my country, part 1

For most of the school year, I've been tutoring an Iranian man. He's planning to move to Canada & needed someone to sit down & practice English with him. We have rather unstructured sessions, mostly just talking to each other about our differing cultures while I correct his English.

It took a surprising number of months for us to get around to talking directly about 9/11. He asked me where I was that day, & I was surprised by the amount of emotion that came out–tears in my eyes, stomach settling into a hard knot, mind telling me not to talk anymore. I realized that I had never been asked that; I hadn't even gone back to that day myself.

It had changed both of our lives so much.

My student, a PhD student studying cardiology, has rarely said "Iran." We have talked about each of our home countries extensively. When I ask about Iran, he tells me about his country. He defends Persia with a pride I have never used when speaking about the United States. I have never referred to the States as "my country." I have never felt an urgency when trying to express that the media image you see is not what I lived for the decades of my life.

At our last session, he showed me this video–an attempt to expose me to modern Tehran. An attempt to defend Iran, a country that has survived for millennia with Persian borders, to one American in hopes they'll pass it on or that he'll have done his part.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 338,266 Iranians lived in the U.S. Their number has continued to rise. I had never thought about the role of Iranians living in the States, whatever their citizenship status may be, & I was ashamed of the reason I found for this.

Most of us, myself included before this year, don't tend to separate Iran from the Middle East. If there is one thing I've learned this year, it is that a Persian does not want to be called an Arab. My student was deeply hurt that he could be confused with such a different culture, history & part of the world. "We are not the Arab world," he told me. Shaking his had that had sunk toward his check, he sighed. "We are not Arab."

So in honor of what I've learned of Iran this year, of the tragedy that we both share & of the unique, vibrant culture of Iran, I'm telling the Americans that I can–in an attempt to do my part as well.

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a bit of memory, speaking

Nothing is more memorable than a smell.  One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town.  Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.  Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once.  A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.  –Diane Ackerman, "A Natural History of the Senses"

If I had to choose flowers to serve as markers of my childhood, they would be bleeding hearts and lily of the valley, two fragile flowers of early spring. When I was younger, our patch of lily of the valley was larger than my kiddie pool and nestled in the shade behind the lilac bush. It has gradually thinned, but those small white flowers still feel and smell like home to me.

I've been trying for a long time to figure out what sort of perfume I would want. It seems like a facet of the adult personality. When I think of each of my parents and grandparents, I recall their cologne, the way the scent changes over the course of the day. The way it hits me when they first leave their bedrooms after applying it. I wonder what the memory of me will smell like. 

Lily, like the earliest memories of childhood, is one of the hardest fragrances to recreate. Smell scientists struggle with the fragility, the particular freshness. (It's a fascinating business that Ackerman explores in her book. While the whole thing is exhausting, the portion on smell, which she refers to as "liquid memory," was delightful. You can read it here.) 

In case you're interested, Christian Dior's Diorissimo is the "gold standard" of lily fragrance. I like the idea of this–the memory of me being a scent that holds so many memories of me.

Now, the scent of lilies has taken on an additional meaning for me: the smell of May Day, the rest of the world's version of Labor Day, which the U.S. ditched as a holiday due to its seemingly union-focused and socialist ideals. May Day, or the "Fête du Travail" in France, is a national holiday with a fun tradition.

The streets are filled with merchants holding small bundles of lily of the valley, which they are able to sell tax-free and without a vendor's license. The "mugeut des bois" (also the name of a fragrance that smells like–you guessed it–lily of the valley) are purchased and given to loved ones during the week of May Day to show appreciation for their hard work. You can learn more about May Day and lily of the valley here or (more cynically and sarcastically) here. 

Now that May Day has passed, I'm filling the apartment with other scent memories in anticipation of my friend's arrival. (She's sitting in the Chicago airport at this moment.) We got a new gingerbread candle to make it smell like I've just baked (instead of burnt) something–handy when the oven is on and you're using those silicone baking things. Gross. 

I also was able to pick instead of buy a bouquet of fresh flowers for the kitchen table. Lauren, my dear American friend sharing this adventure, lives in an apartment in the lower level of a house with a rambling garden–herbs, fruit trees, vegetables, more rhubarb than my entire hometown could consume. And roses. Roses that look exactly like the climbing, ambling bush outside my parents' bedroom window; roses a deep crimson that are so packed with petals they seem to stay fresh for ages. Roses that smell like home.

They're now clustered in small pots–red to remind me of my mom and my home; yellow (from a younger, less ambling bush) to remind me of my grandma, with whom I share my favorite rose color.

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day 26, to the one that got your last pinky promise

Day 26. The last person you made a pinky promise to

Girl Scout Troop 78,

There were lots of promises made & broken in that last year–lots of friendships shifting & alliances cracking. I know a lot of the girls started to hate me. I know I pretended to hate them, too. I know we were all trying to be cool & dissatisfied with "the way the troop was developing." I know we all wanted to stop wearing those green vests before people at school found out & labeled us as something Uncool.

Screw that. We blew it.

If on the bus, instead of insisting that we all quit together in a last act of defiance, you had asked me to stay a part of it forever, I would have done it. It's a promise, made with both pinkies, that I would have been glad to keep. And when they started to make fun of us, we would just say, "Yeah? Well when's the last time you Macgyvered a Thanksgiving craft out of stuff you found while walking through a woods?"

Or better yet, "When's the last time you did something NICE for someone?"

My mom still decorates with the crafts we made–the snowman from a Pringles can, the pumpkin from a dryer's accordion-like hose. I still remember the chant as we dropped our money into the coffee tin each week. I still remember the feeling of getting out of the car at night & walking down the bank's stairs to our meeting room, the embarrassment at being the first one to arrive.

I still want to be a girl scout troop leader, if I ever have girls. I want them to cook grilled pizza sandwiches over fires & put pie filling between two slices of white bread & roast it until it's oozing & cook things in aluminum foil dutch ovens & help old people. 

To remember those we've made & forgive the ones we broke, I pinky promise to remember the good times & pass them on. To leave a place cleaner than I found it. To live by the Girl Scout law. To buy cookies every year. To not judge my daughter when she wants to sell enough cookies to win the highest prize.

I miss you,
Megan

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day 20, the one that broke you most

Day 20. The one that broke your heart the hardest

Joe,

I love you. We've been married nearly six months. We're together. Every. Day. It's incredibly. I'm really happy.

But before that, there was all this other stuff. Like me going back to Wapak for that first summer. Or you wanting to join the Peace Corps and me in some way almost kind of talking you out of it, which makes me the worst person ever. Like me going to France and coming back and you going to graduate school and us feeling differently about what that would mean for our relationship. 

Like all of those long-distance conversations and crises that were really painful and that you handled really well while I cried into my cell phone and it kept getting warmer and warmer in my hand from being connected so long. I'm pretty sure that some nights, you let me cry until I fell asleep. You sat in the static of a cell phone connection with your train wreck of a fiancé on the other end. It was heartbreaking–how much it hurt my chest, my hands, my stomach to love you. 

The closer and more stable we got, the more my heart seemed to break–not so much to tear itself apart, but to pull you in and give you a place to sit. Once you were there–cemented–the whole mess plastered itself back together.

I never expected heartbreak to be the beginning, but without it I couldn't have accepted what I felt for you. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't gone through the physical ache of it. Now we're here, with new heartbreaks creeping in, and again I'm relieved–that you're here now, to hold onto me through all of it, and that I learned to see heartbreak as the beginning. 

Thanks for being really good at loving me.

Love,
Meg


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day 17, to my first best friend

Day 17. Someone from your childhood

Amy,

Do you remember the time you fell off of the bars on the playground that we used to balance ourselves on and swing from? You broke your arm, and I thought your cast was amazing. I lied about how it all happened–said your mom came & had to drive you in a school bus to the hospital. For a moment, I thought the story had gone over. My parents were shocked. I think they were just shocked at how big I'd lie to tell a story.

Now that I'm older, I see the lie as ridiculous, but I think even more ridiculous was the existence of those bars in the first place. What did they expect to happen when children were swinging from metal bars above a gravel-floored playground? Then again, the shredded tire they tried to use as terrain wasn't better. I remember standing up after jumping from the swing. My knees were died black. I smelled like the street. I dug pieces out of chips and abrasions in my hands.

The best memories I have with any childhood friend happen in your basement, or when your bedroom got moved upstairs and your ceiling had all those cools angles from the roof. I would have died for a bedroom like that, but we were too young to know what dying meant. It was something that we acted out, then stood up to smooth out or skirts and continue with the next scene.

 I'm not sure how or why we stopped hanging out or really talking. I hope I didn't upset you. I hope you didn't feel like I was mean to you. I never meant to be. Or if I did, it was middle school & it didn't really mean anything. That doesn't make it better, but I don't remember anything I did that was mean. I hope that's accurate, but we like to trick ourselves & make the memories into better people. I promised I never wrote mean things about you or said bad things about you. I'm sure at some points I talked about being mad at you, but what else did we all have to talk about when that group of girls moved as a solid unit–a cloud of he-said-she-said-they-kissed that grew gradually more segregated & vicious.

You were a great friend. I hope I was, too. I was really pissed when they separated us for second grade. We started finding new friends, and that's when it all fell apart. You were always there, but we couldn't go back to the time when you broke your arm & we listened to No Doubt in your living room. Thanks for being my first best friend & helping me figure out what friends could mean to each other.

Love,
Meg

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day 13, to ask for forgiveness

Day 13. Someone you wish could forgive you

Hey,

We haven't talked in a while. In fact, I don't think we've talked since three months before we stopped living together. We've both gotten married. Without inviting each other. Those last two years on campus, we seemed to move without seeing each other, without even feeling the other person's eyes looking through us.


I loved getting to know you–creating our new life, finding our new circle of friends, watching "Chicago" and leaving each other notes. You went all out on my birthdays, and it meant a lot to me. I'm not sure what happened in the summer months between those two years. We both came back nervous, awkward around each other, living somewhere else in our minds.

I'm afraid that you've written off our friendship as a phase you went through. We weren't always responsible. We weren't always behaving appropriately. Is it bad that I still love that–the times when we really let ourselves go? I don't mean the times we were falling or holding each others' hair. Admittedly not our high points. I mean the times when we danced like it didn't matter and we were fine with whatever they said about us when we walked into the residence hall at 4 a.m.


Looking back, there was a lot that happened that first year that shaped who we both are–you found your truly best friends and began preparing for that second when everything would change; I found Joe and starting seeing the kind of life I wanted to live. 

What I'm afraid of is that, in all of the crazy things that happened, you were asking me for help in a way I didn't notice or recognize. I thought we were fine, & I'm afraid I missed reaching out to you. I'm afraid I've hurt you & didn't realize it. 

I know that you're doing well; you're happy. You seem to be all put together again, neatly. I'm happy for you. I hope that, if you feel I worked against that in some way, you can forgive me.


Sincerely,
Megan


Uh-oh! Check out my other 30-day challenge on my tumblr.

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day 8, to your Internet friend

Day 8. Your favorite Internet friend

Hey,

I've always said that I was largely unaffected by break-ups. That was true. With the exception of your Fourth of July disaster. After months of our parents driving each other to the others' house, months of summer gym and friends running between us to pass messages, you'd decided that it was best to hide in your mom's van while I walked around the fairgrounds looking for you. You decided it was best to dump me over the pay phone.

You were 14. It's not like, looking back, I should have expected something better, but the feeling of running down the fair grounds' midway, tears rolling down my cheeks, still sticks to a part of my stomach. I feel bad for that girl, who had invested too much.

That's one story–a tiny bit of how I knew you. The other part of you was wonderful. You were at the Catholic school, and I lived for the two hours a day we would spend typing to each other–half words, half emoticons–on instant messenger services after school. I don't know how I found you, how we became friends, why we started talking, how I agreed to be your girlfriend when I'd never seen you for more than two minutes as we passed each other in the hallway (since your school shipped you to my public school for math). I don't know how we got to date, since both of us were to young by all of our parents' standards, or how you paid for the movies we went to.

I do know that even after our break-up, when you kept typing messages to me or leaving messages, asking if you could call, I felt the moment of running down the midway, of losing you to a girl that you would then complain to me about when I allowed you to call. I do know that each time you unexpectedly came back into my life, for visits or e-mails or calls, it still broke or burnt or moved a part of me.

We haven't talked in nearly two years now, and I remember your last call. I was worried about you, as I had always worried about you. And then it stopped. I hope you're okay. I don't use messenger services any more. I don't check Myspace. I don't know where you are, but I hope you're well.

Thanks,
Megan

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day 7, to your ex-boyfriend

Day 7. Your Ex-boyfriend

Josh, 

Thanks for asking me out right after the talent show. We were walking over to Field Day, and I was slowly realizing that I do not sound like Maria Carey. Your timing was perfect.

I had a great time rollerblading with you that summer. Those were the days before mortality. I think of getting back into my rollerblades now, and I'm reminded of the stopper in the back that doesn't seem to stop anything. I think of standing back up with the gravel pressed into the soft parts of palms and knees.

When I think of you, I don't think of the break-up. I tried to explain this to you then, when after the phone call you sent Dominic down to see if I was okay. I was reading in bed when he knocked on my window. It was open; he could have just called in. It was kind of him to knock, though I wonder how long he was standing there to see if he could hear me crying. I wasn't. 

I was fine. I didn't mean it as a disservice to you. I intended to keep the teddy bear you got me at the Hard Rock Café–no mutilating it or setting it on fire. You were free to go. The part that stung, though, was the birthday party–the one for the twins. You remember them, don't you? One handled troubles reasonably well; he's the one we've forgotten. The other one–I remember a frightening yearbook photo of him–handled it (life) less well–got into drugs, then the Army, then back to drugs I believe. 

Anyway, we were at their party (13th?). The started Spin the Bottle. You wouldn't kiss me, said it was too public and strange. But when it spun to Kelly, it was different. She wasn't your girlfriend. So you kissed her. And we broke up. I make it sound bad, but I was fine–truly. I just think that maybe you should handle things differently in the future, if you haven't changed that habit yet–finding the next one in front of the current.

I'm still sorry about the guinea pig. Had I known you were allergic, I honestly wouldn't have you hold her (though it was after the party and before the break-up). Had I known how bad it was, I'd have offered for Dad to drive you home with your swollen-shut eyes and your bubbling hands and arms. We can still laugh at this and forget the rest. That's how it should be.

Hope you're well,
Megan

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the philosophy of "choosing one"

There are several passions in my life that pull equal weight–my writing, my draw to environmental/feminist-related nonprofit organizations & the French language. And then there is my number one dream: to open a café/bakery in the traditional style that would serve as a nonprofit forum. I've always known that these things were meant to play a role in my life, each in a different way. I knew I couldn't give one up. I just didn't know how they would come together yet.

When I began choosing graduate school programs, I began getting even more advice about "choosing "one" than I'd gotten when I casually talked about what I wanted from life (to write essays, to dedicate myself to nonprofit work, to bake everyday). "It's best if you choose one," they said. "You'd have better chances of getting in; you'd look like a stronger candidate."

This idea was terrifying to me. It felt as if I would be tearing my soul–I'd be forced to horcrux myself, hiding my passions in bits of my past to feel like they were still, in some way, a part of me. I couldn't bear it. I couldn't choose one passion without having it be intrinsically linked to all other desires.

Yesterday, Joe showed me an article about an incredible man that was seemingly in a similar state of mind. Shelton Johnson is a poet, an activist and an employee of the national park service. He has won awards for his writing, got Oprah to visit Yosemite and has published books. Here's a bit of his awesomeness*:

He served with the Peace Corps in Liberia and attended graduate school at the University of Michigan, where he won several writing awards, including a Hopwood Award in poetry.

Johnson didn't choose one of his passions when he began earning his MFA. He found a way to bring them all together. He didn't limit himself to one way of changing the world: he touches lives through his writing, his work at national parks and his efforts (via Oprah) to bring more Blacks to national parks.

Johnson reminded me that it's possible, that passion doesn't mean choice. It means struggling to bring it all together. It means those feeling in your gut, in your throat–the ones that tear at you when you when you try to let it go, when you try not to worry or to fix or to push for–are meant to be a part of you. You just have to find the reason.

As Vladimir Nabokov wrote in Speak, Memory,

I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip.

Though I don't speak of memory, the sentiment is the same. We take the images that matter most, the feelings that form who we are, and fold them together to superimpose or image on the world. If others can't see where it all comes together & how this brings out meaning to the work you share with others, then by all means, let them trip.

la musique et la souvenir

Our love is like a ship on the ocean...
we've been sailing with a cargo full of love & devotion

(That goodness for the clap track at the end or I wouldn't have known what to do with myself.)

I'm supposed to be grading tests. Instead, I'm listening to this song in a loop. It has become the soundtrack of my family memories.

My family has a putt-putt tradition. It always happens on family vacation or any time we find ourselves in a new city. It usually includes ice cream or a picnic (and on my part superfluous amounts of profanity and sweating).

This summer, shortly before leaving for France, we crammed all three of these traditions together with a bonus tradition: a walk along Clifton Gorge. After our walk, we went to Young's Dairy Farm (CLICK this... it's outstanding) for putt-putt... and for the first time in my life I came in well above last place. We celebrated with  ice cream.

The snapshots from that day that play through my head are perfect–the weather, the laughing, Joe's concentration face when he plays a sport. The small goat photo essay that came out of it was nice, too. But what stands out to me most is sitting in the backseat, pressed next to my sister who was pressed next to Joe. We were sailing with a cargo full of love and devotion, singing words we weren't always sure of and dancing like Brittany Murphy in Clueless.

Joe and I are starting to create our own family traditions–grocery shopping together & trying new pastries after church on Sunday. Our days have settled into routines, predicting each other's schedules & looking forward to the parts that fit together.

Joe's soup turned out great last night. While I taught, he ran the show back home, & it was a big hit with me & Lauren. Can't wait to have it be even thicker, heartier and spicier when we reheat it for lunch today. I'm surprising Joe with lunch when he gets home: the soup & a peanut butter and jelly sandwich thanks to the care package we got in the mail yesterday. (Beef jerky for Joe and all natural peanut butter for me.)

one hundred twenty-eight

I've been distracted this week. I've put off all blog posts, yoga, health foods and term papers. I have managed to busy myself with the small things, though.

Yesterday, Joe, who's in town for the week, helped me take our sofa in from outside. The couch came to us from the Salvation Army. That is, SA rejected it and Joe brought it here. The cat hair-encrusted mess was slip-covered, and I've spent the last two years trying to forget what is underneath.

When we hauled the mess outside to be picked up with our other garbage on Thursday morning, our lamp fell over. This is nothing new: it's been less than level for a year. This time, the concrete bottom that worked as a balance complete shattered. I drug the lamp outside and propped it on the couch, then added old closet doors (used as a partition) and a broken dining room chair. It amounted to an odd sort of modern art.

We went about our day and came home near dusk. The couch and lamp were gone. Now, I'm looking around my room for other small things that can be shed from my life. This anxiety of school and long-distance for four more months is one of them.

Joe leaves tomorrow. He's been with me this week, sitting next to me as I get my reading done for class or drink a beer and watch CNN or drink a coffee and watch Democracy Now (all while doing reading for the term papers I'm not yet writing).

It is our last week like this, and today is our last full day. Joe will not spend another week in Muncie, will not visit me as a student. In May, he'll help me move. He'll watch me walk across the stage and leave this place. He'll visit me this summer, in Ohio. But our time long-distance college student visits comes to a close today.

He'll go back to St. Louis tomorrow, be a graduate student and bookstore employee and writing lab tutor and contract faculty English professor. I'll be behind on my translation and ahead on my reading and ready to do all of my final presentations. Final in all ways.

This week, we bought our wedding bands. When he slipped the band onto his finger and rested the hand on the glass display case, I realized how close everything is. The next time we see each other, there will only be the summer. We will be tan and smiling and packing for our life together.

Joe's asleep right now. I should be reading about managing PR departments. I should be making diagrams and presentation boards. I should be stoppping Baby from chewing the carpet under my bed. I should be packing my belongings into cardboard boxes.