show me yours i’ll show you mine

“What happens when people open their hearts?"
"They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

The other day I was aware that an entire weekend of being on my own would not be good for my mental health. I spend too much time on my own as it is, and the weekend loomed with a whole lot of solo time in sight. Grasping at straws, I reached out to two women who had been part of a grants writing workshop at a local public art site over the winter and asked if they wanted to do some co-working—perhaps on grant writing, but really on anything.

I don’t know either person very well—have never been in their homes, only loosely know the make-up of their immediate nuclear families or how they’ve earned their livings. Little else. So on a too chilly and overcast Sunday with computers propped in front of us, it was anyone’s call where our conversation might go.

After a lull, I asked a current favorite question of mine: “Why do you stay here?” I’m interested in place and home and one’s sense of belonging. The younger of the two—as we represented three different decades between us—said with some humor but mainly with very real annoyance, “If I have to drive down Burlington Street one more time I think I might go nuts! I wonder, ‘Am I going to fucking die here?’” We nodded with understanding. And then she added, “I don’t know where else I’d go.” The older woman said, “I know why I stay. I stay for my friends.” More nods.

This led to me telling them both about my recent existential fear of aging. Not dying so much, but aging—alone, with fewer and fewer abilities. How this reminds me of scenes from movies when an astronaut is outside the capsule trying to make a repair but becomes untethered and floats away, their arms raised upwards as they slowly drift into never-ending blackness. It’s possibly the most terrifying scene I know.

We talk about middle of the night worries. About loneliness. Anxiety. Introversion. Filling time. And death. And then we each close up our gadgets and head home—to nap, to sew, to clean.

This talk is incredibly vulnerable, though in the moment it doesn’t feel that way. Mainly, it’s reassuring to hear what goes on in other people’s minds. There’s no awkwardness or embarrassment, just a straight up here’s my weird obsession with being an untethered astronaut! and lots of head nodding and feeling heard.

This, actually, is why I stay here, in this town. It’s why I stay here in this body at this poignantly gnarled point of human history, even though I occasionally think of leaving.

I stay to peel off the top layer of skin, show others the workings of what’s occurring there. I stay to see what’s happening under their skin. I stay in order for all of us to look not at all shocked but, instead, reassured that it’s hard and beautiful for all of us.

*******

A few days later, I meet a college senior for a short interview she needs to do for a class. Her professor has asked me if I’ll talk to her. The coffee shop we start in is too loud, packed with kids studying for finals, so we go to one of the big old buildings nearby, and I see the ghost of my 19-year old self who took French classes just around the corner from the bench where we perch.

The student asked me to bring three items that represent something about me. I lift my hand toward her so she can see my grandmother’s turquoise ring. Then I reach into my pocket and extract the nut from my favorite eucalyptus tree, the one that stands all alone on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Last, I  open a box of incense from a zendo in Santa Fe and invite her to inhale the odor of that spiritual home.

Each item is about history, lineage, and place. Each represents a kind of home for me. A place I sometimes wish I could be rather than here.

The student is graduating in two weeks and admits to me that she doesn’t know what she wants to do. “I was supposed to figure it out in four years,” she says with a laugh, “but I guess I needed longer!” I can tell she’s scared. But always trying to be amused.

Actually, she’s not without a plan. She has a line of work in mind, although it’s not what she wants to do. An immediate place to live is assured. So it’s not like she’s walking to the edge and jumping. If anything, it’s the opposite of that. She’s following a script it’s just not her own script; it’s her parents’ and the culture’s script. She’s forcing herself into a compact shape of what post-college life is supposed to be.

Jump! I want to shout. Do something weird! Something unexpected. I tell her this in coded, quieter ways because I don’t feel I can be explicit. You don’t tell people you’ve only just met who are three decades your junior to jump.

I’m not sure why—maybe it’s because my own college self lurked these halls—but instead I tell her about the time my mom insisted I go to a job fair at the student union and how I showed up wearing drab Army green cut-offs and an Elvis Costello t-shirt and hand tied friendship bracelets up and down my arms, while everyone else was wearing navy blazers and carrying leather attaches. Where did they get those? I wondered, astonished that these so-called peers suddenly looked like adults.

The students grins at this story and literally claps. “I was at the same job fair last month!” she says, as though only a few months separate us instead of 30-odd years. As though via time travel we were in the same room. She wants to know what happened next, but there was no real outcome—just me proving to my mom that I didn’t fit in that environment. “So, what did you do?” she asks, an emphasis on that last word. I went to grad school, I tell her, because I really didn’t know what else to do.

In a way, what I did next was move. And leap. And leap again. And again. My twenties were one leap after the next. None of it was comfortable or planned but it definitely rarely felt safe or predictable.

When I think of the comment about driving down the street and wanting to die because of its familiarity, I totally get it. There are so many times when I’m at the local grocery store and have this feeling:  Who are these people? Why am I among them? Why, instead, aren’t I in that little market I love in Point Reyes Station or somewhere in Paris? The fact that the Talking Heads always seem to be playing on the soundtrack emanating over the produce only makes it worse—edgy music from my teens and twenties rotated throughout the over-lit “friendly” aisles.

Each time this happens, I pause. I think of how any market anywhere in the world could become overly familiar. Rote. Dull. That damn Dijon mustard! That same wedge of ash-covered goat’s cheese.

The trick is to keep looking for the unexpected and the beauty. See the guy in the wheelchair with his toddler on his lap along with a little basket of fruit. And the woman in the patterned pink and orange coat; does she mean it to be ironic? The older man and his hand on the bottle of Gallo wine. Yeah, kind of sad, but check out how he has one super blue eye. I wonder if it’s always been like that.

I want to sit down with each of them. Tell me what you think about at 2 am.? What’s dogging you these days? What’s beautiful? What’s in your pockets? Do you know what I mean when I tell you about the astronaut? Peel back the top layer. Listen.