And Not Just Today

Today I'm thankful for: purpose; perspective; the complicated siren call to service; the return of my artistic muse; those corner guys who called me beautiful lady; those girls who talked with me about the economy; my great apartment in my amazing neighborhood, where I can go and be as sane and quiet as possible; my insane, loud job, without which I would be lacking in several life skills and this great city experience; my coworkers for embracing my sudden, inexplicable arrival with the promise of swag; my three closest friends, not a single one of whom lives closer than 700 miles but whom I've already gone to for humor and support via the internet; the internet; the fact that my mother just gave me her library password so that I will not be deprived of ProQuest, Project Muse, and JSTOR for the first time in nine years; the friends I'm with in Chicago, and our mighty adventures with wine cupcakes, and song; my German posse at home, the best dysfunctional double date ever; Five Guys, Dippin' Dots, Art Mart, Amy's Bread, Witherspoon Bread Company, Ann Sather's, and the Four Winds Pizzeria; coming full circle with service and with Tales of the City; Dido Twite, George Smiley, Mary Ann Singleton, and Jane Eyre; Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, and Donald Maclean; roommates who carried me through every emotion known to man and made everything hilarious, life-changing, and suggestive; Princeton; John Banville; the British Library; "plans to give you hope and a future"; chocolate chip cookies; Paris and Breil, the gay pride parade, and perfect moments of harmony; introspection, supervised and unsupervised; using a machete to carve out my place in the world.

My parents. I knew I was lucky before--I would compare them to almost everybody, and almost everybody would come up short--but what I've noticed recently is that my parents know me better than anyone else on this planet. They are interested in 95% of what comes out of my mouth, or they at least fake it with reassuring ease. In the words of my senior thesis acknowledgements, the writing of which led me to burst into tears in Small World Coffee, "I was encouraged to pursue my interests. I was never scolded for making fiction my primary means of understanding the world. I was never pushed to be something I am not. They dragged me through museums. They played me Frank Sinatra. Through a long process of editing and revision they made me who I am today."
I've seen good parents and I've seen bad parents. I've seen parents who care about their kid(s) just as much as my parents do, who also have the resources to back it up, who care about education, who care about what their kid wants to do. Somehow, though, my parents are the best. I'm pretty sure it has to do with a high-wire combination of emotional honesty and shot-from-the-hip, weird jokes. I don't know how I got dealt this hand, but I am so thankful I that was. I like who I am and every day I like who I am a little more, and a lot of it comes down to this.