Staring Out Into Possibility

Written En Route San Diego to Las Vegas

Now that a year in my life has come and gone, even while in the midst of the current year, I find myself staring out into a valley of possibility. 

I could use the imagery of mountains to climb or hills to scale, but the entire concept of pushing something up a hill never to arrive is not one that I wish to pursue.

The Myth of Sisyphus is one of never attaining the goal, but always be engaged in the climb.

I, for one, am not certain that the climb itself is all that it’s cracked up to be. The journey, however, that’s an entirely different story. 

When people enter a dark moment of their life I never hear them talk about “the climb.” Instead, they’ll refer to it as “darkness” or “a rut” or a “battle.” Never, that I can recall, does anyone mention some pursuit upwards.

That is not to say that there is no pursuit in going up, it’s just that I’m not certain anyone cognitively feels that they are “moving” into a higher capacity while carrying weight in the process.

Leading up to this new series of 365 days, or 525,600 minutes, my vision is not one of standing in the same place, moving, but going nowhere. Instead, it’s almost a series of ballet movements across grains of sand and onto something.

Then, though, that begs the question: Is moving upwards as or more difficult than the grain of sand on previously uncalloused feet? I suppose that answer would be best told by the person engaged in the journey.

On Coming and Going

11:14 PM Nashville, TN time, July 4, 2011

Preface:

It's been a long time since I wrote. Not because I didn't have anything to say, but because I was busy living. Not thinking about it or worrying about it, but just living. 

Coming and going.

There's been a lot of that in my life the last several weeks. I graduated (but didn't travel) from Boston University with a Master's Degree. I shut down my computer for everything but work and social media and lived and laughed up life.

I went to Palm Springs and soaked up the sun and made a lot of new memories... Stories I will tell my children one day.

Mom and Dad came to visit and bought all my "new" friends their drinks. My Mom even did a shot.  In this visit my parents became my friends.

My two best friends came to visit and a friend from my Palm Springs days did too and we all partied together.

Then, I went. I packed for what would be three full days and three nights of a weekend that could only be described as life-changing. I went to Nashville, TN to be picked up from the airport by one of my most favorite people so I could meet his beautiful and awesomely wonderful wife. Then we, my same friend who visited just two weeks ago, another friend, too, all piled in a car to drive to Chattanooga. Another friend was getting married.

I hadn't slept in 36 hours and couldn't have been happier. I had three of my favorite people - two of my favorite men - sandwiched in a car for two hours.

I couldn't even begin to tell you the rest of the weekend. We went to a comedy murder mystery theater and laughed. I shared a room with a friend that made us laugh so much we couldn't believe our friendship brought us across the country.

There is more. I went to this wedding and was so blessed to have it as a tool or a reason to see one of my best friends. My heart felt torn for the four years I had let (yes...  let) go by. I cried inside and we immediately started planning my return. What a beautiful friendship to meet someone's wife and start a friendship as if we had been friends for years. To meet his Mom and feel as though I was talking to my own. Yes, I cried a little upon coming, but going was the hardest part.

Somehow, the universe might have known and flight delays kept me on the East coast for all of the 4th of July.

It's Independence Day. Let freedom ring, let the white dove sing, let the whole world know that this is a day of reckoning.

This day meant so much to me, and I spent five hours of it in an airport. I came off a weekend of creating new memories and new friendships and different relationships. I am, was, spent. I sat next to a woman at the airport bar.

Airport Mom said to me (I will paraphrase) "Karma is about things happening for a reason, it is not payback." 

It's a statement, even as a woman of Christian faith, that I enveloped my emotional heart around. I wondered, when you feel you left a piece of your heart somewhere or with someone, do you get that back? How? Is it by returning? Is it by faithful or divine intervention? Is going really going? Is it just the beginning of something you never anticipated beginning? Is missing someone the unexpected indication that you love them more than you thought?

Airport Mom's husband passed away in May. She had just returned from seeing her first husband on her getaway trip. She said she loved her second husband. Their time was so short, and she believed she served a purpose in his life, and he hers. Somehow, their path was the road that may lead her back to her first husband. The true love of her life.

If a chance meeting at an airport bar provides a lifetime of wisdom; imagine what a chance encounter at a wedding can do? Or a split decision amongst friends to share a hotel room? Or to eat Twizzlers? 

We are all coming and going to somewhere - where the heart is, where we hope the grass is greener, to where we believe we really belong. 

It's in that coming and going that we really live. It's not in that destination. This weekend I lived possibly more than I have in years. I lived in the in-between of coming and going, knowing it was not a short-lived reunion. It was just a passage of time leading to several lifetime friendships.

I hate goodbyes, but there are no goodbyes in coming and going.

"I'll see you soon."

To my friends referred to here, I love you more than I can articulate.

To my Airport Mom, I am in awe of your optimism and honest contemplation of your life's path, and the reminder to relish in the journey. Now, I really do understand that everything does happen for a reason.

That is the richest lesson, however full of heartache, one could ever stand to learn.

All the Other Kids Grow Up Too

How many homes does one have in their life? Not just a house, but a home, a place where there is a sense of family or community?

I just had to come back one last time, sings Miranda Lambert in “The House That Built Me.” 

In 1994, I went to high school with my direction facing the rear view mirror. I thought if I could just return to middle school every now and then I’d remember what I was afraid I’d forget. 

Del Dios Middle School became so much like a second home to me, I spent afternoons in the teachers lounge. I copied papers and put spiral bound backs in student print out documents. Mostly, I chatted. 

“So, I have this teacher who....” 

“I want to be President someday, still, but....” 

Honestly, I don’t think I ever had anything interesting to say, but I didn’t want to leave. 

Just as much as I didn't want to leave, I was in love with my Grandma. When she passed away in 2006, I could't believe I hadn't returned to her home, where so much love could be found, in so long. So, in 2008, I made the journey. I thought, finally, coming home. But, Grandma's house wasn't Grandma's house anymore. I looked for any evidence that it was, and immediately, outside I spotted what was once my swing, worn, tattered, used, and rusted, yet waiting as if just to say "hello." 

My "Swing" Outside Grandma's House (2008)

You leave home, you move on, and you do the best you can, I got lost in this whole world and forgot who I am. 

In 2002, I left my first job at what was then a Fox affiliate in San Diego. While working there I described it as a playground.

“Anne Marie, how can you run around barefoot!” someone would yell from the sports office.

“Because I can!” 

People would be tickled by the copiers, mini breaks were taken upstairs to make hot chocolate, and no matter what we all always went out for drinks afterwards. 

I remember this one time we convinced one of the main anchors and a weather anchor to come out to karaoke, something the rest of us did every week. Somewhere, on video, they are singing “I’ve Got You Babe.” 

When the men would sing, the girls and I would toss panties, yes panties, to them and scream like we were 17. The hostess of the karaoke night also worked at a strip club. She came with props. 

We had some really, really, fun times. Really. 

In 2009, I went back to that first job for a job interview. It was just happenstance, but someone who worked there when I did still remained and said to come on by. 

She took me inside the building, the same building that I had dreamt about getting lost in, and finding myself in, for the previous seven years. I had never left it. 

“Rust,” I said to her as I looked at the stairwell that had once been so clean and white. “Smudge,” I said again as I noticed dirt on the walls. I cringed inside a little because it wasn’t anything like coming home. 

Then, just as I felt a tinge of tears lulling me out of joy, I heard someone say, “Anne Marie.” 

Two years later, almost to the day, I returned to my latest home, hoping to take more than just a memory. For the first time, the place looked the same, some of the faces were still familiar, and the feeling inside was just right. I had come home.

Yet, I recognize there is always some nostalgia in “coming home.” Eventually, all the other kids on the street grow up and move away, too. It’s always fun when you come back to visit and there’s at least a few you can talk to at the mailbox, or catch up with during a morning run. Yet, they all leave too and we’re out looking for a new place to call home. 

They say home is where the heart is, and depending on who is in your heart, and what makes it beat, and has your chest rise and fall; it’s one place, or no place, or many places at the same time. 

I’ve found home in the teacher’s lounge at a middle school, in the studio of a TV station, on the stage at a bar on karaoke night, and in a little desert town where some people think you only retire, and ultimately, wherever the people I love happen to be.