We had my parents over for dinner tonight. I’m not sure when we realize our parents are people with lives of their own—regardless or the role they play in ours—and weren’t even remotely old when we first met them (though I suppose to a newborn, everybody seems ancient), but I clearly recall the first time I realized I was no longer little.
I was not the kid who dreamt of growing up. I liked being a kid. I liked being home. I remember feeling devastated when I still had four months left of being fourteen, and, with a shock, realized that I would be sixteen “next year.” I froze on that thought for a while, staring at the ceiling, wondering how I could have so quickly arrived at an age that seemed so storied in my mind and among my friends that it was tantamount to Narnia and Cinderella’s castle—places that didn’t really exist.
I had always thought I’d have long blond curly hair and a boyfriend by the time I was sixteen. My hair is straight, so short of getting a perm, I am not sure what kind of magic I anticipated coming over me at sixteen. I’d always assumed sixteen was so old that of course I’d have a boyfriend. But by the time sixteen became a looming reality, I realized it was still young—way too young to have a boyfriend. And so I didn’t, not until I was in college, anyway, when I got into a long distance relationship with a boy named John. He was a blue eyed musician with spiky brown hair and, after we’d been dating for a while, he called me one night to tell me he missed me. “You don’t understand, I miss you so much, I’d drive all night just to see you in the morning.”
And that’s what he did. He called me around five am, having driven from Rochester, about five hours away. “I’m outside, Jess,” he said, “I did it. I drove all night to see you.” I jumped out of bed, brushed my teeth, and went outside. He was there, stayed less than thirty minutes, and had to drive back home just as the dawn was streaking the sky with pink in order to work later in the day. It was nuts and sweet and romantic and I never told my family because it felt like a secret I wanted to keep. It also seemed a little improper and I was not used to being anything but proper. But now whenever I hear Bright Eyes’ song ‘First Day of My Life,’ and this lyric, specifically—
Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning?
I nod inwardly, because I do. I remember.
The last time John visited, he started his drive back home in a huge storm. He only made it a few miles down the road before he called because his car had been flooded. I drove to pick him up and found him sitting on top of his inundated car, shoes in hand and jeans rolled up. He looked so sad and pitiful, and I couldn’t help but feel somewhat responsible for the storm and his car. As a solid peacemaker, I apologized for everything. People bumping into me, everything I did and didn’t do—and sure, acts of God like weather systems that total cars, why not.
It was the kiss of death for us and I never saw him in person again. We had lots of conversations, but they grew less excited, less eager, greater lapses between them. When I finally broke up with him—something that was so obviously coming, it was like removing a cobweb from a corner that hadn’t actually housed a spider in months—he just said, “Have a nice life,” with hardly any emotion at all. I was like, ‘That’s it?” And he explained that since we were breaking up, there was nothing else to say.
A couple months later, he wrote me an email, asking how I’m doing. Ours was a relationship that had started mostly through emails exchanged over and over again, each received with so much joy, every word devoured quickly, then slowly read again—as many times as needed—until a brand new email from him popped up. In those first (and many) emails, I wrote holding nothing back. I threw all my whimsy and imagination at him. Every love story I’d ever read came out in those letters to him. I always knew I loved stories, knew I loved journaling, but this is when I discovered I love an audience for my words—all the better when he’s young and cute and showing evidence of a crush on me.
But this was different. He’d told me to have a nice life, so now I took all my personality and, holding it in like you hold your breath when you dive, I wrote him back a nice email. Factual. Antiseptic, really. Answered a few questions. It was similar to what they teach fifth graders when it’s their turn to learn how to write a proper letter. Puncuation was perfect. A greeting, two paragraphs, a signature. The kind of letter you could send to a grandmother you barely know. She wouldn’t know you any better for reading it, but she also wouldn’t find anything glaring or wrong.
John wrote back and asked why I was so different. “I’ve always loved reading your emails,” he told me, “You’re funny and quirky and have a lot to say, but that email doesn’t sound like you and I wonder where you’ve gone.”
I didn’t understand how he didn’t understand. “Have a nice life.” He set the tone, set it with a cliche, of all terrible things. I was following suit, didn’t he get it? This is the kind of email that people who are busy having the nice life they’ve been told to have write.
There was another man a lot later—this was after I divorced, when I was once again trying to “have a nice life” after a break up, to put it very mildly. I was performing outside of Philly and a friend in the cast set me up on a blind date with his friend. This friend was getting his masters in business at an Ivy League school, but I didn’t hold that against him. He was also tall and handsome, so as you can imagine, elicited a lot of pity from people, and I was no exception. I felt so sorry for Amir, that I went out with him again. He was kind and funny and good at flirting and I felt like my insides were floating when I was next to him. We played pool at a bar and I felt like I was playing a role. When does the girl who meets up with a blind date, has a pool stick in her hand, fills the air all around her with witty conversation go home, change out of her costume, remember herself? The third date, he told me he wasn’t wanting anything serious, he was just having fun with as many women as he can. And now, fun is a word that drastically changes meaning from childhood to adulthood. He didn’t mean board games or Mario Kart and his words were a spotlight; I suddenly knew how differently we see the world.
“That doesn’t sound like fun to me,” I explained quietly. “I think people can be different and they can also be too different. We are probably that.” After I left, we stopped talking; we both understood it was over. I wasn’t hurt. No harm, no foul, as they say. I was just glad to know enough of the truth to make an informed decision. I went home, changed out of my costume, remembered myself.
Many months later he texted, asked for my address in New York City. “I want to send you something,” he explained. A few days later, I opened a beautifully bound and illustrated children’s book. There was a note enclosed from him:
The timing wasn’t right, but I want you to know I think about our paths crossing. There’s something about you. You are kind, whimsical, innocent—one of a kind. Please don’t change. The way you see the world is beautiful. This book is one of my favorites and something about it reminds me of you, so I thought you should have it. —A
I smiled. The note was the opposite of a cliche, but it was still, in a way, another way of saying “have a nice life.” But a genuine way. I felt seen. I texted him, thanked him for thinking of me, told him the book is lovely, the note beautiful. And that was that. We never talked again, but sometimes people come in and out of your life three dates later and the whole thing leaves a pleasant something mingling with your bones and blood and veins and it’s not for nothing that you kept your heart open after all.
I was trying to tell you the first time I realized I was no longer little. I had woken my pop up in the middle of the night and told him I didn’t feel well. Usually, a parent gets up and walks downstairs with me into the kitchen. They take my temperature and dole out whatever medicine makes me feel better (and lets them get back to sleep, no doubt). But for the first time, my pop simply told me how much medicine to give myself. “The measuring cup is right next to the medicine, Jess,” he said, “Red bottle.” And then he went back to sleep and I was left to reckon with having seemingly grown up in the space of one middle of the night waking as I stumbled into a dark kitchen and felt along the wall for the light. It was strange and sad, a tiny “have a nice life”—no, more like, “have a nice night” sort of vibe.
As a parent, I now clearly understand that kids get older, they start to be able to do things for themselves. We need to sleep. Plus if you aren’t an entirely odd child like I was, who seemed extraordinarily aware of my own growing up —as if I was my own grandmother, constantly waxing poetic that I was no longer a baby (really. I cried when I got my first period. I cried when I got married and moved out. I enjoyed my childhood so much that I didn’t see the need to ever stop it, I think, bless my heart)—well, then, you might enjoy pouring your own medicine in the middle of the night like some kind of ninja nurse. You might even feel empowered and trusted. You might love being bigger. You might actually decide that growing up, moving on—all the ascending things we are busy doing when we’re not dead—actually make up a pretty nice life. But like, for real, no cliche about it. A rich, deep, involved, whole-hearted life.
I poured my own medicine that night and went to bed feeling like I was disappointingly no longer a little kid (I think I was 8 or 9); like I was suddenly unfamiliar even to myself. When do these milestones stop. When have I finally arrived and can stop needing to get used to growth, or rather the uncomfortable space between something being new and that same something finally feeling normal?
I think the answer is never. It never happens. As long as we are here, we both have to and get to keep growing. We keep reaching milestones. This means becoming a beginner over and over again. This means experiencing the discomfort of being in an unfamiliar space. Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said, “Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.” Best selling author Barbara Sher says, “If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.” TJ and I were having dinner with leadership consultant, author, and executive coach Dr. Melodye Hilton, and while she was talking about continuing her education, she said something that has stayed with me: “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”
All of the most uncomfortable spaces in my life have been fruitful. Every single one of them. The milestones that felt so awkward and hard while growing up keep coming. Parenthood, all of the jobs I’ve held so far in my career, leading a team of volunteers, being a wife—in all of these things I’ve been a beginner and continue to be a beginner as I catch moments that reveal just how much further I have to grow. I am trying to learn to embrace it. I am trying to remember the discomfort, the pressure, the unfamiliarity is not just to make me feel bad—it’s actually to make me grow.
Just tonight, I told TJ about a team of volunteers I am leading and how hard one person in particular is being. “You get to grow,” he said. “It’s a new workout, you’re earning new muscles with this situation.” I wanted to throw the spatula I was using while making dinner at him. I just wanted him to pull up to my pity party with a hat and a noisemaker and agree that life is too hard and this is not fair and all the stuff that makes my ego feel comfy but doesn’t actually equip me to go back and face life and get my legs a little more ready for the mountain in front of me.
With this person who is being difficult, I am a beginner. Let me listen a lot. Let me act slowly, let me consider their heart, their feelings, their precious and fleeting life and let me do no harm, and, by the grace of God, let me possibly even make their burden a little lighter. And let me consider there may be a way forward that I cannot yet see.
Now to end on an entirely different note. One that has a lot to do with the texture of green beans and how very comfortable my dad is with me.
My parents were sitting around the dinner table with us and I have to say, I have learned a thing or two about cooking. I make a good red sauce, delicious bread, green bean almondine that will make you want another helping. My pop heaped the beans onto his plate and I heard him say to himself, “Oh, these look good!” We were maybe three minutes into the meal, my mom and TJ in conversation, when my pop interrupts with acute urgency in his voice.
“Jessica, did you taste the green beans?! Did you TASTE them?!” he said, making me wonder if I had accidentally poured arsenic onto them instead of salt.
“I did…” I answered slowly, methodically, confusedly.
“Not everyone likes soggy string beans,” my mom said.
“These are crisp!” My pop replied, sounding for all the world like crisp is synonymous with deadly.
I started to laugh. “I like a little texture in green beans—I didn’t make then soggy on purpose. You know they’re even edible entirely raw, right?”
My pop couldn’t believe that I—that anyone—would do something so egregious as making beans not soggy on purpose, but to his credit, he didn’t say another word about them. I did notice that he also didn’t dare touch another one. Not only did my pop not like my cooking, he stopped the meal, sure that the dish I made was at best a mistake, and at worst possibly even dangerous.
And I laughed.
It was no big deal.
Next time he comes over, I’ll sauté them longer.
Or maybe I’ll scatter them on his plate raw. Maybe I’ll tell him he can cook them to the desired texture himself, the pan that he can also use himself is on the stove. Sort of like the time the medicine bottle with the measuring cup right next to it was something that I could use myself.
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