The Passage of Time

It seems like just yesterday I met Gage Alexander Vandermark for the first time. It was a gorgeous day in May and I had just gotten out of work when I made the short drive to introduce myself. Despite the crowd of friends and family, someone plopped him into my arms as soon as I entered the hospital room. A small little peanut of a baby by my family's standards, he slept in my arms for a long time and I instantly felt like the surrogate aunt I became. He also made me $40 richer by arriving on May 27--my guess for the baby pool--so I instantly loved him.

Now here it is, an entire year later and somehow I'm wearing almost the same exact outfit I did the day he was born (a sure indication that I need to shop more). It never fails to surprise me how quickly time marches by. Though each workday seems to drag into infinity, the sun rises and sets and 24 hours later it all starts again. Gage almost walks by himself now; he eats cheese curls and flirts shamelessly with any woman who looks his way. He's starting to talk and he grins at me from a mouth filled with perfect little teeth.

But Gage's birthday isn't the only indication of the passage of time. The Mutchlers celebrate their fifth anniversary today (which, in my world, is the "I forgot to buy you a card" anniversary). Five years ago, I got lost in Allentown three times trying to find my hotel and I danced on a sprained ankle that was so swollen I had to buy bigger shoes for the reception. Five years ago, all my friends from college were still speaking to each other and Katherine Warner wasn't even a twinkle in the eye of her soon-to-be-married parents, Randy and Elizabeth. Today, life and all its crazy circumstances have broken up that old gang of mine, the Warner Family has 3.33 members and the Mutchlers have a beautiful little boy who will celebrate his first birthday next month. My my, how we all do grow up.

(Except Matt, who is STILL in college.)

So on this special day, take a moment to remember the first time you were introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Mutchler or held Gage Alexander in your arms. I often think that growing up is overrated, but events like these--celebrating old friends and welcoming new ones--make adult life worth living.

Slipping into Sunday

After living alone for a month, I'm ready to deliver my verdict on the matter: It stinks.

Oh sure, there's independence and freedom. I can come and go as I want, leave dishes in the sink, even walk around naked if the spirit moves me. But the truth is that I want someone to know where I'm going, I always wash the dishes and I never walk around naked. Last week, the loneliness of being alone seemed to overwhelm me. Wednesday, I made dinner, straightened up the place, watched TV, went to bed. Thursday I made dinner, straightened up the place, watched TV and went to bed. I thought if life kept moving forward in such a predictable pattern, I would lose my mind. I can only cook so much and my apartment can only be so clean. Is this how spinsterhood starts? The elaborate meals for one served on a coffee table with Alex Trebek and three smart people as my only companions? Twenty years from now, will I be sitting in the same place, eating the same meal and wondering what happened to my life?

As the storm of loneliness brewed in my mind on Friday, I consulted my older and wiser sister for advice. "You need to learn how to be alone without being lonely," she said. I think my remark was something like "Right. OK. Like that's possible." I liked her follow-up advice ("buy a fish") better. But over the weekend, I couldn't stop thinking about being alone without being lonely. Can it be done? What could I do to make it happen?

Lucky for my sanity, I spent Friday night and all of Saturday in the company of some great friends, which took my mind off the fact that all I have to go home to at night is a tidy apartment and a freezer of food that begs to be boiled, baked or sauteed. When I went to bed on Saturday, though, I was staring down the barrel of a long Sunday alone. Just me. All by myself.

But somehow, Sunday surprised me with its pleasantness. It didn't bother me. I went to a church I attended years ago, and as I slipped into the pew, I felt clothed in the comfort of the familiar. After three years, the minister was still the same, the same couple sat in front of me and the same gentleman sat across the aisle. There were signs that time hadn't stopped—a graduate was honored that I remembered as a giggly junior high student—but the feeling of peace was still there. And I let it wash over me.

After running some errands, I treated myself to my ultimate Sunday guilty pleasure: sitting in the sun and reading while I listened to the baseball game on the radio. Then I took a little nap and went for a long walk around the beautiful streets in my neighborhood. As I walked and looked at patches of lovingly tended flowers and well-manicured lawns, I realized that this aloneness wasn't all bad. With any luck, one day I'll own a home of my own and my hands will be caked with dirt from my own flowerbeds. I'll have neighbors who will come over to talk while I trim weeds along my sidewalk. I'll have a dog to take for a walk. Maybe I'll even have a husband to drink tall glasses of iced tea with while we watch the kids play in the yard.

But right now, it's just me and I think I'm going to be OK with that. Sure, sometimes I feel like I'm going to be alone forever, but if Sunday is any indication, I can be alone without being lonely. (It's weird how older sisters are almost ALWAYS right!) I can enjoy daydreaming, meeting new people, doing new things. I can sit in the sunny side-lawn of my apartment building and enjoy the bright hues of May. I can buy cookies without worrying that someone else will polish them off while I'm gone.

I think the problem is that I expected my newfound independence to be an immediate success, something like jumping into a cold swimming pool--a moment of shock followed by hours of good times. Instead, the reality seems that I'm standing on the edge of the pool, inching in bit by bit. Like a long Sunday, its something I'm slipping into. It might take some time, but I think I can do it. I'll just keep trying until I can get the whole way into the pool. Until then, though, I'll have a very clean apartment.

Another Tip

Don't take two benadryl and expect to do more than sit on the couch. The world is strangely hazey and I can barely type. Suddenly, I don't care if I'm itchy. This antihistamine stupor is lovely.

I'll post something real soon, whenever the world comes back into focus :)

Just a Tip

I'd like to take just a moment to provide a little public service announcement for all you Defying Gravity readers responsible for your own laundry. Let's say you buy new sheets for your bed and you don't feel like schlepping to the basement to throw the sheets in the coin-op washer and dryer in your very scary shared basement. RESIST the urge to just put them on the bed! Don't do it, or you'll end up like me--a solid mass of red itchiness everywhere the sheets touched.

Good thing I didn't sleep naked.

(So wash those sheets when you buy them, even if the basement is scary and it will cost you $1.50.)

An Old Poem

I think I wrote this last year when a friend and I challenged ourselves to a poetry competition. I used to think it stunk, but now I think it's decent enough to share. It's the only poetry I've written since my sophomore year in college, when the professor told me I'd "gone completely bonkers." Maybe I'll be artsy and call this "Untitled."

If a rose had feelings it would tell you
To love its thorns more than its blossom.
Clench them in a fist, the blood
Scalding your skin, trickling down your arm
Until it trails from wound to elbow.
Hard, unyielding realness; constant
In all things but beauty. Protecting
Innocence from the dangers of the garden.
Hidden in the shade of a beautiful song
That fades before you can hear the music.

In Love in a Movie

In "Sleepless in Seattle," Rosie O'Donnell delivers the verdict on Meg Ryan's principle problem in life: she doesn't want to be in love, she wants to be in love in a movie. She wants the fairytale man to climb her fire escape and whisk her off to the Regent Beverly Wilshire. She wants to meet Mr. Right on top of the Empire State Building. She wants magic.

I want magic too--I don't deny it. But there is little magic in Susie Land. In fact, there's only disaster (or worse, the same old thing). Returning readers might recall a post from February called "Unleashing the Animal Within," where I waxed eloquently on the wild man I was sure rested within the polished exterior of a guy in my class this semester. (If not, refresh your memory here.) Though I never mentioned him here again, he and I did become chummy during the semester. In fact, the last month brought with it some kind of strange transition from casual acquaintances to almost friends, sprinkled liberally with first-grade-like teasing, smiling eyes and strange unsolicited phone calls. But just as shadowy images of magic began to dance at the edges of my brain, a wave of reality washed them away for good.

Standing alone with him at the conference table in my office building after a group meeting that passed its expiration not long after if began more than two hours before, I tried to make my move.

"So, doing anything exciting this weekend?" I asked as a planned prelude to my "let's go get a beer" finale.

"Oh not much," Cute Class Boy replied. "Just hanging out with my grrlfrnd."

It took me a second to realize that last mumbled bit, which came out more like a guttural growl, was indeed the dreaded GF Bomb. Cute Class Boy, the man of my dreams whose children I would gladly have just to experience the conception process, already had a Cute Girl. And Cute Girl was not me.

As he wished me goodnight and I struggled to find a happy face while strong-arming the security system, I couldn't’t help thinking that no romantic comedy heroine--from Meg in "Sleepless" to Julia in, well, any movie she's ever made--ever stood at a Guardian alarm keypad, fighting back tears and wishing that just one time--just one moment in a life filled with unmagic--something out-of-the-ordinary would happen.

If my life were a classic romance, he would have answered, "that depends on what you're doing tonight" when I asked about his weekend plans. His tall frame quickly erasing the distance between us, he would rest an arm on the wall behind me and lean in to me. A hint of a whisper in my ear. "Wanna get a drink?" A quick smile, more of the eyes than of the lips, would be my reward for three months of patience and quiet desperation.

Or maybe, as I stood at the alarm resisting the urge to fall into the arms of despair, I would hear the door open behind me. Turning quickly, I would find him framed in the doorway, hair dripping from the moisture darkening the early evening sky, intensity raining from his eyes.

"I don't love her," he'd say.

I'd remain silent, finally lost for words.

"She's someone I met a few months ago, and we hang out. We have a good time. But I don't love her."

I wouldn't be able to tell if he was convincing himself or me.

"I thought she was everything I wanted. But then this hilarious girl walked into a classroom one night in January. And even though I did all I could to keep my distance, she lured me into her net by just being herself. Smart, nice, funny--and cute."

"God, I can't resist her." He'd gaze into my eyes and try to dispel my confusion with a smile. "I can't resist you."

And then he'd kiss me.

Or maybe he'd just grab me in his arms, throw me on the floor and say "I'm doing one thing this weekend and it's you."

My reality might have been watching him walk into the rain on that miserable Friday and coming to terms once again with my ability to consistently fixate on men who never want me and apparent perpetual state of spinsterhood, but I can't help imagining it were different. Feminists the world over blame Hollywood for woman's obsession with romance, for reinforcing the Cinderella fairytale, but I refuse to believe that there's not a man out there who will someday, somewhere, be lured into my net just because I'm me. Someone who will skip the bathroom break during class to sit and talk to me. Someone who calls me for no real reason on a Thursday night just to hear my voice.

Sure, he might only exist in a movie, but I think he's out there somewhere, wandering the Pittsburgh streets. If my life were a movie, my phone would ring right now and he'd ask me out for a beer tomorrow after work. But since this is reality, I'll just pop "While You Were Sleeping" into the DVD and hope that there's enough magic left in the universe to steer him in my direction again.