Dear Orlando, A Letter to my Hometown

Dear Orlando,

I would be amiss not to reach out to you, on one of your darkest days.  I would be amiss to go about my day without putting down these thoughts gnawing at my heart.  Because I always knew you to be kind and curious and warm, a city that welcomes people from all over the world every day.  You did not deserve this. Nobody deserves this.

We see your tears and we weep with you.  One thing I learned from these past few days is that we all grieve, we all reel and cry out in a common language.  We all feel our blood go cold when we hear the gun shots played over again on the news, shots that echo so much farther than a dark night club on a Saturday night.  And the world is grieving with you.  We feel your pain, our hearts break for you and for those beautiful, precious souls that you lost, that we all lost.  Today we are all Floridians, we are all Americans, we are all members of the LGBT community.  We will stand with you against this act of terror.

I can't even wrap my mind around what could possibly take a person to such a dark and deeply inhuman place, that he could utterly obliterate so much innocence. In the course of a few hours, he single handedly wrote one of the darkest chapters in your history, in our history. He used the language of violence, of destruction of terror.  Pages soaked in blood, pages soaked in hate.

It's a story that moves us to agony, to try to understand an incomprehensible world where so much hatred could exist in one person.

But his part of the story is over.  And he doesn't get to write the ending, we do. 

To all the brave law enforcement and medical professionals who answered the call, who treated and served the victims, who were heroes that night, you are writing the ending.

To all those of you who stood in line for hours at the blood banks the day after the attack and those of you who continue to give of yourselves in these coming days and weeks, you are writing the ending.

To all those of your who are sharing your stories and your memories of those that were lost, you are writing the ending.

To the mental health professionals that worked to make services available to victims and families the day of the attack and those of you who will be serving victims and families in the months to come, you are writing the ending.

Because in this world, we can choose hate or we can choose Love.  When we reach out to our neighbors with open arms and say, yesterday we were different, but today we are the same, we choose Love. When we are a little kinder than we need to be, we choose Love.  When we write a letter to our Congressman to affect change, we choose Love.  When we try to learn about someone who is different than us, we choose Love.  When we seek first to understand, rather than to be understood, we choose Love.  When we forgive our neighbors and learn to forgive ourselves, we choose Love.

Perhaps it's naive, but I have to believe, at the end of all of this, that Love is stronger than we think. That Love is down but not out and that it will rise again twice as strong.  I have to believe that Love may lose a battle, but not the war.  That although we cannot re-write the past, we can shape the future.  

I have to believe that in the end, Love wins.

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Information on how you can help (even from far away) can be found here.

My friend and hero Bridget, a fellow Washingtonian-Orlandonian, wrote a super thoughtful and thought-provoking blog post, which you can read here.

How to Get What You Want

When I was 12, I wanted to be popular.  Gaggles of friends and having my name on everyone's lips, for whatever reason, is something that I thought appealed to me, even though I was shy and more acquainted with books than reality.  I don't know why the idea of prestige has such a seductive power at any age, that even as a bookish child, I knew what Oscar Wilde meant when he wrote that the only thing worse than being talked about was "not being talked about."  But in the years since then, I have learned that in this life you get to choose whether you are going to love people deep or only wide.  You choose whether you are going to love them even after seeing the parts that are less shiny and polished, the parts that are more in need of forgiveness.  And you choose whether you are going to let them love you into those dark crevices of your own self.  In the end, I chose friendship.  Or rather, it chose me.  Thank goodness that it did.

When I was 15, I wanted to be beautiful.  I spent lazy hours thumbing through magazines full of re-touched bodies that didn't look anything like mine.  Grappling with that toxic notion, in a mind not even fully formed, that to be beautiful by this impossible standard was to be happy, was to be worth something in this world.  Every girl I have ever met has had this experience in one form or another, had some voice, often many voices, telling her that she is not thin enough or feminine enough or pretty enough.  But where are the voices telling us that this belief, perpetuated implicitly, ubiquitously and inescapably in every form of media, is a lie of the worst kind?  Those voices are fewer and difficult to make out above the din.  I would continue to carry those magazine-page ideals with me until, years later, I would have a sort of revelation. Strolling through a Tuscan villa, I was shocked to recognize myself in a 16th century fresco.  She represented a different ideal from a different moment in human history.  The resemblance was uncanny, all curves and softness right up to her luscious chocolate curls.  How lucky she was, I thought, to be living in a an age where she was considered beautiful.  How lucky I am, I thought, to be living in an age with Feminism and antibiotics.

When I was 18, I wanted to be smart.  I sought answers to all the questions, determined that, as a newly-initiated adult, nothing could stand between me and the universe's intimate secrets.  With that universal hubris of youth, I was certain that the answers to the world's problems and the questions of our time, though they eluded so many other great minds, were somehow easily within my own reach. But I discovered quickly and definitively that the more I learned, the less I could know for sure.  I learned that answers are rarely satisfying if they don't lead immediately to more questions.  I learned that darkness and light rarely exist without being infernally tangled together.  And I came to understand that eternal scene of Eve in the garden, tasting the fruits of Knowledge for the first time.  How every taste after the first one would be both bitter and sweet.  And yet, it never made me want to stop learning, to stop doubting and prodding and questioning.  Ultimately, the pursuit of Knowledge was not made any less worthwhile by the unlikeliness of ever truly attaining it.

When I was 21, I wanted to be loved.  I was chasing after a feeling that I had read about in books and seen in movies, seeking to play a part that had been ingrained in me since childhood, all flushed cheeks and beating heart and whispered confidences.  But I found love to be most often unrequited and found myself left fraught with insecurities as a memento of everything I was not.  But I learned to grow out of those supposed inadequacies, or rather, I grew into them.  I forgave myself for being deeply flawed and for being deeply human (perhaps the same thing).  More than anything, I learned to love myself.

When I was 23, I wanted more than anything to belong to a place and for that place to belong to me.  Speaking foreign words in a foreign city everyday made me feel alive and lonely and full and empty all at the same time.  I experienced the richness and the joy and the confusion and the sadness of a perpetual identity crisis, of being two things at once, of being everything, of being nothing, of being always caught in the middle.  I left little pieces of myself everywhere in Florence, in gardens and in vineyards and in restaurants and on rooftops and mostly in the hearts of the beautiful people I met there. Perhaps that's the price of loving a place so dearly, to be left fractured, to never be completely at home anywhere again.  Honestly, I wouldn't have it another way.

So where does that leave me now at 25?  I guess what I'm searching for now more than anything is to feel a part of something bigger than myself.  To have a mission and to build something that will still be here after I'm gone.  Perhaps, in its own way, that's what I have been searching for all along.  Perhaps that's what we're all searching for: belonging and purpose.  If my past experience is any indication, the future will continue unfolding with little concern for my plans or desires.  I'm sure that a few long-sought paths will probably lead to dead ends, but equally sure that beauty will reveal itself in unexpected places along the way.

In Loving Memory of Neil Prince

“When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.  But when I got older, I decided that it was enough to just be the best man I can be.”

-Neil Prince

My Grandpa was a good man. One of the best men I ever knew. I suppose a lot of people say that about their grandpas, that he was a great man who loved his family.  But that doesn’t take away from the facts, really.

He was incredibly smart too -- he attended the Naval Academy, and was an engineer and a professor of math. More impressively, he helped my sister and me with our math homework after school when we were in elementary school. It’s one thing to be good at math. It’s another thing to be able to teach a third grader to be good at math. No amount of intellect brings the kind of patience or good humor that requires. Yet that’s the sort of man he was. He was a good man.

In one of those cruel tricks of nature, one of the worst things happened to him that could happen to any engineer or mathematician or human being. We watched his mind fall away in little pieces over the course of several years. Alzheimer’s is a heartless disease that robbed him of many things -- ultimately robbed him of much of his very self. It took and took and took until there was almost nothing left. The one thing it could not rob him of completely was his good humor. Even in the last months, he would crack a smile or make a funny face to make you laugh. I want to believe that this was somehow innate, so essential to him that even such a ruthless thief could not take it away. He was such a good man.

After he passed away, I sifted through pictures for hours trying to find a few snapshots to capture such a full life. It’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words, but even a hundred pictures were not enough. Needing a break, I started to write down some words, words that I had always associated with him. The things he used to say.

“Once I thought I was wrong, but it turned out I was mistaken.”

“I see, said that blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw.”

“Quit dinkin’ around!”

“Oh, fart!!”

“I have a paragoric!”

“What the hell?!”

I was struck by the life that those words previously only spoken took on when they were committed to paper, letters danced and rippled on the page in cadence with the sound of his voice.  They are little pieces of an infinitely good life. Little pieces of an infinitely good man.

One of the paradoxes I love about the words and about him is that they are equal parts faithful and delightfully irreverent. He always caught a laugh from me when he pretended to snore during grace before a meal.  Yet I never knew him to miss Sunday Mass. It’s funny how from the mouth of a good man, even the so-called bad words are deemed acceptable. How they still carry bits of life in them even when everything else is gone.

Such is the power of good words.

Such is the power of a good man.

Donations can be made to the Alzheimers Association of Central and North Florida here.

 

Let It Snow

Don't get the wrong idea here.  I am a Floridian with a plastic pink flamingo soul.  I am not a lover of snow or a fan of the cold or a "winter person."  I will choose sandals over boots any day.  But after staying in my house for two days and watching it fall, I have to admit that I have developed a tentative, grudging admiration for that white stuff.

Two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, one of the most basic formulas in the universe.  And somehow it has knocked out this hard-working city for at least one more work day and turned everything on its head.  It's living proof that there is, in fact, great power to be found in simplicity, that the small things really can be the big things.  Did I mention that no two snow flakes are exactly the same?

 Snow is amazing because it becomes everything.  The snow on my rooftop looked like bolts of fabric, the snow I shoveled fell like powdered sugar.  I saw pieces of snow like rocks and mashed potatoes and glitter.  It tasted like cotton candy, but colder and more nefarious.

As the snow becomes everything, everything becomes snow: asphalt and metal and branches and streets.  There is an air of whimsy to everything because nothing has a practical use buried under 2 feet of snow.  Cars and trees and signs and rooftops: it is as if all these things exist merely for the sake of holding up the snow in different shapes.  We are all familiar with the silouhette of the snow-man, but what about snow-cars and snow-benches and snow-bushes?  It consumes everything. 

Snow storms are one of the ways that Nature reminds us who is really in control here.  I watched the snow fall for around 36 hours and it did not stop, not for a minute.  The words that come to mind are unrelenting, unforgiving.  The snowfall turned my back yard into Everest, it is powerful enough to bury everything, it stops for nothing.  And yet for us humans, in our wonderfully human way, it is the stuff of sentiment and holiday cards and pure delight.  We are not the only ones.

But what I admire most is how wild and inconvenient and messy it is.  It covers everything and fills the in-between spaces we take for granted.  It blocks roads and closes offices and does not bend to anyone's political will.  And yet the newly fallen snow is a universal symbol for purity.  There are these enchanting moments when it is pristine and perfect.  Stunning and beautiful and awe-inspiring.  

 Life is that way too, if you're paying attention.  Difficult because it is so far beyond our control, but at moments wonderful beyond our wildest dreams for the same reason.  

Stunning and beautiful and awe-inspiring. 

Let it snow.

  

A Conversation with Rumi

"This being human is a guesthouse.

Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meanness, 

some momentary awareness 

Comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all.

 Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house 

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

 He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent as a guide from beyond." 

-Rumi (b.1207-d.1273)

I met Rumi a few weeks ago in a peaceful place.  I was sprawled out on a bench by the water seeking comfort in verses.  At moments, I struggled to hear his words.  After all, even a shout hurled across centuries sometimes comes through as a whisper.  But at other moments, his voice rang crystal clear, advice on living well that holds true after nearly a millenium.  

And I whispered questions to him because I want to know how he got to be so wise.  But it seems that this sort of communication works in only one direction--forward.  I slip a quick thank you back into the centuries anyway, just in case Rumi is listening for it.

And I contemplate the small pieces of work I've done in this life and I wonder what I will someday leave behind--or rather, what I will leave in front of me.  Because I want what I suppose every writer wants: words that echo through centuries, words that hang on lips and tongues and at the tips of pens for generations to come.  

And though everything else might change--the place, the language and the names, the technology and the way we communicate, there is still so much truth and solace to be found in the written word.  Though our tragedies will become jokes and our names will be forgotten, may our words live on forever and may you know that you are not alone when the shame and malice come to call you on you, as they inevitably will.  I have been there and so has Rumi.  

If you listen carefully, we'll tell you all about it.

2015: A Year in Review

"All that is gold does not glitter.

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost."

-J.R.R. Tolkien

This past year I lived in 4 different cities on 2 continents: Florence, Prato, Orlando, Washington DC.  The question "where are you from?" has become more complicated than ever.  But I am taking a moment to reflect on this because it's a unique situation--it's worth reflecting on because I probably won't ever again be able to say that I called so many places home in such a short period of time.  It's certainly a privilege, mostly because of all the beautiful and wonderful humans that I've had the opportunity to meet and to love.  And I want to be clear that I would not change anything about the past year, even if I could spare myself the uncertainty and the frustration and some of the tears. Because the funny thing about the uncertainty and frustration and tears is that they teach you a lot more than easy routines, natural talent and instant success

That said, all the moving and changing and shaking up is exhausting.  My suitcases were my only point of continuity, the only things that came with me on every step of the journey.  I always thought of commitments as things that hold you in one place and therefore, as things that are inherently bad. But in the course of this past year, I found myself longing to stay in one place long enough to put down some kind roots, roots not so easily reached by the frost.  This is something that "older and wiser" people in my life had warned me would happen and I laughed at them up until the moment when I realized that it was true.  Everyone is on their own journey, but for me, this is a part of getting older, of growing up.  And I hope that 2016 will be a year of only one city, at least for me, at least for the purposes of living, at least for now.

"The bottom line is that we need each other.  And not just this civilized, proper, convenient kind of need.  Not one of us gets through this life without expressing desperate, messy and uncivilized need."

-Brene Brown, Rising Strong

But I have never done anything in a vacuum.  I have to recognize that I had a lot of help this year from a lot of people: friends, strangers and strangers who turned out to be friends.  I learned a lot about self-reliance and independence, but the more valuable thing I learned was how to know when you need help and how to ask for it.  Help in the form of friendship, help in the form a listening ear, help in the form of a ride (for myself and often large amounts of my stuff), help in form of a couch to crash on or a perfectly timed hug.  

While I couldn't possibly list the names of everyone who helped me over the past year-- if you welcomed me into your home or gave me a reference for a job or listened to me whine about my problems or drove me around or helped me move, if you told me "it's going to be okay," if you let me cry on your shoulder, if you shared your wine, if you asked "are you okay?" sincerely because you were concerned-- thank you.  Thank you from the very bottom of my heart.  I recognize that this past year, even more than usual, that I would not have made it through without the love and support of friends and family around the world.  I'm so grateful, so very grateful and I hope to pay it all forward someday, since I know that I could never pay it back.

 "O Master grant that I may never seek

So much to be consoled as to console

To be understood as to understand

To be loved as to love with all my soul."

-Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Another crucial lesson learned was about understanding context, about the things that make us different and why they matter or sometimes don't matter.  As a traveler, I am constantly in awe of everything, but I struggled to reconcile all the experiences I had, all the things I saw. I struggled to understand my own ability to live fully within two different cultures and to wrap my head around my own actions and biases.  It wasn't until I started to look for and find a greater context, the bigger picture and how this can change from place to place, situation to situation, person to person that I was able to begin making sense of it all.

It made me realize that I don't necessarily have to think of one way of doing things as being inherently better, that I don't have to confine myself to single way of thinking.  It's recognizing with humility that I don't know everything and there is always something to learn.  It's recognizing that no city or culture has a monopoly on answering the question of what it means to live well.  It's recognizing that the world is big and wide and long and beautifully and convolutedly diverse. Looking at the world this way reinforces the value of boundless curiosity, of asking questions (even questions that on the surface seem shamelessly stupid) and, most importantly, of seeking first to understand rather than to be understood.  

That understanding has brought me greater patience and sensitivity in working with people and a solid foundation for understanding different points of view and why two different, intelligent people, given the same information could draw a different conclusion.  Looking for a context that is significantly bigger than us and our problems is what gives us the ability to entertain an idea without accepting it, what makes it possible to empathize with another person, what makes us travelers and good citizens of the world.

And in all of these endeavors, as always, I am still decidedly a work in progress.  I am glad to know that there is still plenty of room for growth and plenty of work to be done in the new year.

So Happy New Year, dear friends, to you and yours.

In 2016, let's resolve to have some wonderful adventures. 

Mani Freddi, Cuore Caldo

Two weeks ago, we had the first truly cold day since I've lived in Washington DC.  I put on my heaviest jacket, bundled up and took a deep breath before taking those first tentative steps outside.  My hands were cold, but my heart was warmed when a stranger on the street smiled at me and said encouragingly, "stay warm out there."  His glowing smile was contagious and I was determined to carry it with me, even when a gust of wind that surely came straight from the Arctic itself assaulted me as I turned the corner.  As two involuntary tears streamed down my cheeks, I held tightly onto my hood and that warm smile.

I don't know much about winter, but I'm familiar with bitter winds. We can measure the windchill in the air, but it takes more than thermometers to understand the windchill in our hearts.  It's a cold world out there, after all.  Shootings and bombings and hostages.  It's amazing how things happening far away can hit so close to home.  We watch wars play out on television and senseless acts of violence happen daily in our own cities, on our own streets, right in front of us.  The great Italian author Cesare Pavese once wrote "ogni guerra e' una guerra civile"- "every war is a civil war."

And that doesn't even begin to account for the individual tragedies that we could each write.  The stories of heartbreak and grief and betrayal, the loved ones we have lost, the addictions that have haunted us, the times when trust was broken--we carry these things like ice in bare, frozen hands, trying to make sense of a world that can be unflinchingly callous.

And what can we do about our vulnerable hearts, so often left out in the cold?  We can always take the easy way out and close ourselves off like we close our borders.  We can lock ourselves away from the cold, barricaded in a dark room alone.  We can meticulously turn the keys in each lock and stack furniture in the entrance way, as if grief and joy entered through different doors.  But despite our best attempts at insulation, the cold will always find a way in.

The world is big and it is scary.  We have to recognize that our hearts will surely take a beating, released on their own in a place where loss and suffering and grief are waiting around every corner to have their go.  But bloodied and bruised as we may be, shattered and torn and broken as we are, we have to get up off of the ground.  Even when all the odds are against us, we have to go back into the ring, gritting our teeth, determined to love again.

I certainly don't have all the answers but I've found that human warmth is about more than body temperature.  Someone wise once said that one of the great miracles of friendship is its unique ability to multiply the joys while dividing the sorrows.  I think of fresh-baked cookies and hugs that stay with you like a hearty meal.  I'm not talking about the delicate, cautious, polite hugs but rather the stick-to-your-ribs kind of hugs, the not-letting-go kind of hugs.  And I think of the humbly defiant chrysanthemums, which have recently become my favorite flower.  They refuse to give up their seemingly dainty petals, though all the other flowers might.  They will hold out in spite of the cold.

We too may find that we are more resilient than we initially thought, that we can, in fact, weather the cold.

So put on a scarf if you have to, but don't hide from the cold.  Fearlessly fill your lungs with the cold air and remember that this too is a part of life on an ever-changing planet.  The winter may be brutal, but we must recognize that even winter can't last forever.  Winter, after all, is followed by Spring.

Until then,

Stay warm out there.