HOW LIFE IS

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things to do in Boston when the winter refuses to end

Read romance novels. Throw parties. Watch John Legend and Common’s Oscar performance over and over. Drink margaritas with your sister and laugh so hard you snort salt up your nose. Fill your spring capsule with sweaters, because sweaters are on sale right now and frankly you can’t imagine when you might be able to wear anything that isn’t a sweater. Nap. Take the train to New York to see your family. Put band-aids on your cracking knuckles. Write your novel. Fix your thesis, sort of. Start a Pinterest board, but a secret one, because you still think Pinterest is kind of embarrassing. Burn a lemon basil candle. Watch five hours of Fixer Upper. Anticipate House of Cards. Make soup. Make granola. Make brussels sprouts. Make lists. Dream of tomato plants. Dream of the ocean. Watch the sun come back.

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wintery mix

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It started snowing at 2:30 with the promise of the kind of accumulation that makes people here start grumbling about the blizzard of ’78, and the only thing to do was knock off work early and go for tacos.

I am trying. The older I get the more winter tests both my patience and my optimist’s nature, on top of which the universe dropped a steaming turd of disappointment in my lap last weekend that was kind of alarming in the scope of both its insult and injury. But I’m making chicken and rice in the crockpot, there’s a new shower curtain in my bathroom (an idea I blatantly stole from Erin and I was surprised by how much it cheered me up), and I’m skipping my school reading today in favor of the Rookie Yearbook. Like 4 winters ago I was really fannish about something that made it necessary to listen to Michael Bolton pandora all the time, a cold-weather habit which has stuck, if only because trudging through snowdrifts is made marginally more enjoyable to me with a greatest-hits soundtrack from the year 1992.

It’s not as bad out there as they said it was going to be, really. It’s not so bad in here, either.

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like four times this weekend alone

Over beers at a dive bar on Massachusetts Avenue on the coldest day of the year my advisor tells me I’m not the kind of person he could ever picture crying and I think to myself, wow, self, you have gotten through graduate school without anyone knowing you at all, just like you wanted, and I feel about one inch tall.

It’s my last semester. I struggled. I settled in exactly noplace and it was my own fault, my first year at Emerson all over again, that nasty part of me that refuses to engage or just doesn’t know how to, who’s sure the thing she said is the wrong thing, who can’t come to your party because she needs to be in bed by 10pm. That part of me can’t countenance loud noise or slimy cafeteria sandwiches, that part of me wrote How To Love and every other sentence I’ve ever strung that was worth half a damn, that part has her head tilted back on the sofa cushions thinking maybe I did this totally wrong after all, who can say.

Who can say?

I’m not someone who thinks it’s worthwhile to be vulnerable everywhere. I am easy to chat with but not easy to learn. I can see from the outside how that looks the same as snobbishness. I have always taken more than my fair share of work to get to know.

It’s occurring to me, slow and a little sadly, that I may regret not working harder myself.

For the last year and a half my standard answer when people have asked me about this program is that you get out of it exactly what you funnel in, and the truth is if I had it to do all over again, I think I might give a little more. Not in terms of nouns and verbs and characterization but in being present in the nowness of it, of committing with both hands and feet. I’ll earn the paper regardless, I’ll get the letters after my name, but six months out from graduation I can’t help but think it might have helped to do a little more actual living before I slammed it all down on the page.

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top five

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1. In June at the beach in Southie with my sister, secret Coronas sweating in plastic cups and the whole night stretching out in front of us pink and blue. We ate watermelon and watched the meat market, waded in up to our knees.

2. In July in Chicago at J’s parents’ house, middle of the night and barefoot doubled over laughing, eating cake and tortellini straight out of the fridge.

3. On the porch of the bar in Montana in August, chatting, taking pictures. Watching the cars drive away.

4. In Nashville, with a guy in a chicken suit.

5. On the plane to New York after book tour, the skyline springing up out the grey, grey window. My phone dinged when we landed. Come over! I have snacks.

Tell me your top five.

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special intentions

In high school I had a theology teacher we will call Ms. A who couldn’t have been much older than I am now, or maybe she was even younger. Also, she was nuts. One time she taped two girls’ arms together with packing tape at the front of the classroom, then yanked the tape off, held it up so that we could see all the arm skin gunk on it, and explained that this was why we shouldn’t have premarital sex. This is my favorite story to tell about Catholic school when I am drunk because it gets a great reaction every time, and when I am drunk I am always looking for a reaction.

Ms. A started every class period with a prayer, and a thing you could do was raise your hand and say if you had something or someone you wanted the group to pray for, and if you didn’t want to say what it was specifically that was okay too, you could just say special intention. I actually think that was the most respectful Ms. A ever was of any of us, of our privacy or of anything else: We don’t have to understand what you are asking for. But we will ask for it on your behalf.

My plan was to make a gratitude list for today, and I’m going to do that later anyway because I am, I am so grateful, for my beautiful family and my gorgeous friends and the fact that I have never in my life had to wonder if I was going to eat that day. But what happened last night in Ferguson—what is happening all day every day, world without end—has left me so heartbroken and afraid and angry and helpless-feeling, and the idea of cheekily telling you I’m thankful for the Serial podcast and tottering off to New York for the week makes me want to punch my own self in the face.

I tend not to write a ton about what’s going on in the world because I always feel like there are other, smarter, more articulate people who deserve to be heard much more than I do. I tend not to write a lot about faith because my feelings are murky and confusing at best. But I will say that back in Ms. A’s class it used to help to know that nineteen other girls in uniforms were praying for you to get what you needed, even if they had no earthly idea what it was.

I don’t know what we need, exactly. But I will ask for it today.

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