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blue collar princess

~ agirlnamedmary ~ 1 Comment

IMG_0617.JPGIf I close my eyes, I can still feel Irish winds blowing my hair atop the bulwarks of Blarney Castle.

Two days into a nine-day trip where I traversed the Emerald Isle with nothing but a few bus tickets and a backpack, my inner nomad was already climbing high upon a throne of wanderlust. Through rain slicks, three days of fever, the moaning grey ghosts of the Irish winterlands and countless pubs in search of the Golden Harp, I reveled in the challenge and the bliss of the open road. That was three years ago. I’ve been there and back and elsewhere, since.

But for the last year, I’ve been home and now I’ve got itchy feet again. I’m ready to move. Ready to walk the new road, fight the new fight, claim the new castle. I miss my roustabout days when I could buy a train ticket to Santa Barbara or hop on a flight from Prague to Madrid in just a few hours. Fresh places, fresh faces. A world of people and color at my fingertips.

But losing my teaching position to the school’s closure, a rather undramatic car crash that I do not want to talk about, college bills and a bottomless gas tank have left me absolutely penniless. And you need pennies to travel.

So I’ve spent my summer looking for gainful employment with varying levels of success. And by “varying levels,” I mean, no one would hire me.

I have a weird resume. I’ve never had a blue collar job in my life. I jumped into marketing, politics, journalism and law right after high school. So when I sat down for my interview at Denny’s in June, the manager looked at me with a quizzical tremble of her upper lip and asked, “Why do you want to work here?” And it wasn’t the typical, “tell me what you love about this company” question. She was literally judging my life decisions so hard. It’s hard to go from executive assistant to “I’ve never waited a table before but please hire me anyway.”

Not that I never wanted to be a waitress at a diner or something equally quaint and romantic.

For years, I’ve had this crazy impulse to run away to somewhere exotic and extreme, like Uzbekistan or the Florida Panhandle, and become a bartender. How great, to just be there for people. An entire job centered around making someone’s night better with a smile, an open ear, and a little liquid company.

I would be the world’s greatest bartender, of this I am completely certain.

I have no idea how I’d get to Florida without a car, though, so I’m stuck with the hometown job this summer.

Unfortunately, the temp agencies couldn’t find me a job either. Law firms need someone with a more recent paralegal certification (mine is a couple years old) and everyone else simply looked at the last four years of my work experience (teaching and freelance writing) and said with simpering smiles, “As much as we’d like to stick you in a closet to backfile our employee reports for us, we’d like someone with more filing experience.”

All for the best. I couldn’t spend the summer in a filing closet. I’d go mad.

I nearly gave up on the job search. Maybe, if I just curled up in bed with a good book for the summer, rent and car insurance and my eight dollar Netflix subscription would all just disappear. I had a really good book too! Spain’s Golden Queen Isabella by Iris Noble. Queen Isabella was the last great ruler of the age of chivalry and knights. She was a warrior of a woman, too. By 23, she was already a queen, a general, and a mother besides! She would race across Spain clad in armor with banners flying high, gathering support for the crusades into Andalucia or the war with Portugal. She prized the goodness of mankind, the nobility of the mind and heart, the gentle strength of bravery. And she set the standard with her own courage and conviction.

If I couldn’t let me feet wander the world, maybe I could let my mind go instead. But the sad truth is that you can’t hide from rent.

Desperation is the mother of miracles, so after dropping off my resume at restaurants all morning, I walked into L.A. Fitness. I had left my resume with the club in Eastlake about once every two weeks since late May and hadn’t heard anything, but there’s one much closer to my house that I had never been in before (at least, not with the intention of applying for a job). If being stuck in the Moscow airport for 18 hours taught me anything, it’s that if you don’t ask, you’ll never know whether that guy eating smoked fish out of a plastic bag was aware that he was publically consuming the entire corpse of a once living Oncorhynchus Mykiss, or if he just assumed nobody would mind the smell. Moral of the story: I walked in, flashed a smile, and handed over my application. Two weeks later, I was signing the hiring paperwork and sitting through employee training.

Actually, first they put me through first aid training. That was a long afternoon.

Then they asked me to cover a few shifts in the Kid’s Klub — thirty little kids running around half-crazed because it’s after 6 p.m. and they’re tired and want to be at home. How do you babysit thirty children at once for four hours? You play lava monster. You play a lot of lava monster.

I forgot how much I love tiny people. This last year, I only taught high schoolers. I miss my fourth graders from Prague. I miss their silly games and big opinions and tiny acts of heroism. Kids Klub reminded me just what an adventure the pre-teen world can be. A toy dinosaur can be a monster, a superhero, a truck driver or a baby, depending on whose imagination is at the helm. Hide-seek-can is still exciting enough to invoke shrieks of laughter and screams of terror alike. The world isn’t little to kids, it’s big. And stepping into their world for an evening makes mine seem a little bigger too, even if I’m just here in a playroom in San Diego.

Finally, I got a two-hour employee training session with our amazing operations manager.

The thing about employee training is that it can only prepare you for about two percent of the chaos that actually goes down at work, which is a lot like traveling, if you think about it. You can book all your tickets ahead of time, but if you miss a train or you get lost and can’t find your hostel in the middle of the night in a town where no one speaks any of the one and a half languages you know, you’d better know how to improvise.

They told me how to answer the phone, how to transfer a call, how to check people in and service their accounts. And then they gave me the closing shift on a Saturday night and left me to sink beneath the weight of my own incompetence.

I’ve done that before. Just ask anyone who has ridden a bus with me literally anywhere.

“So sorry to bother you again, but do you know where I get off?”

Anyway, what they didn’t prepare me for was how to pay off multiple accounts at once in cash, how to put a call on hold and pick up the other line without dropping both of them, where the ice packs are when someone drops a weight on their finger, which key unlocks the customer safe, how to respond when a member starts shouting at you over the phone, how to respond when a member starts shouting at you in person, how to respond when a member asks you out on a date, or how to use the intercom system with even the most basic effectiveness.

Actually, they did teach me how to use the intercom. Apparently some skills can only be learned through fire.

“I’m already getting compliments on how friendly you are,” my supervisor said as she showed me for the millionth time how to transfer a phone call.

The affirmation of my front desk persona came as a huge relief because I’m so terrible at the rest of this stuff, I’m going to need all the job security I can get.

Following a particularly bad day during my first week at work, I showed up to my next shift dressed up extra pretty. I did my hair and stole one of my mom’s black cardigans.

“You look nice today,” said one of my coworkers. “Dressing for the job you want?”

“I’m compensating for yesterday,” I told him with an exasperated sigh. “Just dressing for the job I’m desperately trying to keep.”

But I am good at part of this job. I am so, so good at welcoming people. If only I could sit there on my little stool all day and say, “Hi, how are you today?” or, “Bye, have a nice afternoon!” If that were the sum total of the job, I’d be amazing. It’s literally my favorite thing to do. There are so many people who come to this gym. And I love people.

Some of the gym members have started to become familiar. I can feel myself being drawn into this community of gym rats, fitness geeks and old people who just want to use the pool. People will grin back when they see me smile, or actually answer when I ask them how their day is going. Even the people in a hurry are pretty nice. And more than one member has taken the time to stop and compliment my smile. Mom and my dentist would be so proud.

Funny how far a smile can go in someone’s day, especially at a gym.

When you go to the gym, you’re taking a day’s worth of troubles, successes, and distractions with you, and the first person you see is the girl at the front desk. In a way, she’s the bartender. If you want to vent about your day for a minute, she’ll listen. If you want to get straight to business, she won’t take offense. If you sigh a little, she’ll understand. No judgement, just a smile and a sincere, “have a good workout today” as if she’s sliding over a gin and tonic on a cream colored napkin.

It’s been a few weeks. I’m feeling more comfortable behind the desk now. I don’t get rattled as easily. I had my first late-night this week. We close at midnight, so I brought my book about Queen Isabella just in case things got too quiet.

But work is its own little crusade, a challenge to make the day better for everyone who comes through our doors, if even in small measure. As I perched on my stool behind the front desk, like a lady in a tower, smiling on her subjects as they pass, I felt like a princess. Struggling with our computer system and my thin but growing level of competency to answer people’s questions and solve their problems, I imagined myself to be a general, commanding troops and winning wars.

And walking through the dark halls of the gym to close everything down, then locking the doors and stepping into the humid night, I felt like a queen shushing her kingdom into peaceful sleep.

When I lived in Prague, adventure was waiting right outside my door, ready to whisk me away at any moment. But the truth is, that lofty temptress has followed me across the world. Even in San Diego, even in my home neighborhood, even the dull humdrum of daily life, like working shifts at a blue collar job to pay off car repairs and tuition fees, there can be fields of war and palaces of gold. Always, there will be new people to discover.

So here is where I will be. My itchy feet are dancing off their nerves in this castle of new experiences. And proudly, I’ll fly my banner above its bulwarks until the wind catches my wings again and new roads open before me.

once a teacher

~ agirlnamedmary ~ 1 Comment

img_20160906_085443There it was. Bright red and gleefully tucked beneath the clear folds of plastic wrap and blue ribbon, my very first “Teacher’s Apple.”

It’s an idea I have loved since I first spotted it in the soft colors of Norman Rockwell paintings kept in a book beneath our living room coffee table. Giving the teacher an apple. How classically, iconically American.

Needless to say, it wasn’t really something I experienced in the Czech Republic. Oh, I was begifted with plenty of little treasures, but apples were never a thing there as far as I could tell.

So beginning at my new little school this year, ten minutes away from where I grew up, has been…Well, it’s been a long time in coming.

My tumultuous year away from my Czech students in Prague was reaching an excruciating peak in March when I was contacted by this little school to see if I was interested in a teaching position.

I wasn’t.

Already, I was mapping out a survival plan for my remaining three years of college education here in San Diego and teaching part time at a tiny Christian school was just not in the cards. It wouldn’t be Prague, you know? And I would be too busy.

But I have trouble saying, “No” to people, so the next thing I knew, I was in the middle of a phone call with a board member and then in the middle of an interview with the entire school board and then negotiating hours.

None of it held any large office space in my mind. I was in the middle of several meltdowns in April and May, mostly involving finals and anxiety about my trip back to Prague in the summer for some final goodbyes and a little closure.

And all the while, I assumed I would turn the job down eventually. Something wouldn’t work out. Because how could it? This school wasn’t mine. It wasn’t Prague, remember?

And yet an insatiable curiosity kept pulling me along. This was no longer an inability to be an adult and say, “No, thank you, but I just can’t.”

There was a turning point, I remember.

During the full-board interview, after being sufficiently and terrifyingly grilled on my values, virtues and skill sets (most of which I may have slightly oversold), the Chairman leaned back, pointed his sharp eyes on me and said in his gruff voice, “Is there anything you’d like to ask us?”

I thought for a moment, whispers of my little Czech students still echoing in my ears all these months later, and said, “Tell me about the kids.”

All heads turned to the Chairman, who had been to this point the most intimidating figure in the room. He softened. He smiled. He said, “Let me tell you about them.”

I don’t remember what he said, but I remember how he said it. He said it with the same tenderness I have felt for my own little okurky. He said spoke about them with affection and hope, as though he could vividly see all the promises held in their futures lined out like golden stepping stones and he wanted more than anything to help them jump from one to the next.

And I knew that feeling so well.

So I took the job.

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Harvey, the fake owl that sits on my candy bowl. He is a dear friend.

I rearranged my school and work schedules. I found minutes in the day I didn’t know existed until I had all the time I needed to make everything fit. I read text books. I made lesson plans. I drafted a friend into decorating my classroom for me.

And on the first day of school, I found myself on the receiving end of an apple. The girl was quick about it. She placed it in my hand and then dashed away.

For three and a half hours, I made my way through high school level English and Spanish. Then I packed my things, locked my classroom and dashed off to campus to begin a round of back to back college lectures.

All week, I was in and out so quickly, I barely noticed the flurry of paperwork and signatures and beginners ‘how to’s’ I still needed to walk through. I did notice the other teachers graciously asking, “How’s it going? Are you doing okay?”

And I was, surprisingly.

After teaching several hundred students of all grades in a different language in the Czech Republic, a room of six high schoolers who all understand English seemed too easy. It was like training for a marathon and then running a mile.

On top of this, it was good to be back in the classroom. Indoctrinating a new generation of children on the importance of adverbs and explaining complex grammatical concepts with shoddily drawn stick figures. Having a little room with a little desk to sit behind (or on, as is more often my case). Having tiny people just bursting to ask questions, push buttons and grow into themselves.

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It wasn’t until Friday, the end of the first week, that I felt it. A realization. A revelation. A homecoming.

As my new students waltzed out of the room, practically singing, “See you on Monday!”, tripping over themselves to get to lunch, I felt a little tug on the cords of my heart. The same tug I always felt when school let out in Prague. It would be a whole weekend before I saw my students again.

My new school isn’t my old one. I knew that going in. I am very aware of it now. And I know that nothing will replace what Prague was to me.

But I think God knew I needed to be back in a classroom. I think maybe he’s been wanting me here and I was too stubborn to go on my own, so he just kind of pushed me into one.

When the Chairman bustles into my classroom with his gravelly voice and his broad smile and asks, “How are you doing?” – I tell him I’m doing well, that I like it here, that it feels like a good fit.

But the truth is, it’s more than that. It feels like home.

a return to joy

~ agirlnamedmary ~ 2 Comments
trainclouds
Speeding on a train from Kutná Hora to Prague. Photo Credit: Eli Hirtzel.

“Did you get any rest?” Rachel asked me, lowering herself into the deeply cushioned chair next to my corner of the couch.

“Not really,” I said. Early evening light filtered into the livingroom of the house I had once lived in for two years. The day was hot and muggy and we were both glistening, despite the coolness of our new surroundings. It’s a long walk from our hotel rooms on top of the hill to the house at the bottom (during the late summer evenings, you can sometimes see fireflies along the path in the forest, but I’ve not managed to spot any this trip).

Rachel tilted her head sideways and eyed me, looking every ounce the schoolteacher she is.

“Why not? What were you doing all afternoon?”

“Mopping up the bathroom,” I said. “And crying.”

Rachel smiled. Not a happy one, but a knowing one. She understands, about the crying at least.

“Why were you mopping the bathroom?” she asked.

One of my roommates, a girl from the American team who had come to help with the English Camp, had had a disagreeable moment with the shower in our hotel room and we didn’t have time before church to mop up the lake left in the wake of their dispute. So following Sunday lunch at the house, I trekked up through the forest alone to our room and found myself knee-deep in water, wet towels and something unexplainably sticky.

Then I rehung all my laundry around the open window, hoping they’d dry out better in the fresh air than in the dank of our bathroom before I packed them for a final time in the evening.

Then I broke the bathroom hairdryer trying to shortcut the hang-dry process with a pair of shorts.

Then I stared out the window for a while.

Then I sat on my bed and cried. For about two hours.

I don’t know why I came back to the Czech Republic, to be honest. Technically, I came to help with an English Camp the church puts on every summer. Technically, I came to see my former students and fellow teachers one last time before their school year let out. Technically, I came to catch up with a few dear friends I had to leave behind when I returned to San Diego last July after living and working in this beautiful country for two years.

But I couldn’t tell you what I was really coming to find. Peace? Closure? The missing remnants of my broken heart so I can piece myself back together before resuming my new life in San Diego?

Why had I come back to Prague? What a truly awful, horrible, stupid idea. Because I knew this moment would come. This afternoon when I’d be sitting on this couch for the last time, wishing with all my heart I could stay, knowing I’d have to leave.

I wish I could explain why leaving Prague last year was so devastating to me. It’s a question I have thought about a lot this summer as I have revisited forests, fields and the homes of friends I know so well. My breath still vanishes when I cross Charles’ Bridge. My eyes still linger on the horizon whenever St. Vitus Cathedral stands against it. Prague is always new for me. But it also has the feel of a very old friend, one who knows me perhaps better than I know myself.

Every sidewalk I traversed this summer led me down a thousand memories of the city and its people, each in a different season. Every friend I visited refreshed my mind and loosened my tongue to the Czech language (which, sadly, I have only been able to speak with my cat for the last year, and she’s not much of a conversationalist). And every day, I remembered anew why this place feels so much like home.

Which is unfortunate since I don’t live here anymore. And I find myself asking God, “Why would you give me this just to take it all away?”

“Have you ever thought about moving back?” Rachel asked me, echoing a question I’ve heard maybe a hundred times.

Of course, is always my answer. I’d give my right leg to be here forever. Sometimes I wish I was Czech or wonder whether my Czech friends feel special to belong to a people and a place like this.

In fact, even the difference between returning to San Diego, which was difficult and stressful, and returning to Prague was shocking to me.

They say you can’t go back. You can’t go home again. That was totally true for me. When I moved back to San Diego, it felt forced and awkward. I had become a stranger in the town that raised me. I had chased a different wind and had changed with the current, such that the old seas felt rough and strange to me upon return.

Okay, I realize this all may sound a little over-dramatic, but I just don’t know how else to explain how I’ve been feeling for the last year. Not that I haven’t adjusted, made new friends, started new ventures. But in the still moments before sunset, the walks from my car to the house when the stars are out, the muffled laughter of people enjoying themselves right here, I find myself somewhere else. Somewhere far away, in a time that almost seems imaginary, as though I fell asleep for two years, dreamed a wonderful dream, and woke again to a world that has moved on without me. And it leaves me feeling heartbroken and lost.

I thought ‘coming back’ would be the same with Prague. I had been away for a year after all. Would I recognize this place? Would it remember me?

Prague surprised me. I instantly felt pieces of myself fall back into place as I immersed myself again in a culture and a language. I visited my school and saw my students and fellow teachers. It felt like I had never left. Like I had been gone only a day.

And I’m wondering if this is because the ‘Home’ where we begin is a launching point, setting us up for flight and a future. To return is impossible because it represents the past. But the ‘Home’ we create on our own is our future. Coming back is easy and natural, like finding your way back to the path that leads you onward.

So why don’t I just move back? Get a teaching position again? Make my own way of things?

Simple, really.

I first considered moving to Prague in 2010 after a short term mission’s trip when it was obvious that there was a need for workers in the field. I felt so called to go. For three years, I waited, planned, prepared. Finally, I was accepted to go as a missionary associate for two years, with the possibility of extensions. It was so hard and yet so easy to struggle through those two years (five, if you count the three years in San Diego it took to get me to Prague) because, at every step, I knew that this was where God wanted me to be. And in my heart I knew I wouldn’t leave Prague unless God sent someone to replace me or made it very obvious he wanted me elsewhere.

In a way, He did both. So I left.

I’m in San Diego because it’s pretty clear to me that God wants me there right now. And I’m not unhappy.

Not unhappy, but I’ve been missing something. For months now, I’ve noticed the lack of something very important in my life, something I long to have back.

I’ve lost my joy.

I’ve been missing the delight of waking up every morning and knowing I’ll get to see all my students, I’ll get to walk through fall leaves or winter snows, I’ll get to learn new words and practice old ones. I’ve been missing my friends from school, the women who opened up their lives and hearts to me. I’ve been missing impossibly clear Czech skies, feathery forests and wayside flowers. I’ve been missing the life I had and all the joy that came with it. I have this fear that my two years in Prague were the best I may ever get, nothing will ever be quite so golden. And even though I know in my heart that this is probably untrue, it’s hard to fight the feeling. Especially sitting in a house that was once home, looking out a window into what was once my world and my future.

“It is hard having your life in one place and your heart in another,” I finally said.

Rachel gave her head a little shake, sympathy in the highest degree, and we waited for the evening devotional to begin.

The dear man who led us through Scripture and then prayer began quickly and finished quietly. We read only three passages, each about the sacrifice of the Christian life. For us, living safely and happily in the first world, the Christian life doesn’t require many sacrifices. Certainly not the pain of death. Not torture, not imprisonment, not persecution.

Literally, all I have to do is live by the Word of God and follow His direction in my life. And in return, He has given us a peace that passes understanding.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God,which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:4-7

All this I know in my head, but it has taken a year for that knowledge to work its way into my broken heart.

Suddenly, I felt a lifting of my spirit, a calming of my soul.

My world of hopes and dreams here in Prague seem like an awfully small sacrifice to make for the One who gave me all.  

Sitting there in that living room, I suddenly felt myself breathe for what felt like the first time in a year. The idea of being able to bring a sacrifice to the altar of the Lord brightened my soul in a way I didn’t expect.

Prague is not something God is taking away from me. It is something He has given me, which I should be delighted to return to him to make room for the new plans He has for me whatever or wherever they may be.

Logically, it doesn’t make sense. It is very truly a peace that passes understanding. And, although it didn’t come all at once, that evening I began to realize it personally.

I trooped back through the forest to the hotel that night with another friend from the team.

“I really want to see fireflies,” I told him. “This is my last chance before I go home.”

In the dark, I could hear him laughing, but he made a point of staring into the abyss of the shadowy creek for bobbing lights with me. We found none.

I sighed. Not even fireflies? Like, I understand that God gives and takes away as he pleases, but not even one little firefly? You know, as a consolation gift? Is that too much to ask for?

We kept walking, my friend bending the conversation as softly as the curves in the road.

And then I saw it.

Glowing unmistakably, it flickered a few yards in front of us. Beating nearly as loudly as my friend’s heavy footsteps, my heart seemed to pound uncontrollably as we slowly approached the little creature.

“It’s not a firefly,” my friend said, crouching on the pebbled pathway near the grass where our new acquaintance lay blazing like a supernova.

“No,” I said, entranced. “He’s a glow worm.”

A dozen memories of Czech mountains and Czech children and all the glow worms they’ve brought me over the years blinked before me.

“Should we take him with us?” asked me friend.

“No,” I said again, feeling a smile spreading warmly across my face as we watched the only glowing insect in the whole forest beaming before us. “His place is here.”

He’s not a firefly, but he’s something – a reminder from the Lord that he hears me. That I’m not alone. That he’s sending me back to San Diego for a reason. Just like he sent me to Prague for a reason.

Prague is my glow worm. Beautiful, magical, moving, but not mine. Prague and the people in it belong to God and it is time to let go of the idol I have turned them into, to give them back and trust that they will be just as safe in his hands as they’ve ever been.

Coming back to San Diego was no easier this time around. I still feel so deeply sad to leave a home I hoped was mine. But my heart is healed, fully back, not inside me, but in the hands of my Savior. I’m ready to love again, adventure again, find a new home with a new people, if that’s what he asks me to do. What a little sacrifice, to live this life God gave me unto him and no other.

And with that readiness has come the return of my joy.

Things I’m thankful for in 2015

~ agirlnamedmary ~ 1 Comment

Spending the last two Thanksgivings away from home was one of the hardest parts of being an expat. Christmas is fairly universally celebrated, at least in Europe. But Thanksgiving is the American holiday. Like, good luck even finding a turkey.

Suffice it to say, I’m happy to be back home this November.

When you come home, everything has to be discovered again. Roads are revisited. The running path in the park has to be beaten into by feet it has long-forgotten. Crisp skies and the San Diegan winter introduce themselves again. And while it takes some getting used to, meeting the familiar as if they were strangers, the upside to “coming home” has been seeing with new eyes all these things I once took for granted.

This Thanksgiving I have a lot to be thankful for.

  • Mexican food – Los Panchos, Lolita’s, Chili’s. I have missed real spices, real beans, real tortillas, real rice and real avocadoes. I waited a long time for this fiesta.
  • Hand sanitizer – You may think I am crazy – and I am – but hand sanitizer makes my life 100 percent more manageable. And if it’s not the little things, it’s not anything.
  • A nephew – As if this needs an explanation.
    thenephster
  • My 14-year old brother – More specifically, my 14-year old brother who ties his own ties, speaks primarily in a deep Scottish brogue and has a running playlist of Irish folk music on nearly all the time. Dear sir, I love you.
  • Water fountains – I’m sorry, but I can’t get over this one. Free water. Everywhere. This is America.
  • Sunday mornings – Every single Sunday morning as we drive to church, as our car crests the big hill on Sweetwater road and Mt. Miguel comes into view, my dad will say softly, “Doesn’t our mountain look great today?” as if it has always belonged to us. Then he’ll say a prayer as the car winds beneath the evergreens towards our little church. Every Sunday.
  • My 12-year old sister – Thank you for letting me borrow your clothes.
  • “Jacket weather” – I know San Diego doesn’t have frosted forests and white-tipped steeples, but it’s nice having to put a jacket on after the sun’s gone down. Like, yes, we do have cold-ish weather.
  • My Dad – When we drive somewhere and he breaks the conversation to say, “How many shades of green do you think are in those trees?” When he engages in a pun war or a game of Boggle and reminds us all what happens when you subscribe to Webster’s online dictionary ‘Word of the Day.’ When he suggests watching Disney cartoons on Saturday nights. When he believes in the plans God has for me even when I struggle to believe them myself.
  • The Sun newsroom staff – I never expected the welcome I was given here. I never expected to feel so immediately part of a family again. God has been so gracious in putting you all in my life. And you have been gracious in putting up with my “Marydowns.” I thank you. And P.S. — there is no Thanksgiving like a Sunsgiving, is there?
    sunsgiving
  • The radio – You guys have no idea. Two years without a radio nearly killed me. I was like, this close.
  • Turkey – I’m all about that baste.
  • Friends who stay in touch – It’s hard to sit down and write a letter or make time for a skype call when life throws you into the current of the everyday madness. I love my friends who freely give me precious pieces of their time.
  • Rachel Platten – Don’t you dare judge me.
  • Opportunity – Trying to figure out what to do next with my life has been the ongoing challenge of this year, but I’m thankful to live in a country where I can make that choice. Where it isn’t made for me by other people, by the government or by my circumstances.
  • Immigrants – All my great-grandparents on my mom’s side are immigrants. They came over in the 1920s and ‘30s, some to a country where they did not know the language. They faced poverty, fear of the unknown and futures full of terrible possibility. They shaped this country with their lives. And because they lived, I live. Irish and Italian immigrants were heavily discriminated against when my great grandparents first came to America. Today, that mantel of mistrust and fear is born by other people groups. I am thankful for them, too. Thankful that they’ve been able to come to the safe harbor of our golden shores, and I hope that they will help us make our country better. I hope that we never become so fearful as a people that we close our doors to our brothers and sisters around the world, that we wouldn’t be willing to risk our own personal comfort to help the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
  • God – How can I not mention my Lord and Savior? When I have felt most lost this year, when I have felt most empty, when I have felt most fearful, He has been there, for He is the greatest Comforter. What a Prince of Peace.

What happens when you clean your bookshelf

~ agirlnamedmary ~ Leave a comment

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Months before I made the dreaded move from Prague back to the United States, my mom called to tell me she was redoing my room. “Spring Cleaning,” she called it.

“It’ll be all ready for you when you get home,” she said. And as the weeks dripped by, each one revealing to me something else I knew I would miss terribly when I left, Mom would give me an update. “I bought new sheets for your bed! Aubrey’s agreed to give you the bottom bunk. We’re cleaning out the garage so you can set up an office down there. We found you a bookshelf for your things when you come home.”

Coming home is a lot less glamorous that people will let you believe. Firstly, there is no dramatic soundtrack playing when you step off the airplane. It’s just you and the white-noise of a tired airport. Exhaustion takes you by the hand and holds it tightly as you wait for your suitcases to make their way around the luggage carriage. And by the time you’re pulled safely into a car that is speeding you home, towards family and pizza and a warm bed with new sheets, you can’t feel your own face, let alone make sense of any emotion that has the audacity to interrupt your desire to sleep.

After a slice of real pizza with real crust and real pepperonis, Mom and assorted family members walked me through the house, showing me the additions to the bathroom (including but not limited to a curtain rod that works and a new cup for our toothbrushes), changes to the bedroom I share with my youngest sister (they were all very excited about the bookshelf they got for me), and the cleaned-out corner of the garage where someone had already hung up several pictures for me. Eventually, the Call of the Pizza became too great and they all meandered back downstairs, leaving me to unpack a few things from my suitcase onto my new bookshelf before flopping into bed.

It’s been five months exactly since I came home. It doesn’t feel that long. Life, in truest form, dropped me off in the middle of a rushing current that took me around the country and back and then deposited me into a full schedule of work and school and family.

After that first week, when I had time to carefully place precious mementoes from my two years in Prague onto various golden-brown shelves, life reached out a hand and started shoving odds and ends into the free spaces. Receipts, bottle caps, newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, books I haven’t read, gifts from friends, make-up and enough bobby pins to rebuild the Brooklyn Bridge – they all found their way onto my bookshelf.

Five months of apathy took over.

So this week I cleaned it out. It needed to be done and in wave of Prague-sickness, I figured it would be the most productive thing to do with my afternoon.

The top shelf is mostly make-up and jewelry, not that I own much of either. Frankly, if society allowed women to show up to Life without all the war paint and bangles, I wouldn’t own any. But I was surprised, as I untangled necklaces and earrings, how many of the little gems in my pink box were gifts from friends and students in Prague. The week I left Prague is still a haze, but I vaguely recall sorting through my collection of jewelry and giving most of it away (I be-gifted most of my belongings to friends before I left on account of airport weight limits). All this must have made the cut because they are more than belongings, they are tokens of affections that once were mine.

I dusted off the frame of the year-end school picture of all my fellow teachers, wonderful Czech women who adopted this little lost American and taught her how to teach English and take coffee (with chocolate. You always take coffee with chocolate).

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The next shelf down was half trash, half Czech CDs and ornaments I collected in Prague. None of the CDs play on US machines and I definitely cried for a solid twenty minutes when I found that out in July. It’s amazing, though, how much trash can build up when you’re not paying attention. When did I fall back into the habit of letting life run me? When did I become careless with where I put my things? When did my actions lose intention and how do I get it back? There should not be trash on this book shelf.

There is only one shelf which actually has books and it was the easiest to straighten up. One half is comprised of my Czech literature. They’re books I’m not sure I’ll ever finish because Harry Potter is a lot harder to read in a second language than one might originally assume. The other half has all my journals and notebooks. Every memory I recorded in Europe fits on six inches of bookshelf.

Three shelves down, two to go. I looked at the bottom one, my paper dungeon, and realized that some things are too far gone to change. Besides, where else am I going to throw papers that have ambiguous purpose and questionable sentimental value?

So that just left one.

I hate this shelf because it has all my pieces of Europe. Every stupid collector’s spoon that I bought in every stupid souvenir shop in every stupid city I went to.  A pile of homemade hot pads from a Czech friend. An extremely creepy rabbit that I bought from a student at our Christmas market my first year in Prague. And a stack of letters.

I never counted how many I got, but I knew I couldn’t leave them behind. How could I? Those were the voices of people from home who cared enough about me to take the time to write me a physical letter, buy a stamp and drop it in our much underused mail system without any promise of getting one in return. They just did it.

In those letters I found comfort and flavors of a world that felt very far away. When Prague got lonely, and it would from time to time, almost on cue, a note would appear in my mailbox with a scrawling American address and a red, white and blue stamp.

It always amazed me how much closer I felt to people through letters. They didn’t even always write about anything they considered “significant” – just the daily routine of existing in their corner of the world.

So when I came home late one night this week to find a letter waiting on my pillow with a Prague address, my heart surged up into my throat.

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Carefully, I unfolded the crinkly white pages and reveled in the inky heart someone had poured onto that page, entrusted in an envelope, and sent to me. In beautiful dips and curves of a silky-black ink, she chatted about her summer and its adventures. She asked me questions and puzzled over how different things had become since I left. And there I was again, in that letter, sitting next to her in a coffee shop talking about life. It was as if the grand ocean and the insurmountable distance between our two paths in life disappeared completely. And when the letter was done, it was like saying goodbye and catching our separate buses back home.

Except that I’m a lot farther away now than I was then.

I folded the letter back up, wiping away tears (and no one should be surprised to know that I was absolutely gushing), and added it to the dozens of letters I received from people I missed while I was in Prague.

Now I have people I miss while in San Diego.

It will take me a good month and a half to find the time (and the emotional energy) to sit down and write out a response. I’ll think about what I want to say, and what I wish I could say but can’t, and it will be a long time before those words make it to paper.

But for now, I want to share with whoever may be reading this what I learned from that letter, and from cleaning out my bookshelf. It’s something I’ve been needing to be reminded of.

There is no end to the capacity of the human heart to love and be loved. And if we use our souls as vessels to carry genuine care and affection for those who wind up in our lives, it is likely they will be put through the mill. But how beautiful it is to cradle our aching hearts on the floor, swaying gently to the realization that friendship is not limited by time and space, nor are we creatures made of glass which break and cannot be put back together again.

It has taken a long time for me to realize this, but my mom is an incredibly brave, admirably selfless woman. I left home for two years and she supported me, encouraged me and sent me an appreciatively large amount care packages. She is a woman who knows how it feels to set free a piece of your heart and trust that someday it will come back.

Leave it to me to make cleaning up my bookshelf an existential adventure in self-discovery. But everyone has to get their kicks somewhere.

My lesson has been learned, though. I promise to keep my bookshelf cleaner. I promise to keep writing letters. I promise to treasure the precious people in my life. And I promise, no matter where we are or where we end up, I will find a way to redeem the love that has been invested in me by so many people in so many places.

Six Stages of Reverse Culture Shock

~ agirlnamedmary ~ Leave a comment

The very idea of reverse culture shock sounds laughable. Frankly, it sounds a little like something a traveling yuppie would make up as an excuse for not having their life together when they return home from wandering abroad. I may have read a total of two articles about the topic before coming back to San Diego after two years in Prague. I don’t think a journal-full would have prepared me for the arduous process of taking the person you’ve become and assimilating them back into the place belonging to the person you once were.

But I’m getting there and, more importantly, others have gotten there already, which gives me hope. It took me the whole summer and several weeks into a new semester, with multiple trips around the USA, to figure this all out. Honestly, my Kimmy Schmidt-esque stories of rediscovering a culture I left for 24 months could fill several blog posts, but I’ve gotten lazy so we’re condensing this into six basic stages of reverse culture shock.

Here goes.

1. HAZE

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a plane home.

Jet-lagged, weary and inexplicably hungry (if you’re me, you’re always hungry), you stumble out of the airport in a blur of vaguely familiar sights and sounds. Some things stick out like finely stenciled pictures – the palm trees you never noticed, the size of the masts looming out of the shipyard, the feel of the new seat covers in the family car. Others play out before you like a foggy, black-and-white film. The bend in the road you’ve driven over a million times or the creak of the back gate leading into a softly lit patio. Home.

People and faces, voices, sounds and space all take on a new life and in your travel-tired stupor, they seem like strangers.

I remember the first night back in my own bed. It didn’t feel like mine. It was uncomfortable and unfamiliar and I missed my bed tucked away beneath a slanted wood roof somewhere in Prague. Homecoming is not what you expect it to be.

2. LOSS

Life in Zbraslav 2013
a walk through a Czech forest.

If going to sleep on a strange bed in your old home is hard, waking up to your childhood room is heart-wrenching. Immediately, two kinds of loss sink deeply into the conscious layer of your beating heart: what you missed and what you’ve left behind. It’s not like you expected life to stand still while you were away, but you hadn’t really intended for it to take off without you either. It did. And instead of being able to take comfort in the things around your room, suddenly you feel out of place. Your thoughts will drift to safe spots in your other ‘place’ and you will think of what you’ve just left behind. Forest paths to your home in the village, friends to drink coffee with, quilted blankets and familiar sunrises.

As the haze begins to disappear and the days turn into weeks, you’ll feel more acutely the loss of the world you left behind and catch glimpses and shadows of the life you missed.

That first morning, staring at the blue walls covered in papers and posters my youngest sister had put up in my absence, I swear I felt my heart ripping in two pieces as it tried desperately to be wholly in Prague and wholly here, at home. And, of course, it couldn’t.

3. DISCOVERY

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a skyscraper in New York City with a very good friend.

Expect to be surprised every day by something completely ordinary. Expect to have a thousand questions about things that have changed in the months or years since you’ve been gone. What is Uber? Who the heck is Ariana Grande? Exactly how long have fleeked up eyebrows been a thing, and what does “fleek” mean anyway?

Some of this will be rediscovery. Yes, water is free in restaurants. No, you don’t have to take your shoes off every time you walk inside. Being able to drive yourself places will be liberating, having to buy your own gas again will feel like a death sentence. Pandora? Netflix? Hulu? Little Caesars? Real Mexican food? Heaven.  

The radio hasn’t lost its magic yet. I’ve been home for four months and every song on the radio still sounds new to me. I’ve been getting down to Uptown Funk like nobody’s business. It’s a brave new world.

4. INDIGNATION

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a sunset in Dallas with my long-lost brother.

As the shimmery layer of sparkle wears off your newly rediscovered home, you begin to see things you hadn’t noticed before. Things like the entitled attitude your friends or neighbors have about things like owning cars or getting an education. The narrow views and set ways of family members regarding political issues will drive you up a wall. And when you walk past your fourth unused drinking fountain in a day, covered in spider webs and gunk, you want to shout out, “you have to pay for this stuff in Europe! Free, clean drinking water right here, folks! They’ll walk all day to find water in Africa and here it comes out of a spout!”

But no one will listen, because no one has been where you’ve been or seen what you’ve seen. You’ll be lumped in with every other traveling yuppie who has ever come home and said, “they do it better over there.”

Two weeks after I got home, I was people watching at the food court in the mall and it struck me how confidently Americans take their seats. They walk and talk and sit and stand like they own whatever ground they’re touching. And while they occupy that plastic chair, it is their throne. Europeans do not come close to exuding this air of confidence and control. I think that’s when I realized how hard it would be to ‘come home’ all the way because I no longer identified with my own people. Folks were going to think I was nuts. Who would ever understand the mental battle I was fighting every day just to make sense of the home I used to know? Just to keep things together.

5. ISOLATION

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a piece of my heart in San Francisco.

This may be the worst part, and honestly, it may not come in this order. You may feel alone the day you arrive home or a month later when you finally realize why things aren’t clicking the way they used to. But eventually, the frustration you feel at your own culture for their blindness to their faults and the welling sense of loss toward wherever it is you’ve left will isolate you. It’s like a breakdown in communication. Because people around you can look at the same situation and not see it the way you now do. You will feel disconnected and alone.

It’s discouraging to be back around family and friends who should know you better than anyone, but suddenly they can’t seem to grasp why you feel strongly about water fountains or why you sometimes have to stop in the middle of what you’re doing to process a painful memory.

I came home right before our family reunion. I got to hold my nephew for the first time ever. I went out for a night on the town with my brother. I got ice-cream with an assortment of siblings in an illegal takeover of an abandoned baseball field. But the people who made me feel most at home were the random friends who would come up to me out of the blue and ask, “how is it being back? What can I do? Want to get coffee and talk about it?” They were the ones who’ve been there and back. They’ve all had a ‘place’ and left it to come home again. They knew. And they reached out with human connection and empathy, and it helped me move on to Stage Six.

6. ADJUSTMENT

a new friend.
a new friend.

At some point, you have to accept that life is moving quickly and you need to jump on the train or get left behind again. Working back into crazy American eating patterns (so much grease, so much store-bought food, sooooo late at night) or re-learning how to drive a car (which I was never very good at to begin with) will come with time. Eventually, you’ll stop waking up every morning wondering what the weather is like in your ‘place’ and the hole left by the friends you miss so dearly will begin to fill with new people.

And the scariest part about the adjustment phase is the thought of losing your experience. So let me be clear. Moving on does not mean forgetting the past. It does not mean abandoning your friendships, erasing your memories or sinking back into old ways you’ve grown out of. It just means adopting this new person you’ve become and making a space for her in your old world. Both you and it have changed and the fit may not be perfect yet. But that’s how you’ll continue to grow. You’ll be challenged. You’ll be tested. You may be lost for a little while. But, believe it or not, that’s the road we’re all on, culture shock or not.

Congratulations. You’ve caught up to the rest of us. Now, onward and upward.

Star-gazing and Zombies

~ agirlnamedmary ~ 1 Comment

“Come back here!” cooed Hosanna in the most aggressively affectionate tone I’ve literally ever heard.

“No,” spat back Sophia with a laugh. “I’m taking these to the car.”

She didn’t get far. Her cheery face and black hair disappeared behind Hosanna’s sweater as the big sister devoured the younger one in an octopus hug. There was a struggle.

My own sister and I watched the tousle a safe, respectful distance from the tangled wrestlers and from each other.

“I feel like we should hug or something,” I said making tentative eye-contact with her.

“No,” said Sarah flatly.

Sisters were part of the reason I came home. Both the ones I’m related to by blood and the ones who’ve adopted me over the course of many, many years. They’re part of what made coming home worthwhile. Even the unaffectionate ones.

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“Shotgun!” I called, dragging blankets and thermoses of tea out to the truck. Sophia and Sarah piled into the back, begrudgingly giving me command of the iPod as Hosanna took the wheel.

Sarah and Sophia are a lot alike. Very stable. Very practical. Very capable. Very void of touch-feely.

Hosanna and I are a lot alike. Adventuresome, soul-searching sojourners who need a little Practical in our lives from time to time.

And that’s what this evening was. The sister reunion, the reconnection of yin and yang, the defragmenting session we all needed.

Nine o’clock hung over us like a cape, flapping in the wind, driving us onward into the far side of San Diego County. The sticks. The boondocks. Pine Valley.

The drive was about forty-five minutes, but between the power struggle over the song selection and my solo performance of Hakuna Matata, it went quickly.

“I think that’s it,” Sophia said, several minutes after passing the last house-light in the valley and crossing over a cow gate. She pointed to a spit of dirt just off the road and Hosanna followed her finger, steering the big, black truck into the narrow space.

We tumbled out of the car, taking our blankets, tea and a box of animal crackers with us. In the dark, we arranged everything neatly in the bed of the truck before piling in on top of the cushy mess.

“We didn’t pick a great night for star-gazing,” I said, noting the full moon smiling above us.

“Yeah, but at least it’s not freezing cold like last time,” quipped Sarah.

Our last trip was a mid-December disaster in which we spent twenty minutes shivering in the back of the truck before heading home to sleep in warm beds. This time we brought blankets.

“That was a terrifying experience,” said Hosanna, patting down the folds of a silky sleeping bag. “I don’t think I could do this again in pitch darkness like that.”

“I think you should all just be grateful that I got us out here at all,” said Sophia with insistence, cashing in on her initiative in organizing the night. “You’re welcome.”

“Thank you, Sophia,” we all chimed in, various levels of obligation flaring up in our pitch.

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We spent a lot of time tossing and turning. Shift weight or stretch, we all ended up uncomfortable for most of the evening.

“Next time we’re bringing pillows,” I said as Hosanna distributed the tea. “And more snacks.”

“We have animal crackers and carrots,” said Sarah with a distinct crunch. “What more could you need?”

“Yeah, whenever you feel bad about the animal crackers, just eat a carrot,” said Hosanna. “It’s a balanced diet.”

“What’s the ratio?” I asked. “One carrot to every two crackers?”

“It’s whatever your conscience tells you,” Sarah affirmed, giving the cracker box a motherly pat.

Our voices lowered and the steady munching joined the chorus of the universe above us – a universe which, on this particular night, in this particular part of the world, consisted of about four stars and a very visible moon.

“At least we have that helicopter,” said Sophia, snapping a lion cracker in half with her front teeth.

I hugged my camera to make sure it was still there and then settled deep into the folds of a sleeping bag as Sarah began questioning Hosanna about her summer.

Hosanna left for Europe a few weeks before I came home from it. I needed her here this summer. I needed her positivity and encouragement. Mostly I just needed to know she was there, that I had someone to come home to. But I also knew she needed this trip. Just like I’ve needed mine. We are wanderers.

Hosanna’s face lit up, making the moon look modest and unassuming in comparison. I had heard most of her adventures before, but Hosanna knows how to string a yarn and I found myself thoroughly roped in and we followed the sound of her voice across the farmlands of France, through the streets of Berlin and into the heart of the Netherlands.

It’s been a long time since the four of us were all together. Eightteen months, give or take. However long ago the wedding was, when the four of us were standing in the hotel lounge. Sarah and Hosanna were halfway into several glasses of wine they had found abandoned at a table and Sophia and I were wringing the water out of our dresses by the fire, having led the charge into the hotel pool, post-reception.

Eightteen months is a long time. To me, it seems like another lifetime ago. But being in the back of this truck was helping me readjust again.

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Conversation and jest flitted from one topic to the next and I noticed that it in no way resembled our muddled, giggly gatherings from high school. For starters, the hypothetical questions have decreased substantially. We also just seem to care more about what’s happening with everyone else.

The one thing I will say for age – the longer you live, the more struggles you will face. The more your struggles, the more you approach people with empathy. And empathy makes better listeners of us all.

Eleven o’clock inched closer and the truck had quieted down to a mere ripple of conversation. For a while, and I’m not sure how long, I slept.

I woke up to the hushed and hurried whispers of the girls as they slid out of view of the road beneath the lip of the truck. They buried their faces into the blankets, shushing each other and dimming the lights from their phones.

Without moving, I listened to the grumbling of gravel come closer. Headlights swept over us and the girls shushed each other again.

“What would we even have done if someone had stopped to check the truck?” Sophia whispered when the lights were gone.

“They wouldn’t have checked,” said Hosanna with an air of insider info.

“Are you kidding?” said Sarah, still reeling from the close-call but beginning to peep her head above the lip of the truck. “We could be dead bodies back here for all they know. I totally would have checked!”

At that moment, the headlights reappeared, this time coming from the road behind us. The girls dove once more and I felt someone’s elbow dig into my leg.

“Sarah,” Hosanna whispered over the gravely approach, “No one is going to check the back of a truck that’s pulled up along a dirt road. Haven’t you ever listened to country songs?”

As realization washed over Sarah, the headlights washed over us before disappearing one last time down the road.

We waited in silence for a moment and then the girls straightened back up to their sitting positions. Sarah was the only one brave enough to allow her head to peek out over the edge of the truck bed (“Someone has to keep a look out!”).

“What was it we were so scared of last time?” asked Hosanna, checking her watch. We had far outdone our last trip’s record. “Remember we were out here for a little while and then we went straight home?”

“Mountain lions,” said Sophia.

“Indecent gentlemen?” I suggested.

“Zombies,” Sarah said. “It was definitely zombies. And guys, if they come, I’m still the only one keeping watch!”

“Forget it, Sarah,” Hosanna said from her nest of blankets in the corner of the trunk. “I’m nice and warm here. I’m not moving.”

“Neither am I,” I muttered from my half-comatose state.

“Well, you are all going to die when they do come.”

“I wouldn’t last the zombie apocalypse very long anyway,” I said sadly.

“We need to stop talking about zombies,” said Sophia. “It’s making me nervous.”

She and I giggled mostly to disguise how certain we actually were that the night might end in bloodshed and I clutched my camera. If the zombies do come, I’m definitely getting it on film.

“Wait,” said Hosanna, sucking in her breath, ears pricking up and eyes flashing. “Do you hear gr-”

Sarah, Sophia and I jumped up – “WHAT?”

“Gravel?” she said again.

We relaxed.

“Am I the only one who thought she said ‘growling’?” asked Sophia. “Like, seriously?”

“Yeah, I did too,” I said.

“Maybe it’s time to head home before we scare ourselves out of ever coming back,” said Hosanna.

We all know that will never happen. The scare is half the fun. I think it’s the scare we’ve been waiting for before heading home again. And when we’re ready for another one, we’ll troop back out.

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The girls pulled the blankets out of the back and stuffed them into the spaces between our seats. I reached for my camera. Might as well get some of these stars. We don’t have many, but gosh darn it, why not? They are ours, after all.

On the most sensitive settings, I was surprised to find, many more stars appear in the sky than we can see with just our eyes. I jiggled around a bit with the ISO and the aperture, getting different results. The girls eventually knocked on the windows and I got inside the truck.

The ride home was quiet. No one complained when I played “Geronimo” twice in a row. These songs that are old news to everyone else are all new to me still.

Sarah and I helped the girls bring our gear back into the house before saying our ‘goodbyes.’ At some point, and for reasons unknown, Hosanna tackled Sofia in another person-enveloping hug.

“Don’t even think about it,” Sarah told me with a smirk.

She loves me.

I’m still adjusting to life back home. I’m still discovering people who’ve changed and it reminds me how much I’ve changed. I suppose that will be true for the rest of life. Our little spot on the side of the road may still be there, but we won’t be the same people we were the last time we visited.

And at some point, that call for adventure or purpose or a good scare will beckon me away from my sisters out onto a path lit only by the knowledge that God made it mine.

But even in this transition from girl to slightly-older girl to whatever-comes-next, animal crackers are still good, zombies are still scary and there’s no one I’d rather star-gaze with than you.