A Good Weekend

It's a good weekend when I get to spend it with these kiddos.

The Summer I Left From One Home, And Came Back To Another

When I got off the plane in Jacksonville, I felt like I was in a movie where the kids go away to camp and their parents move away without telling them. Except for me, it wasn't that they didn't tell me about it, but rather that I conveniently forgot about it all summer long.

I knew somewhere in a tiny part of my brain kept mostly shuttered that when I left my house in Pittsburgh to go to camp in June I was leaving my childhood home for the last time. And somewhere in my grey matter was floating the idea that plane tickets to Florida had  been booked for me for August, but I was thinking of it more like a vacation rather than a place where I would have all the things one has in the place they live.

So I spent eight weeks at the camp I loved, pretending that everything was as it should be. I lived in a cabin with  friends that had been mine for years, making late night mac and cheese in contraband hot pots and reading Judy Blume's Summer Sisters out loud to each other. I had my first kiss, learned how to slalom on water skis, and made a deliciously ugly pillow in the art shack.

And if the occasional thought of my parents setting up our new house in Jacksonville crossed my mind, I shoved it down and smothered it with bug juice and barbecues.

Except camp doesn't last forever, and I had a plane ticket to Florida that I suddenly couldn't ignore anymore.

The land below the descending plane was flat, brown, and foreign. The blacktop of the runway seemed to simmer in the stifling heat that is late summer in the south. The jolt of landing yanked me roughly out of one reality and deposited me into another, creating the fault line between my lives that said to me, "you live here now and not there."

I sat in the back corner of the car on the way home and stared out the window at the unfamiliar scenery and the palm trees rushing by. Along the highway billboards screamed bible verses touting the virtues of Christianity and decrying abortion and I felt like I had entered another world, which I guess I had. So I closed my eyes and didn't open them again until I felt the car pull into the driveway.

When I walked in the door of the house my mind was running on a constant loop, chanting I don't know this place. I felt my breath backing up in my chest and knew I had to do something - anything - or I would run screaming from the house that was now supposed to be home.

There were bags to unpack and my new room to set up, but there was time enough for that. Instead, I dug out a bathing suit that still smelled like camp and pulled it on, searched out a towel, and headed straight outside.

As I dove into the clear, cool waters of the swimming pool that was only steps away from my back door, I had the fleeting thought that maybe Florida wouldn't be so bad after all.

Blue Underwear

"Wear nude underwear. Not white. White will show through your pants and dresses, and no one needs to see that," said Mrs. Tyler as she stood behind the podium at the front of the cavernous auditorium.

At other schools it may have been strange for a science teacher to lecture a room full of students on the color of their underwear, but not at my school. At my high school, this was the assembly everyone waited for. The one where a much-loved teacher lectured seniors on the dress code for graduation. There were no caps and gowns at my southern private school. Instead, there were white dresses and gloves for the girls and white pants for the boys. And nude underwear for everyone, apparently.

I slouched in my seat somewhere in the middle of the room trying to be as invisible as I felt. This assembly didn't apply to me.

I didn't need to know what color underwear to wear to graduation because I wouldn't be going to graduation, not by choice, but by circumstance.

My high school graduation took place on a Saturday morning, and as an orthodox Jewish Shabbat observer - the only one in my high school class of 186 - I wouldn't be able to attend. There was nothing wrong with sitting at the ceremony on Shabbat of course, but since I couldn't drive to the school, be in any pictures, or even carry my diploma from the stage back to my seat, that plan was rife with complications.

Early in my senior year my parents and I approached the school's board of trustees to ask them to consider changing the day of graduation. But this was the south, where tradition was everything and progress moved at a snail's pace, so the board barely even considered our request before telling us no.

They said "this is the way it has always been." And they meant "this is the way it always will be."

And that was that.

When Mrs. Tyler finally said all she could about underwear and called the assembly to a close, the room still buzzed with excitement as everyone discussed graduation, dresses, and the rapidly approaching end of finals. The festivities were a mere two weeks away, and I couldn't help but feel like every day until then would be one more reminder that I was - and always had been - on the outside looking in at this school.

With nowhere to be for the rest of the day, I got up and quietly walked out of the auditorium, straight to my car, every step taking me closer to the day I could leave high school behind and move on to a place where people understood me. Accepted me. Were more like me.

And on graduation day, while the rest of my class sat outside clad in white, I sat in my synagogue with my family, wearing blue underwear.

Just because I could.

If I Was Asked About My Most Embarrassing Moment, This Is The Story I Would Tell

I ran blindly up the stairs, tears of panic and humiliation clouding my vision and my mind playing the same words on repeat.

Have to get away. Faster.

For a second, the voice of my teacher calling my name cut through the refrain, but I kept moving. I didn't look back. Couldn't.

I hated last period English in eighth grade. Actually, I hated all of eighth grade, but last period English was particularly awful.

I only had five minutes to run from my seventh period class to my English classroom down by the lake on the outskirts of campus. Every day I got to class sweaty and out of breath and spent forty-five minutes trying to be invisible in a classroom filled with the popular kids. And when English was over I had another five minutes to get up to the bus that would take me to the high school campus where my mom picked me up.

Every day I was gripped with anxiety about being late for English or, more terrifyingly, missing the bus. No matter that shuttles to the high school left every ten minutes. If I didn't make the 3:50 bus, obviously something catastrophic would happen.

On this particular day, at 3:38, I had to go to the bathroom.

The closest one was up on the main campus, so I couldn't go and come back before the last bell. I had spent the past fifteen minutes wondering if I could hold it until I got home, because I also knew that if I stopped on the way to the bus I would miss the 3:50 for sure.

But I couldn't hold it. I had to go now, even if I missed the bus.

I raised my hand per classroom policy and asked if I could please use the restroom. My teacher said that I could, and since there were only a few minutes of class left, why didn't I just take my things with me.

Feeling like I had won the lottery, I hurriedly gathered up my backpack, turned to leave, and walked straight into the classroom's closed sliding glass door.

After a beat of silence, the entire class - including five football players, three baseball players, two members of the girl's soccer team, an actress and the student council president - burst into wild laughter.

The tears rose faster than I was able to battle them back and, unwilling to be any further embarrassed, I wrenched open the door and fled.

I was halfway up the stairs when my teacher yelled, "Samantha, come back. I'm so mad at them for laughing at you."

But I didn't go back, and her coming after me didn't make it better. It made it worse, and so did the notes of apology that she made the entire class write to me the next day.

I wish she would have just ignored it and pretended it didn't happen, just like I tried to do.

Even if I never quite managed it.

The Restaurant

It was the night before the OJ Simpson verdict was handed down.

I may not remember all the details, but for some strange reason, I remember that one.

The Station Square restaurant where my parents undoubtedly took my sisters and me in order to avoid a major scene when they dropped the bomb was packed. Waiters were bustling around, people were dropping utensils, and at the bar a group of college age guys were cheering at some sporting event or another.

In retrospect I think I should have guessed what they were about to tell us. For about two months, there had been little signs that something was different. That something wasn't quite right.

My dad, who always traveled a great deal for work, had been traveling quite a bit more. A few times, my mom went with him, which she generally didn't do.

But it was the message on the answering machine the month before that really should have done it. It was a Sunday night. We had company for dinner and, as usual, there was talking, laughing, food and people running around everywhere. When the phone rang, no one bothered with it. Most of the people we cared about were right in our house and everyone figured if it was important, they would leave a message.

After the beep, a strong southern accent boomed through the machine.

"Hi y'all, this is Beverly Brandenburger from Jacksonville. I have the information you asked for on that house you were interested in. Give me a call when you get a chance. Bye, now."

Confused, I wondered why my parents would be interested in a house in Jackson-something when we lived in Pittsburgh. Had always lived in Pittsburgh. Would always, as far as I was concerned. I barely even knew there were other places in the world to live. My grandparents were all born in southwestern Pennsylvania, for god's sake. I certainly didn't know anything about any place where someone with an accent like that would live.

I pondered it for a little while, but by the end of the night the call slipped out of my mind, and all was as it should be.

Until the restaurant.

It was unusual for us to go out on a weeknight, but when we were growing up, once in awhile my parents would surprise us with nighttime adventures. A summer evening trip to the amusement park, homemade chicken nuggets and french fries for dinner, and popcorn and a movie on TV long after we should have been asleep were all a part of what was a fun and pretty idyllic childhood. So dinner out on a weeknight, while rare, was not unheard of.

But it wasn't one of those fun and exciting childhood nights. Even at age twelve, I knew it almost as soon as we sat down at the table. The waitress had just delivered our drinks when my mom took my hand, and my dad started to talk.

"Girls, we're moving to Florida."

*The move was for business reasons, and after thirteen years in Jacksonville, almost four years ago my parents moved back to Pittsburgh and are now happily ensconced in the city of all of our childhoods. And all is as it should be in the Brinn family.

This is Winter

My Car. This Morning.

It was nine degrees outside when I left for work this morning. That's pretty cold. So cold, in fact, that my car never warmed up enough to use the heater for the entirety of my ten minute drive to the train station. So cold that after walking without gloves so that I could finish reading an American Idol recap on my phone during the half a block between where I park my car and the train platform I was pretty sure my fingertips had just frozen solid and cracked off. So cold that my phone, after being outside for just a couple of minutes, was doing that weird sluggish thing smart phones do in the cold, making the reading of the aforementioned American Idol recap awfully difficult.

It's brutally cold.

But you know what? It's also winter. January in New York. This is what's supposed to happen in January in New York. We haven't felt winter like this in the past few years due to scary global warming, but let us not forget that while every meteorologist in the northeast is talking about this week-long cold spell like it has never happened before, forty-five and fifty degree days in January is just not normal.

Winter has always been my favorite time of year. Maybe it's because I grew up in Pittsburgh, which is basically a frozen, snowy tundra from Thanksgiving through May. Or maybe it's because I spent my high school years in Florida where there is no winter. Or maybe it's because I spent college in Boston, where it was so cold that I now have a shelf of sweaters in my closet I call my "Boston Sweaters," because they are too heavy and hot to wear anywhere else (except maybe this week, in New York).

Most of my best childhood memories are winter memories. Playing "snow olympics" outside with my friends. Hot chocolate and cookies on snow days. Walking to the local movie theater when the snow was too high to drive. Ice skating on the outdoor rink until I couldn't feel my fingers or toes.

And my adult memories too. Sledding down a massive hill on my college campus on trays we stole from the cafeteria. Running double digits for the first time in a snow-covered Central Park. Walking eight blocks in a raging blizzard when we decided we just had to eat at the famed Shake Shack that very night, and then deciding to walk some more to a diner for dessert. Curling up in front of the fire in our new living room as frigid wind howls outside.

No, nothing beats the winter.

But for anyone who is counting the minutes until winter moves on and spring takes its place, head on over to Rockefeller Center ice skating rink, where there is an oasis waiting, just for you.

Crazy-Town

I saw the text as I left my office for the day.

"What time are you coming over?"

It was a totally normal question for a Thursday night. Thursday night was our stay-in date night. It was the night that I went over, we watched The Office, and enjoyed being together at the end of the long week. Thursday nights were my favorite nights. But that Thursday night he may as well have asked me to don a French maid uniform and clean his apartment, such was the depth of my annoyance.

It wasn't his fault, I did this to myself. He was amazing, and merely an innocent bystander to my mania. I told myself I wasn't going to be one of those girls, and for a long time I avoided it, but as February turned into March, I started growing fangs.

We had a trip planned at the beginning of April to my parents' house in Florida to be with my entire family for two weeks. It was the last time that we were all going to be together in that house before my parents moved back to Pittsburgh, and it was going to be an epic celebration. And I just knew he would propose before that, so we could all celebrate together. But I didn't know when. And I knew that he had the ring. But I didn't know where. And as our departure date drew closer, I took a downward spiral into crazy-town.

Every time he did something a bit out of the ordinary, my heart rate kicked up. I planned and calculated and wondered. Every day I woke up and thought "today is the day."

I knew that my hyper-awareness was exceedingly unattractive and completely unlike me, but I couldn't seem to shut it down.

So when he asked when I would be over that Thursday night, I told him I had a few things to do, and I would be over later.

I met my sister for a dinner that lasted longer than I intended. And I stopped at the grocery store. And when I was in my kitchen unloading my bags I decided to whip up the brownies I promised I would bring to a dinner I was going to the following night.

No rush, I thought.

It was after nine by the time I headed over to his apartment, clad in my oldest sweatpants, battered Uggs, and a sweatshirt that had certainly seen better days. As I walked into the lobby of his building, my phone rang. It was him. He said that he was running late and wasn't home yet, which infuriated me, mostly because my decision to passive-aggressively show up late for our regularly scheduled Thursday night activities was thwarted. Then he said that he needed to do some internet research that night on a potential business partner, but he didn't have time so since I was there anyway, could I please do it?

I protested. The research sounded pretty unnecessary, but he was insistent.

"Fine," I said, and hung up.

Forty-five minutes later he walked in. He picked up another computer and told me he would help me out so that we could finish the research quickly and get on with our night. A few minutes of silence passed before he told me he had found something he wanted me to take a look at and asked me to sign on to G-Chat so he could send me the link.

With an unnecessarily loud sigh of frustration, I signed on to G-Chat, and less then a second later the link popped up on my screen.

http://www.samwillyoumarryme.com/.

I clicked yes.

Engagement Night.

First Day

I stood, fixed in place, blood roaring in my ears, when I realized what I had done.

I thought how this was not a very good way to make a first impression.

It was my first day of eighth grade. For most adolescent girls, the first day of eighth grade is unremarkable. A return to the monotony of middle school. To the same place and faces left behind the previous May. One more year of familiarity before the grand landscape of high school loomed. Not so for me. Two months before my first day, my family left behind the comfort of our familiar life in Western Pennsylvania, and drove south towards our new home in Jacksonville, Florida.

So for me, eighth grade was the beginning of a brand new chapter.

I woke up early the morning of my first day, my mind racing with barely concealed panic as I thought about all the things that could go wrong. My uniform skirt was too long. I had the wrong shoes. I was going to miss the bus. I had never taken a bus to school before. I didn't know how to take a bus. Who would I sit with at lunch?

But more than anything, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find my classes. See, this wasn't just a school. This was a campus. It wasn't enough to just learn one building. I had to learn six different buildings. Seven if I took art, so I decided to never take art. All day long, my classes would zig-zag across campus, and I was expected to remember where I needed to be and when. I copied my schedule into the front cover of all of my notebooks, but my habitual organizational skills didn't have their usual calming effect. I was going to get lost. I just knew it.

But with no choice in the matter, I went to school and forged ahead with my day.

Maybe orientation did the trick, or my memory was better than I thought, but my nightmare scenario never came to fruition. I managed to find my locker, and all six of my classrooms. I zig-zagged with the best of them, and was on time all day.

I didn't have anyone to sit with at lunch, but I thought that there would be other days for worrying about that. Because today, I was worried about getting lost. Not existentially lost - there would be time enough for that too - but rather actually physically lost. And I didn't.

When the bell rang signaling that it was time to switch for the last period of the day, I gathered my books and headed towards the gym for eighth period PE, ready to give myself a big pat on the back for my remarkable navigation skills. But as I made my way there, I realized I was expected to change into the regulation gym uniform, and I didn't know where the locker rooms were.

The orientation tour had included the gym, obviously, but the tour guide never mentioned where to change.

No reason to panic, I thought. There were lots of people headed in my general direction. I assumed they had PE too, and walked with the crowd towards a door around the side of the gigantic gym. I breathed a sigh of relief as I followed everyone into what was most certainly the locker room, and glanced down at my watch to make sure I was still on time.

"What are you doing in here?"

I heard the shocked voice as I stepped over the threshold.

I looked up and found that I was, indeed, standing in the locker room.

The boy's locker room.

Home

Every time I come through the tunnel, this view grabs me by the throat. It leaves me momentarily speechless as I once again absorb the gritty wonder of this skyline. 

This is the vista that welcomes me home.

I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A third generation southwestern-Pennsylvanian, it barely ever occurred to me that there were other places on the planet to live. This was my place. I spent my childhood racing around its streets, first holding the hands of my parents, and then accompanied by forever friends as I got older.

Its hills and rivers and soaring trees became a part of me. Its rich history my own. 

My dad taught me Steeler football, and twelve months a year I bleed black and gold.

When I was in high school we moved away from Pittsburgh for awhile, but it was still my home, and I came back often. I would fly into the Pittsburgh airport, and was met by family for the unremarkable drive into the city. The route took us through some suburbs, and strip malls, and industrial complexes, and I drove it so many times I barely noticed anymore. 

But then. Then we went through the Fort Pitt Tunnel, and when we came out the other side, the world opened up into that view. And I was home again.

Each and every time I go back to Pittsburgh - far more often since my parents moved back three years ago - I find myself steeped in familiarity. I revel in walking the streets of my childhood, and see myself throughout the years on each and every corner of the city.

I have lived four different places since we moved away from Pittsburgh. I have soaked in the balmy nights of Jacksonville, Florida, lived shoulder to shoulder with American history in Boston, experienced the frenetic energy of Manhattan, and have now settled into the quiet grace of Westchester County. And I have taken something important from each and every one of those places. 

But there is, and forever will be, only one place to which I am inextricably linked. Only one place that has made an indelible mark on my soul.

It may not be where I live right now.

But it is still home.

From the backyard of my parent's new house, I can see my old house.
Talk about coming full circle.

The Writing on the Wall

My parents recently moved to a new house, and since the move, all the stuff from my old room has been packed in boxes in my room in their new house. My mom has been after me to unpack the boxes and take some of the stuff home with me, but until recently, I didn't have anywhere to put anything, so I just left it in the boxes. But now that I have a new house with plenty of room, last night I decided to start going through the boxes to figure out what I want to take back with me after Thanksgiving.

I packed up lots of books and some favorite pictures and frames, and then I came across a box just marked "closet shelves." And when I opened the box, I found those six journals in the picture up there. I don't really remember being a serious journal keeper, so I expected the pages to be mostly blank. Imagine my surprise when, one by one, I opened each journal to find them all entirely filled with writing. Turns out, I was a bit of a journaler. From sixth grade through the end of my sophomore year in college, my entire life is documented in my own words.

Color me amazed.

I guess it's no accident that I have taken to blogging with such a fierce determination. Because really, I have been doing it in some form, albeit less public, for almost twenty years.

So, of course, I will be taking these six books back with me to New York to keep in my new house. And although I won't display them on my bookshelves like I will my prized book collection, and although I probably won't go back and read them (because honestly, who wants to read words written by their high school selves?), I will know that they are there, existing as a symbol. The writing on the wall if you will. A sign that I am, finally, becoming what I was always meant to be.

A writer.

Twister

The sky was already darkening as my mom left to take my youngest sister to her violin lesson across town.

My dad was at work, and my middle sister and I were home. Alone.

It was our first year living in Jacksonville, Florida, and we had started to get used to some of the stranger quirks of life in the deep south. The slow pace. The accents. The endless strip malls. The wide open spaces.

But we couldn't get used to the storms.

Every summer afternoon around four o'clock the clouds started to gather, and the sky darkened. The wind kicked up, and the air grew heavy with ominous humidity. Lightning sizzled across the darkened sky, and thunder rumbled in the distance. It moved closer and closer until it was right on top of us.

Then came the rain.

On this particular summer day, as the elements did their daily dance, the garage door ground to a close, and the taillights of my mom's car disappeared down the driveway. As jagged bolts of lightning slashed across the sky, my stomach knotted in a vicious case of separation anxiety. I was fourteen, but I hated being home alone in the storms.

I sat on the couch and tried to focus on the TV. Four half-hour shows until my mom came home. Thirty seconds later I was up again, watching the gathering storm. I went up to my room and opened a book, but only managed a single page before I was back at the downstairs windows.

This storm seemed worse than usual.

I knew that standing so close to the windows was a bad idea. I had been in the south long enough to hear violent stories of trees and patio furniture flying through the glass. But I couldn't step away.

As the rain beat down on the house, my sister joined me at the window in time to watch half a tree crash down across our backyard. My sister was never afraid of anything, but at that moment her eyes were wide, and her face a deathly pale, mirroring my own, I was sure. We knew we should get away from the windows, but somehow, hearing the storm without seeing it was the scariest prospect of all. So my sister and I watched, as the battle raged outside.

And then it happened.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the funnel cloud make its way across my backyard. We watched, frozen in place, as the tornado tore through the grass, and brought down the other half of the tree. Smaller branches cracked against the windows, and our patio furniture blew around until it somehow all ended up in the pool. The tornado lifted up our heavy metal outdoor table with the glass top, and when the table fell back to the ground, the glass remained suspended in mid-air, as if by magic, until it, too, crashed to the ground in a million tiny pieces that mixed with the ferocious rain still beating down on the pool deck.

I thought frantically that we should make a run for the laundry room, the only room in the house without any windows. But before we could move, the storm was over, as quickly as it began. Relief coursed through my veins as the rain stopped and the sky lightened once again.

I thought maybe I imagined the funnel cloud, until I saw pictures on the news of the damage it caused to the rest of my neighborhood.

But our house wasn't touched.

We were safe.

Until the next storm blew through.

Obviously my mind these past couple of weeks has been on my move to the south when I was 14. So honored to share these thoughts with all the amazing folks at Yeah Write, the coolest blogging and writing community around. Go check them out. You won't be sorry.