Tag Archives: friendship

The Natural Sequel of an Unnatural Beginning

09 Wednesday Sep 2015

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I’ve been thinking a lot about Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Over the past few weeks, the following line from the novel slipped through my mind as I’ve walked to work, made a cup of tea, and absently stared at my balcony’s potted plants (when I should have been doing work): “[Anne Elliot] had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” 

The line refers to the life narrative of the novel’s main character, Anne Elliot. As a young woman of nineteen, her family persuaded her to reject the marriage proposal of Captain Wentworth, because he didn’t have a large enough fortune to provide a comfortable life for her. This was the prudence that she learned in her youth. Eight years later, she and Captain Wentworth meet again. He has made his fortune as a Naval officer in the Napoleonic Wars; she has rejected another suitor and learned to regret her earlier decision. They get a second chance, and this time, Anne, tempered by experience and wisdom, finally says yes to the dashing captain. As Jane notes, this is Anne’s “natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” Most young people learn such lessons of love and coupling the other way around.

“The natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” What a phrase. I think about it a lot, especially after turning thirty this summer. Looking back, I hardly recognize the person I was at twenty, and like Anne, I have learned a few life lessons in a backwards fashion. I have become less serious, less quiet, less wrapped up in the folds of my inner life this past decade. I often hid from my peers behind a book—or behind the words in a beautifully constructed paragraph—yet as the decade went forward, I relied less on books and more on the company and love and supportive energy of my life’s beloveds. A mode of being that many of my peers had engaged in since their parents dropped them off at kindergarten, but something I only learned as an adult, struggling with the demands and loneliness of a graduate school program. That is my natural sequel of an unnatural beginning. 

And yet, there was a sequel, to my life and to Anne’s, one that was not dictated by social expectations or some stock human narrative. Our narratives were formed through our choices and our willingness to examine and grow from them—and honestly, I prefer it that way.

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An Unmade Bed: Living the Messy Process

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

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About a month ago, my friend Kim wrote an excellent blog post about writing in the morning. I read it at the beginning of January, on a train ride from New York to New Haven. The post was full of luscious descriptions of gourmet oatmeal and the pure joy of putting together sentences. The whole piece was a pleasure to read, but one line stood out in particular to me: Kim wanted her readers to enjoy their morning drafts, to revel in their messiness, to take delight in slipping outlandish ideas and sentences into their work before their inner editor woke up. “Much of life” she wrote, “is messy process folks, not product.” This line made me laugh hysterically, startling the reveries of my fellow train passengers, but I didn’t care. I laughed because her words felt so damn true.

It turns out that my friend’s line was a prolific harbinger, giving shape to my next thirty days. My January was quite messy—full of chaos, lessons, and growth. It was a time that stretched my understanding of life, essay writing, librarianship, and human nature. And during that month, I was rarely able to make my bed. My mornings before work found me on my laptop, typing in a sea of blankets, before throwing on work clothes and running out the door. During the day, no bedspread calmed this unruly sea. The blankets stayed rumpled and exposed, with grammar and theology books hiding in their folds.

Not having time to make my bed felt odd. It’s one of those morning rituals that makes me feel like I have life in order. That I can be just as flawless and put together as a smooth bedspread and artistically placed pillows. But I wasn’t this past January and didn’t have the time to make believe that I was. There was nothing finished about January—I was in a process, growing and creating. And a made bed is a product. But a rumpled, unmade, bed is a space of possibility, a place to live into an ever changing life.
The right companion for a messy process.

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Contra Dancing

24 Wednesday Dec 2014

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Outside, the summer rain falls, cool, clean, and sweet. Inside, the air is warm and sweaty, filled with Scottish reel music. I am at a large contra dance, dancing with a stranger. He is tall and his hands are steady as he spins me. Even though my hands are tiny in his large palms, we keep a tension between us that is balanced and supple as we bounce through the Highland Schottische. The dance is spirited with lots of spins and Celtic kicks, but it still retains its Bohemian roots in its stylized patty-cake section. I’m enjoying my time with my partner. It is rare that I find someone who matches my steps and anticipates my body movements so well. But, we link arms and spin each other one last time. We exchange smiles, happy that the afternoon has only started. We shall be seeking each other out for another set. Then I look forward, reaching out both of my arms, palms out, to my next partner. The band is only finishing the first cycle of the tune, I will dance with at least ten more people before the song is over.

I love a good contra dance. It combines a few of my favorite things: traditional United Kingdom music, exercise, spinning, and geometry. I especially love the Highland Schottishe, a dance I was first introduced to at middle school church camp. It is a dance full of marvelous contradictions: it is restrained yet spirited, connected yet independent, proper yet provocative. Perhaps I like it so much because its spirit epitomizes the ways I find myself daily moving through the world. If my personality could be a traditional folk dance, I know it would be the Highland Scottische.

But most importantly, it is a dance of many meetings and partings. You kick and clap and spin your way around the dance floor for as long as the band pleases. Never with the same partner. Not a bad thing when you have a less than ideal partner, but very hard when you meet someone with whom you delight in dancing. But as with life, there can be later meetings and other sets.

Perhaps it is odd that I think of a summer contra dance on Christmas Eve Day. I guess all the rain we’ve had in New Haven prompted my memory. But I also think that writing Christmas cards to friends and family the world over (while planning New Year’s visits in two different states) makes my heart feel like it is at an astral contra dance with those who are willing to connect their lives with mine. I’m glad that my heart is moving in this way. Like a good contra dance, friends, family, boyfriends, crushes, and lovers move in and out of my life. Some I will never see again, but others will return to me in surprising ways. And some, I will return to again and again, hoping that they will dance just one more set with me. And if they say yes, they are the ones that become my life-long partners, willing to move with me through it all.

But, the band stills plays and I still must say goodbye, looking ahead to my next partner, to my next life stage, steadied by the conviction of my two hands reaching out, opening my palms to the promise of new connections, hoping and trusting that whomever lets me rest my hands upon their palms, is worth the dance. And, that they will want to dance with me again.

White Ceramic Bowls

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

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I have house guest this week. An old friend who will stay with me in my cozy apartment. That was the plan, until my housemates from downstairs needed someone to apartment sit for them.

It is the evening before my friend arrives and I am in my housemates’ apartment, making sure that the space is ready. I pull out sheets and towels and put away pots and dishes. In the process, I find one of my forks in the cutlery drawer, warmly welcomed  into neat piles of silverware after some past exchange of cobbler or cake. I lay the fork on the kitchen table.

The only thing left for me to put away is a trio of white ceramic bowls, outward sloping and angular in shape. They are bowls I know well and deeply associate with my housemates. These bowls have contained all manner of things: ice cream eaten in solidarity when one of my housemates was pregnant, chili consumed in ecstatic joy as we gathered for house dinner, and soup, not consumed at all because a toddler’s pacifier floated in between the chicken chunks and spinach leaves.

I carefully place the bowls in the cupboard, pick up my fork from the kitchen table, and ascend the stairs to my apartment. Like my fork, I am going home from home. I wouldn’t want to welcome a house guest into any other space. For here, we regularly share our forks, our bowls, our households, and our lives.

The Dark: Children’s Books and Adult Experience

30 Wednesday Jul 2014

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For his third birthday, I bought my honorary nephew The Dark, Lemony Snicket’s newest book for children. Before the purchase, one of my dearest friends and I stood by the children’s book island in the middle of the Strand, a famous New York city bookstore. Though the city, with its ever lively pace, still moved around us as shoppers and tourists, we were suspended in the quiet, honest loveliness of the story. Huddled over the book’s crisp, yet textured, drawings of oranges, ambers, blues, and blacks.

We took turns reading each page out loud to one another. The story went something like this: Laszlo was afraid of the Dark, but that was okay because the Dark, who lived in the basement, stayed out of Laszlo’s room. But one night, when his night light burned out, the Dark visited him. This encounter taught Laszlo that: “…without the Dark, everything would be light, and you would never know if you needed a light bulb.”

By the story’s end and with our shoulders touching, my friend and I were both quietly crying.

After reading a few more children’s books to each other, we wandered around the store’s remaining floors (Three to be exact). I suppose the experience was impressive, but my senses dulled towards the towers of books that towered above us. My mind was still with Laszlo, slowly re-feeling its way through his encounter with the Dark. Yes, the book was for my nephew, but the more I thought about it, the story was also for me.

I am not a young child, afraid of the dark in my bedroom—that doesn’t mean my adult life has not had its share of darkness. These past five years have put me in places and experiences where I have seen (with much surprise and sadness) how pain, fear, anger, and loss can wind around a person, hiding them from themselves and disordering and dissembling every important relationship they have. It’s horrible to watch. It’s even more horrible to be on the receiving end of its desperate grip.

God, “…without the Dark, everything would be light, and you would never know if you needed a light bulb,” is such a powerful line for me. When the Dark visited me, its presence hurt. But, its presence also tuned my senses to quickly see and deeply experience life’s blessings and joys—proverbial light bulbs—whenever they enlightened and enlivened my messy little bundle of experience and truth.

Apparently, The Dark helps my honorary nephew fall asleep. That’s what his mother told me yesterday. This knowledge makes me smile. We all have little stories that we tell ourselves, to make us strong, to make us brave, to help us not be afraid of the dark. I’m glad The Dark is such a story for him. And, I hope its wisdom will continue to walk with him and to strengthen him for the rest of his life.

Personality Puppetry and Grief

16 Wednesday Jul 2014

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Recently, I sent a friend a text. The content wasn’t important. Perhaps it was about meeting up or figuring out a decent time to chat amidst our mutually busy lives. But after sending it, I slumped back into my office chair, overcome by tears of relief. For the first time in a year, I saw me in the grammar and vocabulary of the text—neither S.L. Woodford the writer, who tends to favor long, elegant sentences and whimsical witticisms, nor Sarah L. Woodford (Library Director), who strides about her texts and e-mails with jolly precision and no-nonsense professionalism, but simply Sarah, a human being who doesn’t favor any sort of sentence structure and would much rather be spending her time cooking, drinking tea, reading, playing music, gardening, and being part of the joys and difficulties of her friends’ lives.

Only as I sobbed did I realize how much I’ve hidden behind both my librarian and writer personae this year. Given the pain that the death of my mother spewed into my life, it makes sense why it happened. Grief casts such a sharp, white pain onto your life, that it’s easier to hold up the simple shapes of your personality, like puppets, and let their shadows dance in the harsh light. The shadows you cast can make you appear whole even when you are not. S.L. Woodford and Sarah L. Woodford were structured, predictable roles. I knew the expectations and assumptions that came with playing them. But being Sarah was much more unpredictable. Grief threw some of my deepest held personality traits into upheaval and direct contradiction. I’m rather self-sufficient and usually a resource for others; I had to learn how to ask others for help this year. I’m also someone who primarily finds comfort and love in thoughtful words—yet, words seemed so empty and distant this year. I just longed to be held, to be shielded. Grief made me cry in ladies’ toilets, run out of concerts, and carry around packets upon packets of tissues. It made me irrationally terrified of beginning new relationships (because even good things end, and it’s hard and sucky and awful). And if there was any possibility of rejection, of silence, or of misunderstanding, at the hands of my fellow human beings, I kept my distance. I had quite enough big, complicated emotions to deal with already. I didn’t need anything new.

And if I couldn’t predict who I was or how I would act, why would I subject others to my inconsistencies and deep pain? S.L. Woodford and Sarah L. Woodford were much safer and steadier creatures to know. Sarah needed a year of hermitage.

Grief casts such a sharp, white pain onto your life, that it’s easier to hold up the simple shapes of your personality, like puppets, and let their shadows dance in the harsh light. The shadows you cast can make you appear whole even when you are not.

But there I was, in 160 characters or less, joyfully reaching out to my friend. And through the tears, I was happy and awed. Happy, that the desire to connect was still within me. Awed, that the will to earnestly step into the life of another (but only if you’re wanted :)) was at last returning.

Letters and E-mails

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

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photo(The front of one of the lovely cards my West Coast friend sent me.)

A few weeks ago, I received a package from a friend living on the West Coast. Inside the package were twelve sealed letters, ready for me to open over the course of a month. And open them I did. Each one contained the hand writing and colloquialisms of my friend. Each envelope filled with the personal, the emotive, the empowering, and the Romantic—exactly like my lively friend who loves people, psychology, social-justice, and Mary Ann Evans.

A few days later, my phone chimed, alerting me that an unopened e-mail waited in my inbox. And open it I did. A note from another friend living in the D.C. area, sent from her iPhone as she paused in the midst of classes and hospital work to see how I was doing. Each sentence on the screen glowed with precision and warmth—exactly like my gentle friend who studies and works in the fast-paced world of medicine.

Though I am a 21st-Century woman, reading these correspondences made me feel like an ancient Roman. In the Roman world of sprawling empire, letters tied people together. A letter was always a practical form of connection, but the Romans turned this mode of communication into a work of art and a piece of philosophy. To the Roman mind, a letter was a physical extension of the sender to the receiver. When you read a sender’s words, they became present to you—as if you sat in the same room with each other. This made correspondence, especially among close friends, a sacred and intimate act. Open a letter, and you open a passageway to your friend. Distance be damned.

I agree with the Romans when I read letters and e-mails. I love to experience my friends through the things that they write, because as a writer, the main way I engage with the world and others is through words:  sometimes spoken, sometimes written. Typed words and uttered phrases conjure up for me my life’s beloveds, even when they are far away. But though I depend on words, I know that without action, without some sort of real presence, some sort of real love, those same words can become cavernous and distancing. I am grateful that I have friends who know the weight of words. When miles space apart friendships, letters and e-mails typed on iPhones become an action, a sort of real presence, a manifestation of real love. Allowing you to once more hold your friends in your hands.