

            Ireland (and Leetle Sister!)

            Classes to begin (For my teaching certificate)

            F a l l

            A part time job-erooni

            September 10^th (Connecticut to see best friends!)

            Tomorrow (More best friends!)

            The puppy I will name Bear (Or Tenley, or Sebastian, or Tila)

            A Boston Donuts trip

            A Leitrim’s jaunt (Favorite bar in Worcester, but definitely not the classiest…)

            My Birthday

            Christmas & New Year’s

           

And, last but not least….

            My Soul mate, my mister man of all seasons, the other guy who looks up at the sky and feels a purpose.

I know you’re out there, dude. Aren't you?