Tag Archives: growing up

November 29, 2012 · 4:00 am

Cousin-induced motion blur


My cousins are always in motion.

Since I don’t have little ones around every day, I really look forward to seeing the kids in my family. On one side is our Virginia crew of rambunctious, adorable boys (and their equally great little sister!); and from Pennsylvania, we have a gaggle of girls to delight and entertain us. All my little cousins — actually second cousins, in most cases — are under the age of six, so it’s never dull at our gatherings.

Whether I’m coloring, running, doing “karate” (Peyton’s favorite, learned from many a screening of “Kung Fu Panda”) or jumping on a trampoline, our kid crew teaches me to live in the moment. I absolutely love spending time with them — mostly because they’re hilarious and random. They let me color in their Barbie coloring books. And yes, they definitely say the craziest things.

It’s both my blessing and curse to be so aware of the passage of time — and I know that the next time I see Trinity and Peyton, my northern cousins, they’ll be older. Different. In school. With new friends and new experiences. And because they don’t see us too often, they probably will have forgotten all our silly jokes and games from this summer and their Thanksgiving visit. I will remember them, but they won’t remember me.

So I tried to document our family time — if only for myself. My photography skills have definitely been put to the test . . . and, um, have been found lacking. And I’m learning there isn’t a shutter fast enough to capture a child’s devilish grin or head thrown back in laughter. I mean, news alert: kids are fast. They move all the time. And if I thought I was one step ahead of Peyton, an adorable blonde firecracker, I was wrong. Nearly every picture I took was blurry — save this one:



The motion speaks to me, though. I bask in the knowledge that I can barely keep up with them — and love the challenge of capturing a fleeting moment. The girls will never be 3 or 4 or 5 again, but there’s a beauty in that. In the growing up. In the knowledge that these moments are temporary — but no less meaningful. Maybe more meaningful . . . because they’re temporary?

And I know someday I’ll come home to a family of my own — a family with kids I’ll desperately want to document, want to suspend in time. They’ll be fast and wild and silly and smart and bossy. And loved.

Let’s hope there’s a shutter fast enough to capture all that.



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October 23, 2012 · 4:00 am

Humbled by nature


It seems strange that I should feel optimistic in fall, when all around things are changing and falling and landing softly on the ground.

But I do.

We went on a little field trip to a local park over the weekend — and I’ll be showing you the photographic mementos of that trip tomorrow! But for today? I was standing beneath these too-tall trees, craning my neck as far back as it would go. And it was not enough.

Just like the redwoods, it’s impossible to take in the enormity of nature until you’re standing beneath it. Quiet. Humbled. That’s been the theme of my 2012: Humbled By Nature. (Catchy — sounds like a band or something.) I’ve been waxing poetic about the great outdoors since we went to California in May, and I haven’t stopped thinking about Yosemite.

I’m finally learning, at 27, that my happiness directly correlates to the amount of sunshine on my skin. Fresh air in my lungs. New sights, smells and scenery to enjoy. Whether my camera is glued to my palm. And to my surprise, I like being outside. Even when I’m wearing inappropriate footwear.

Though I’m really getting better about that. I’m in sneakers most of the time — a fact that would horrify my once-fashionable and often barefoot self. But it’s not easy to scale hills, walk beaches and sunflower fields, skid on ice or scramble over rocky shoreline in flats or sandals.



Guess I really am growing up.


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August 17, 2012 · 4:00 am

Trading school for freedom


There are things I miss about school.

How life was broken into 180-day cycles — and even smaller ones, tidier ones. First quarter. Second quarter. First semester. Second semester.

My high school locker, where friends would congregate or slip notes or slam for me when I’d forgotten to shut it.

Fall play season. Staying late with my friends to run lines, ordering Chinese take-out when our rehearsals stretched too long. The exhilaration of looking out into the audience and seeing my parents’ faces. That harsh glare of the spotlight, obliterating anything except what was directly in front of me.

A fresh pack of crayons. A blank “Barbie” coloring book.

Meeting new teachers — one that would push me, inspire me. Ones I would irritate me. Ones that would greatly help me.

Stacks of college-ruled paper. Carefully printing my name at the top of each page.

Seeing your buddies for the first time after summer vacation, taking stock of how tall or tanned they’d gotten. Trading vacation stories. Resuming your call-every-afternoon-to-rehash-the-school-day routines.

Now five years out of college and nine from public school (!), I guess I’m allowed to wax philosophical about the whole experience. School wasn’t always a breeze, that’s for sure — and it’s easy to slip on my rose-colored glasses and forget the tough moments. Like algebra and difficult teachers. Peer pressure. Feeling left out.

But for me? The good moments crowd out the bad ones. I look back on my school days with curly, pink-hued nostalgia, remembering the thrill of selecting first day of school outfits and organizing my school planner. It will come as a shock to absolutely no one to learn I once made lists upon lists of every assignment to complete, every phone call to return. And since my school days existed pre-Facebook, text messaging and Twitter, the only way to get in touch with friends over the summer was to call or write them a letter. I probably still have most of them.

As a working adult, the weeks stretch on without end. I live for vacations, planning the next one while still away on the first. My weekends are precious real estate, planned to maximize every free moment, and I cherish the time I’m up and away from my familiar, well-loved desk.

Summer ending means nothing more than switching my linen crop pants for slacks. Flats for boots. Tanks for cardigans. It means turning off the tiny fan by my desk and slipping a blanket over my lap. Seeing coworkers return from their summer vacations, all of us hunkered down together with our vacation time gone — eagerly waiting for Christmas. Needing a break.

Since I’m not in school anymore, kids returning to the classroom has little significance to me — but I still acknowledge it. When Target pushes out their school supplies, I flip through the stacks of folders and colorful pens. Hot August pushes into sunny September, and I remember my own days in countless classrooms and how it felt to spot your high school crush for the first time since June. A sense that this could be the year. A delirium, bright and irrepressible, that anything is possible.

My mom always laughs as she tells a story about her grandmother, my great-grandmother, who would often look in the mirror and joke, “Who is that old woman?”

“What you look like on the outside doesn’t match what you feel on the inside,” Mom says. “You feel the same as you always have. You just look different.”

So sometimes I’m 10 again, or 15, or 20. Sometimes I’m in a lecture hall at the University of Maryland or on my elementary school playground — a stone’s throw away from my grandparents’ house. Sometimes I’m hoofin’ it across my college campus or slamming my middle school locker, sliding into home economics class or writing a Spanish paper at my first love’s apartment.

These moments all live inside me, jostling against one another. They overlap. They war and twist and turn, pushing me in and out of the present, and it’s not a stretch to feel like my school backpack has landed heavy over my shoulders again.

But then I grab my car keys, my Diet Coke, a paperback for my lunch hour. I’m snorting with laughter at a text from my boyfriend, counting down the minutes until the work day is over — the time when I’ll meet my family for dinner or take a walk with Spencer. I write. I read tons of books. I earn money at a job, one I really like, and I’m paid to write for a living — a fact that would astonish 7-year-old me. And I can eat dessert for dinner.

My time is my own — no mention of essays or math problems. No assignments or worries. No homework.

I’m free.

And ice cream for dinner is sounding pretty good right about now.


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April 17, 2012 · 4:00 am

What you wish you’d known when you were 10

{Mom and me at my fifth grade promotion, 1996}


When I was 10, I was captain of the safety patrols. My hair was thick and tangly, and I wore red Sally Jesse glasses. I had already outgrown much of my wardrobe and was actually borrowing blouses from my tall, pretty mother. I was on the math team, wore multicolored moccasins I picked out from Kmart and was obsessed with tornadoes.

I had a wicked crush on a boy named Matt who was “dating” a pretty curly-haired girl named Andrea, and I fell asleep at night praying he would eventually like me back. Despite my crush-to-end-all-crushes (Jessica Darling-style), I thought kissing a boy would be gross — and couldn’t actually imagine doing such a thing. I had friends who were just about as awkward as I was, and we agreed that kissing was really disgusting.

My fifth-grade teacher realized I liked to write, and she read one of my short stories — “Night Of The Twisters,” title shamelessly ripped off from the Devon Sawa made-for-TV movie of the same name — to the class. Though I was proud of my work, I was embarrassed when Mrs. Smallwood tried to read lines like, “Get away from me, you morian [sic]!” aloud. I’d actually meant “moron,” which was some pret-ty unkind language for a 10-year-old, but we didn’t have spellcheck in 1996. “Morian” it was.

On Monday morning, I got a really interesting call: a local elementary school asked me to be their keynote speaker at a fifth-grade promotion ceremony in June. The event’s theme, “Turning the Page,” dovetails nicely with my job as a newspaper columnist — and the school’s vice principal was actually my second grade teacher (she of the “I’m proud of you” note). Without thinking, I agreed to come and speak — and have already drafting my five-minute speech. I’m a teensy bit nervous.

Despite the fact that I have approximately .4672 ounces of patience in my entire body, I’ve always thought teaching would be a really rewarding profession. (The teachers out there might be cutting me the eye, but I’m sure it is sometimes — right?) In my daydreams, the opportunity to help kids seems awesome. I think about how much my own teachers inspired me, and the chance to encourage other kids at such a tumultuous time could make a difference.

Of course, the story has already been written — and I’m a writer. I wouldn’t — and couldn’t — have it any other way, but I still jumped at the chance to live out my teacher daydream for a few minutes: speaking to today’s youth and encouraging them to be brave, bold and kind.

I know it’s, like, 10 minutes of the kids’ lives — and that much of my own, too. But I remember my fifth grade promotion ceremony like it was yesterday, and I definitely remember all the people who encouraged me to do great things as I grew up.

As the Rod Stewart song I always have stuck in my head goes, “I wish that I knew what I know now . . . when I was younger.” So here’s the question I have for you, friends: given the chance, what advice would you give your 10-year-old self?

Like any commencement speaker, I want to be inspiring, pithy, funny and . . . quick. No one enjoys some long-winded old bag talking endlessly about the “good old days,” and I refuse to go down in flames. Those 10-year-olds are going to be give me a standing ovation.

Unless, you know, I suck.

So please help me not suck.


What advice would you give
your 10-year-old self?


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April 6, 2012 · 4:00 am

Memories of Easter candies past


So yes, I’m trying to lose weight. Like 90 percent of the general adult population. Like many friends and coworkers, all of whom conspire to keep me on the straight and narrow. Like my poor boyfriend, who is constantly trying to get me to embrace his healthy(-ier) lifestyle . . . and has faced my hungry, annoyed face on more than one occasion. Especially as I explore the theories set forth in Cynthia Sass’s S.A.S.S. Yourself Slim, a diet book that is both enlightening and profoundly upsetting.

Because I seem to be doing All The Bad Things.

And I know a tough holiday is coming up, friends: a holiday in which I sacrifice myself at the altar of hollow chocolate bunnies. When I was a kid, Easter was all about family (and it still is, of course), worship and, well . . . presents. Edible presents.

I’m talking candy, y’all. Real, sugary, honest-to-goodness candy.

Like Christmas morning, Easter Sunday back in the ’90s would always begin with my sister and I huddled together while my parents prepared to capture our shrieks of delight as we ran down the stairs. Many years featured the Easter Bunny hiding little toys and plastic eggs around the living room, leading us into a small scavenger hunt, and we tore through the downstairs seeking our prizes.

This went on for a while — years and years. Until Katie, reaching the age of reason, finally looked at me with wide, blinking eyes. “The Easter Bunny’s handwriting sure looks a lot like Mom’s,” she scoffed, holding up a folded index card with scavenger hunt instructions. And being the older, bossy sister I was, I could only shrug with what I imagined as an impassive expression on my face. It was probably the mocking “I know something you don’t know” look all siblings despise.

At 26, I still look forward to Peeps and chocolate bunnies and robin’s egg bubblegum. And Reese’s eggs and Pixy Stix and Cadbury cream eggs. As long as I don’t get any NECCO wafers (blech, seriously — what are those?), I’m a happy girl — and no amount of faux-dieting I convince myself I’m doing will keep me from diving headfirst into my basket this year.

I’m Meg, a sweets addict. As evidenced by the time I posed in Dylan’s Candy Bar in New York City — quite possibly the most insane shopping experience I’ve ever had. In the twenty or so minutes we prowled the store, we saw and heard two glass containers full of sugary goodness smash to the floor . . . and trying to check out was enough to give me a panic attack. And all I wanted was a little porcelain container shaped like a cupcake.



And candy, of course. I don’t remember what I got, but there’s no way I left empty-handed. I must have brought home some sort of sweet for Spencer, who lives and dies by Jelly-Belly jelly beans. Pear flavored, to be exact. I tell the man he’s sweet enough already (aww), but he’s hopelessly addicted.

I don’t worry about it, though. I’m definitely not one to judge.

——

So tell me, friends: What’s your favorite type of Easter candy? What did you love as a kid? Has your sugar-covered palate changed over the years?

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March 29, 2012 · 4:00 am

‘Proud of you’


I got a note from my second grade teacher yesterday.

It’s funny how people emerge from the past like specters, and just a few sentences can transport you back to a different time. In my case, that would be 1992 — and I would be a boisterous 7-year-old with flowing curls just discovering books. I’d always loved being read to, and my parents’ penchant for storytime was a favorite pastime. Someone was always reading in my house.

Mrs. Brown was the first teacher to notice I loved to write — and to encourage that interest. I distinctly remember showing her a story I crafted about Carrot the bunny and his bunny family, and Mrs. Brown’s kind expression as she read my work and offered some helpful tips. “After someone is speaking, you don’t always have to say ‘he said,’” she explained, indicating a string of dialogue that probably went something like this:

“I’m going to the store,” Carrot said.
“Don’t go alone,” Mama said.
“I won’t — I’ll take Brother,” he said.
“Be back by dinner,” she said.

Pure poetry, I know. The greats reveal their genius early.

I have many memories from Mrs. Brown’s classroom, which was close to the “little kids’” recess spot on the far side of the school. That class of 25 or 30 kids was where I first met Daniel, the kid on whom I nursed a wicked crush and sent lovey-dovey Valentine cards. It was where I started to understand math and history, and when I realized I could write stories like the ones I found in books.

Mrs. Brown was the first teacher to encourage my writing, telling my parents that she thought I had talent. Twenty years after Carrot the bunny, she reads my biweekly columns in the local paper — and she wrote me a note to tell me so. The entire message is very sweet, but the best part comes at the end: “I am proud of you.”

How simple those words are.

How powerful those words are.

As a kid (and teen), I idolized my teachers. I can vividly recall every one of them, remembering their lessons and soothing voices and homework help. Each was special in their own way, and it’s so crazy to think of them now — these women (and a few men) I put on pedestals, more than mere mortals who could do no wrong through the bright lens of my childhood.

Knowing Mrs. Brown is reading the work of her former pupil — me — and remembering the kid I once was, the kid I still am inside, makes me extraordinarily happy. I’ve heard from my elementary school librarian (she was so awesome!), my first grade teacher, my beloved gym teacher. I smile uncontrollably every time, remembering the sunny days spent in their classrooms and on the playground. I had a really, really happy childhood — probably a better one than most. I was too young to realize that.

I’m glad I was too young to realize that.

Pride is such a powerful emotion. All I’ve ever wanted was to make my family proud, my teachers proud. My sister. My boyfriend. My friends. And someday, some shiny day, my children.

Hearing from Mrs. Brown gave me an opportunity to do what we rarely think to do: thank her. Remembering the pride I felt when she read my Carrot story aloud still fills me with warmth. She’s the first teacher to put books in my hand; she’s the one who encouraged me to write crazy stories, then rewarded that creativity with kindness instead of dismissal. I’ve never thought to reach out to her. But now I have.

It takes just a moment to say a kind word, to forge or reform a connection. The simplest word from you can change the trajectory of someone’s day, of someone’s week. Maybe someone’s life. If you have a moment, thank someone who has helped you along the way. I’ve never regretted it.


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October 24, 2011 · 6:00 am

Favorite Halloween costumes and an ‘Aww, Ricky’

We take so much for granted as children. I mean, dressing up? Nothing out of the ordinary. We can be princesses and walk in our mothers’ heels from here to eternity, never worrying that anyone is discussing our eccentric behavior. It’s nothing to don a crown and prance around the living room, or to find a magic wand and place “curses” on others. It’s all fun. Make believe.

But since I’m not eight anymore, I know I can’t get away with such behavior. Halloween is the only time I can safely go out dressed as a witch or devil and not be thought a creeper by the general populace. I might try to milk the whole costume thing and dress up in Christmas- or elf-related garb come December, but that’s a stretch.

Like all kids, I took my Halloween costumes very seriously. There was the year I was a cheerleader, for instance, complete with a sash for my elementary school. On another occasion I was Miss America (oh, if only); and then, of course, there were the endless witch costumes. The Wicked Witch was sort of my go-to, which is funny considering how terrified I am of “The Wizard of Oz.” I guess I was overcompensating.

One of my favorites was my Blue Fairy costume. In 1992, Katie dressed up as Belle from “Beauty and the Beast” and I recycled one of my mom’s old bridesmaids dresses from the ’60s to become a magical helper. What I remember most were the sequin-covered wands my little sister and I had. Though I’m unsure why Belle would need a magic wand, we went with it – and you’ll also spot a fully-clothed Beast doll in Katie’s arms. (He lost his Beast head soon after and was, from then on, merely the unmasked Prince.)

We used to go trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood, checking out the costumes on the local kids, then hop over to my grandparents’ house to visit their friends and neighbors. Since our elementary school was just a block or two from Grandma and Grandpa’s, we usually saw lots of kids we knew — and showing off your costumes was always half the fun.

Though Halloween is different now, of course, I still enjoy the holiday and eat my fair share of treats. I dressed up as a ’20s flapper in 2009 and have a newly-acquired Lucille Ball costume for this year’s festivities! I’m still trying to convince Spencer to be the Ricky to my Lucy, but he’s hesitant thus far. If he goes for it, we’re going to have to work on our “Babalu.” 

Though my singing could make an angel cry. 

Maybe I’ll just stick to the ol’ trademark “Aww, Rick-yyyyyy . . .”

Whining? Never been a problem for me.

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