Fresh from America! Madame brought them!

StoryCorps happened, to my delight. I went on over to the Mobile Booth they had stationed in Millenium Park and, to the sounds of the jazz fest two greens over and the families out enjoying Labor Day weekend, I sat and waited my turn. A couple people wandered up to me and asked me about StoryCorps, mistaking me for an employee. Others asked where the bathroom was, mistaking me for a park ranger. Finally, Lady #1 emerged and asked me what story I would be telling that day.

Until that moment, I hadn’t fully decided. I figured they would want whatever I said to be as fresh as possible, anyway. I told her that I would be telling the story of how my parents met. I gestured vaguely. “And some other stuff.”

None of that other stuff would be new to readers of this blog, or anyone who’s had a serious conversation with me over the past year. As to the story of how my parents met, and the story of my French godfathers, which I launched into as well…those are best heard in person. Or you could listen to the recording of the entire interview they handed me on CD once I was done. I went home and uploaded it to iTunes and from there to Dropbox to share with whoever wanted to hear it. I was figuring my parents would want to hear it, and maybe a handful of interested family members. I knew which of my friends actively wanted to listen. I sent the link to some people and left it at that, figuring they’d listen to it when they could (probably while stuck in traffic or folding laundry or something).

Instead, I started getting, alternately, barrages of people wanted to listen to the interview and barrages of notes from people who had already listened to and enjoyed it. These notes ran the gamut from, “Awesome!” (much appreciated; that’s what I strive for) to “I love your StoryCorps recording! The stories you told obviously mean so much to you and are so beautiful, and your voice sounds so good telling stories (I would say you got your father’s gift :D)! I’m so glad it’s preserved to inspire others: your parents and the quality of the relationships in your family truly are moving.”

This is me, now, curled up, feeling the love.

It wasn’t that I expected no one to listen—that would be veering away from humility and into denial—but the volume and quality of the responses I got really moved me. From the girl I hadn’t talked to in a while who materialized out of nowhere and asked to listen, to the very close friend who intended to listen while she was doing something else and found herself glued to her computer, listening: these friends of mine rock.

There were others who, in really well thought out e-mails, informed me of my maturity. This meant a lot. It’s unpopular for someone my age to rhapsodize about her parents. It’s not that closeness with your parents isn’t valued in America, it’s more that it’s seen as a dangerous quality; possibly those who possess this quality are about to crawl back home, possibly they already live there, possibly they have no lives of their own.

None of those things are true of me, or of my best friend, who is also very close to her parents, or of the other people I know in this situation. “You should call home more,” is the punch line of many a joke, but it’s always the parent who utters it who is the butt of the joke, not the grown child off doing their own (presumably fulfilling, fascinating) thing. The assumption is that, as time passes, it is the parent’s place to sit by the phone and the child’s to craft their own life at the expense of the life they left behind.

In Europe, in China, in certain American cultures (although not the WASPy mainstream), living with your parents, or allowing your parents to live with you, is the norm. It doesn’t mean that you rely on them overmuch, that you haven’t cut the cord, or that you’re incapable of adulthood. It just means that for financial or health or other reasons you have chosen to support each other. That, after all, is what families are expected to do.

Let me be clear: I don’t advocate leeching off your parents. I don’t think parents exist solely to cater to their children’s needs. Nor to I think your parents should factor in every decision you make. We’re all people, and we can all live our own lives. I’m just saying that those lives don’t necessarily have to be lived completely separately in the service of some weirdly developed notion of the American Dream. I have no plans to move to my parents’ house in Kansas, but I don’t think I have to feel ashamed about wanting to talk about or be with the people who mean the most to me. Once upon a time, after all, someone referred to me as “your filial piety daughter.” I don’t think I’ve ever been more honored in my life.

So it was nice to feel the love on Facebook, in text messages, and via e-mail. And it was nice, in true Nom de Plume fashion, to share the experience with my parents, even though I was in one place and they were in another. Now, and for the foreseeable future, we and all the characters in our stories will get to hang out together in the Library of Congress. I’ll bring dinner, my godfathers can bring the wine, and my mom can bring her, ahem, American cake. My dad can provide the entertainment and sit there and tell stories to remind us how we all got there in the first place.

A Brief P.S.

Today, I finally got around to finishing Quiet. I finished it in two installments. I read the majority on my favorite bench in Chicago.

It's a place perfectly suited to contemplation. Indeed, if I had been invited to contribute an essay to the hypothetical volume of essays I mentioned in my previous post on this topic, I would probably have written it sitting on that bench.

But enough about that.

In the end, I came around. Reality never quite measured up to expectation, but Cain did shift focus from society to the individual, and that certainly helped my enjoyment of the book. Like Cain (and I don't want to spoil anything here for those who haven't read Quiet and intend to, so I'm about to be vague), the theory I found most revelatory and most applicable to daily life was Professor Little's Free Trait Theory. You may sometimes act out of character and against type, but it's worth it in the service of something you really, really care about, even if it leaves you exhausted and hiding in the bathroom.

Which brings me to my next point! Only 10% sarcastic kudos to Cain for acknowledging the Universal Hiding in the Bathroom Principle. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's okay, it takes all kinds!)

Thanks, also, for:
1) The guy at Claremont McKenna who got up early "just to savor time alone with a steaming cup of coffee." Replace tea, and you've got my life now.
2) "...the life of the mind." My mother, once again vindicated in print for something she's been saying for as long as I can remember.
3) "'The stereotype of the university professor is accurate for so many people on campus. They like to read; for them there's nothing more exciting than ideas. And some of this has to do with how they spent their time when they were growing up. If you spend a lot of time charging around, then you have less time for reading and learning. There's only so much time in your life.'" That last line is something both sides of the spectrum should be able to say, but you so rarely hear it applied in this context.
4) Introvert guilt, which I completely identified with and had always chalked up to Catholic Guilt.
5) "Finally, pay attention to what you envy. Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth."

However, there was one serious problem. In all that talk of fear of public speaking, not once did anyone mention nervous poo. Forgive me for being frank, but it's a phenomenon Roommate J (who I am sending this book immediately) and I discussed endlessly. Quelle oversight!

"I'm telling you stories. Trust me."

If you know my family, particularly specific members of my family, you know that we're storytellers. In order to explain how three voodoo dolls showed up unexpectedly on a nippy Colorado night in the early 2000s, we like to go all the way back to the 1950s in Baltimore and thoroughly lay the groundwork.

My conversational style in high school and college could reasonably be described as story on top of story on top of story. When I wasn't telling stories, the well was dry and I was listening attentively instead. That's why people think of me as a good listener. I think I am too, and I'll take the compliment, but I think the reason for it is slightly different from what people suppose: I do genuinely want to solve your problems, but I also want slice of life stories from other perspectives, and there's nothing like a particularly fraught or tearful rant to deliver those stories.

My conversations still run like that, although to a lesser extent now. These days, I like to have deep, introspective debates with those who know me best. Just last weekend, my friends P and M were staying with me in Chicago and we delved deep until two in the morning two nights running. I was in heaven...until I had to get up at seven to go to work on Monday.

The point is, I love telling to stories, and I love listening to other people's well-told stories as well. There's a reason I listened (and wept along with a good percentage of) StoryCorps segments in the mornings before I headed off to high school. In college, I made one unsuccessful attempt to sign up for an interview slot at the StoryCorps office in New York. Those slots go fast. I had wanted to get my parents to sit down and tell the story of how they met. I love it, and I've heard it a million times, and a corner of my brain is convinced that the whole world (or at least the NPR-listening public) needs to hear it too.

A year and a half later, and here I am in Chicago, still a fan of StoryCorps on Facebook and an occasional dabbler in their podcast. I'm heading out to work one morning when I notice that not only is the mobile recording booth coming to Chicago, but signups will be the following day at 10:00AM. I file it away and rush out the door. The next day I arrive at work at 8:50 as usual, turn on my computer, and wait. This, I thought, is one of the reasons why this job is better than my last job. Here I sit, with all of the modern world a few key strokes away (barring the eccentric web filter).

As ten o'clock approaches, I start to get anxious. My supervisor mentioned that she might push my weekly meeting with her forward a bit to accommodate another meeting. It's only my third week; I couldn't very well say, "Sorry: StoryCorps," and gesture at the screen with supreme confidence. I shouldn't have worried, though. At the stroke of ten, I log in, see the rapidly disappearing times, an nab an available slot in the first weekend of September. I feed them my information, agonize for a while over whether I should put a specific interviewee (name and phone number) to accompany me, and ultimately mark that I'll be coming alone. I click submit and, miracle of miracles, the next page tells me that my attendance is confirmed!

I do a little dance at my desk surreptitiously take out my phone to make a Facebook status. This is modern life, and I like it.

The question remains: out of a lifetime of my own and other people's stories, which one do I pick? These can be multi-part stories, of course, as all good stories told by members of my family are. I have some ideas, a couple two short and one probably too bloated. I have an hour slot all to myself, so it should take time, but not too much time. Or (always assuming I can change my reservation) should I grab someone from Chicago or Champaign and interview them? At first I assumed that's what I would do, but the more I think about it, the more I think I want the freedom to tell the story I want.

Suggestions are welcome, either here or via e-mail, with the caveat that I may not listen to any of them. Which of my stories (or the stories you know I know) do you think are particularly deserving of a spot in the Library of Congress? Do I tell my own story, or another's? It goes without saying that part of it will be funny, and part of it will be heartfelt. What do you think?

The mind churns / the heart yearns

There was a time in my life when I listened to nothing but musicals. This was before I discovered Oldies and would tune the car radio to 92.5, Champaign, Illinois’s last real oldies station. That in turn was before I discovered top 40 radio, some time between my first high school dance and my second.

           

The point is, for years it was Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera and Man of La Mancha and Cats and Crazy for You. When, in second grade, I met the girl who would be one of my very closest friends, she was wearing a Damn Yankees shirt. (I knew it was a show, but I was still shocked.) Later I went to see her perform in Sunday in the Park With George, in Gypsy, in Fiddler on the Roof, in A Chorus Line. In high school I saw her in Bye Bye Birdie and The Pajama Game. We didn’t share any lines, but we acted alongside in Anything Goes. I don’t remember if she was in South Pacific, but I saw that too. She invited me over to her house and played me Cabaret for the first time (we were twelve). I invited her family to join mine at a performance of Sweeney Todd. At intermission she pointed out that I had neglected to mention the undercurrent of cannibalism.

           

Then, for years, nothing. The theater bug bit me, and by theater bug I mean the straight play bug. I could never sing or dance or compose music and so I thought if I were going to act, if I were going to write, it better be without music. I stopped attending musicals if I had the chance to see a play instead. Plays were weightier, I felt. They would help me with my writing. They would help me understand the world.

           

Sure, a couple musicals slipped in under the radar. With my aunt and cousin I went to see Spring Awakening (awesome). With Roommate J I went to see Wicked (less than awesome, but more on that later). In London, I took time out of researching and checked out Billy Elliot (really, really great). I saw Hair (revelatory) with my parents twice. It provided a soundtrack to my junior year of college, but it didn’t change my life.

I hadn’t sworn off musicals entirely, obviously, but I was treating them like I treated romantic comedies (and I used to watch a lot of those too): every once and a while, one was fine, but there wasn’t enough substance there to engage me.

           

Through it all, there was one musical I would only touch with two ten foot poles. Sure, I watched the movie like everyone else did. I even downloaded a few of the more famous melancholy songs (original cast, bien sur) to my iPod, but if there was one thing I was not, it was a Rent head. Rent fans, I knew from my many theater festival experiences, were unspeakably annoying. They were prone to bursting into “Seasons of Love” or “La Vie Boheme” in public, talking as loudly as possible, and bad dye jobs. They thought they were incurably edgy; they were as edgy as you can be when your mom drives you to Theaterfest in her minivan and picks you up early for youth group. They had never been to New York, but if they did, I assumed, they would never find their way out of Midtown. They were very open-minded, which was great, but I couldn’t help but wish they’d be less open-mouthed. I couldn’t see Rent without also seeing its legion of awkward and loud middle and high school fans.

           

(In case it’s not abundantly clear already, I will pause here and say that, on occasion, I can be a raging snob.)

           

When I started work three weeks ago, I set up several stations on Pandora. For those of you unfamiliar with how Pandora works, all you have to know is that you pick an album, or a song, or an artist, and the website will then create a stream of songs for you that resemble that album, or song, or artist, in some way. On a whim, I picked the new cast recording of Hair, hoping that it would turn into some Hair/Spring Awakening/audacious oldies songs hybrid.

           

Instead, after playing a few Hair songs to get me started, it switched right over to Rent. Now, I wasn’t about to waste one of my precious thumbs-down-switch-the-song-now chances (they cut you off after a while) on a song I actually kind of liked, so I let “One Song Glory” play on while I typed away. I hadn’t heard it for a while and I had forgotten how much I liked it, so after I finished a sentence I actually paused to give it the thumbs up.

           

After a while I got sick of listening to Berger’s out of school songs while I was chained to my desk, so I started listening to my hip hop station instead. Then I switched to Vaughan Williams. I didn’t switch back to my Hair station again until yesterday, and then it was to find a million Rent songs laying in wait for me.

           

I loved it. It was great. They didn’t play “Seasons of Love.” They didn’t play “La Vie Boheme.” Even if they had, I don’t think I would have objected. Instead, I found myself, mouth open, gaping at my computer, listening to “Santa Fe” and “Without You,” getting all verklempt because those beautiful voices were singing those songs just for me. I almost broke my mouse hitting the thumbs up button. I typed with my fingers figuratively crossed for the rest of the day hoping those two songs would come back and when they did, I silently sang along, stopping only when the President and CEO walked by on her way home.

           

I haven’t known struggle, not really, although I’ve struggled plenty. Nor am I overly fond of hipsters, which those people in Rent most certainly are. I have actively chosen not to starve for my art. I really enjoy taking showers. And I still can’t quite shake the image of a busload of over-privileged, white, Central Illinois teenagers, who would die if they got upwind of a real junkie, butchering the emotion required to sing those songs. So I’m not exactly thrilled with my transformation, at age 23, from a self-assured young professional-ish woman who not two months ago was over identifying with “Do You Hear the People Sing?” (first, overlooked hint that the musical thing was back) into someone who is playing Rent songs on repeat and feeling it in the depths of their soul.

           

Yes, reader, I went right home last night and purchased “Santa Fe” and “Without You” (original cast, bien sur) and carried my computer around my apartment while I performed mundane tasks so that the music and I would not be separated.

           

Maybe the thing about musicals is that you can’t force the connection and that, if you let things happen naturally, one day a particular song or turn of phrase will sneak up and attack you from behind. I certainly believe that to be true of movies and books, and regular, non-plot-driven songs, so why not musicals as well? I think I have to give myself permission to find inspiration in unlikely, sometimes unwanted places.

I may have started already. After all, I wrote something like five pages of my current fiction project while listening to “For Good” from Wicked on repeat. I didn’t like the show, but that song just gets at something. The same could be said for “Santa Fe” and “Without You.” If I can forget all my preconceived notions, maybe I’ll become the ideal listener, or the ideal viewer, and I’ll be able to find something new and unique in a show everyone has done to death.

So am I a musical person again? Not yet. But my Hair station got a lot of play today, so we’ll see. I already bought tickets to The Book of Mormon in December (War Horse too, but that was to be expected). I don’t expect it to change my life, but when it comes to theater I should know by now to expect the unexpected.

I'll Be What I Am

You know that scene in (500) Days of Summer (or maybe you don't in which case, what are you doing?) where expectations and reality don't quite align? This happens all the time--it's practically the human condition in a nutshell--and usually it's cause neither for commotion nor comment. Nonetheless, I feel moved to tell you of an instance recently where expectations and reality did not align for me, and what I did about it.

Before my parents and I went to Colorado, I stopped by one of the several awesome independent bookstores in their new Kansas town and purchased Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. Now, I rarely read nonfiction (although I seem to be dabbling more and more), but the subject is near and dear to my heart, in particular after a year spent in a very loud, boisterous workplace. An added bonus was the fact that the author, Susan Cain, went to Princeton as well.

I should pause and say that I've been thinking about what I'm about to say for about a week now, and that I only really started gathering my thoughts while on the phone with my friend M about three hours ago. This foray into articulation may spawn more blog posts or it may not. It's still a relatively recent thought although--and this might help me to express it--I've been trying to understand the questions surrounding this topic for my entire life.

I should also say that I'm not done with the book yet. Hence the already deep imperfection of this post. I started reading it, and then my mom stole it, read it, and returned it. By then I was already deep in something else. On the bright side: no spoilers! One possible problem: I will be making some pretty obvious snap judgements.

With all that being said, let me lay things out for the more visually inclined.

This is the book I started reading:

This is what it has been like so far:

This is what I wanted it to be like:

That last image is from the Inspector Lewis episode "The Indelible Stain." I love Lewis, not just because it's on the artist formerly known as Masterpiece Theater but because it's smart, well-written for the most part, and, well, quiet.

Most of the quiet is due to the fact the Inspector Lewis' sergeant and sidekick is James Hathaway (played by Laurence Fox, pictured above). Hathaway used to be an Episcopalian seminary student. He left for reasons unraveled (or not) over the course of the show's long run. Hathaway was also a student at Cambridge of some academic repute. Hathaway likes chamber music, walking around Oxford, having pints with friends, and good literature. The screenshot I've selected above came from the beginning of last week's episode. While Lewis stood in a crowded pub and watched a match, Hathaway sat in his flat, had a drink, and contemplated a stack of books. I'm sure many people watching found it a somewhat depressing juxtaposition. I thought it was the most calming image I'd seen all week.

By the end of the episode, Hathaway had gently declined Lewis' offer to join him at the pub for another game in favor of returning home and finishing his book. It's not that Lewis and Hathaway don't socialize, it's just that Hathaway doesn't want to this one time. Lewis, to his credit, accepts this, one of the many reasons their friendship is one of my favorites on television.

I wish Quiet had some of the meditative qualities Hathaway brings to Inspector Lewis. That's what I wanted, even though I'm not sure I had the right to expect it. Quiet is very upfront about what kind of book it is. It is concerned with the cultural impact of the extrovert/introvert divide and the ways both introverts and extroverts can use their innate skills in every professional realm. Introverts, Cain says, may be swimming against the current of the Extrovert Ideal, but they don't have to be. It's time for a paradigm shift, she says. All that is fine, and I knew to expect it, but I think by the time I settled down with the book at the cabin in Colorado (a place, by the way, designed, intentionally or unintentionally, as a paradise for both introverts and extroverts) the book I needed and wanted and the book I had were no longer the same.

Cain and I agree on at least one thing: people learn by example. Her use of specific anecdotes is the best thing I've encountered in the book so far, and not just because this entire topic is grounded in such personal things as genetics (more on the science in a second), identity, and, vaguest and most important, how people feel (more on that now).

I am on page thirty one of Quiet, and already Cain has told me that I'm all right something like five times. Yes, Ms. Cain, I know I'm all right. In fact, I'm pretty damn fabulous. The day they print a pamphlet for my general brand of introversion, I'm going to be on the cover. I think everyone has moments of doubt and moments where they compare themselves to others, but I have never thought of the way I charge and recharge my batteries as anything less than a blessing. So I'm good, thanks.

I don't want to learn by being told; I want to learn by seeing. What I want now, in my hands, is a book of essays. These essays would be written by introverts, but that wouldn't necessarily come up. These essays would be meditations on quiet and noise and the intersections of the two. Maybe one piece would be written by a Hathaway type, who has friends and a job and who doesn't have everything figured out but who nonetheless does pretty well for himself. Maybe this person values those things, but occasionally just wants to retreat to his flat (calm, IKEA interiors, soft chairs, cool air, tea kettle) and read. I want to read quiet people's observations on a range of things, not just the workplace, the ivory tower, and the public sphere. I want to see these people carving out their niches in, on, around, and outside of the swim; wherever they want to be, that's where I want to see them succeeding.

My mom occasionally talks about the life of the mind. She mentioned it once--I don't remember the context--to our neighbor, a meditative guy, and he was very struck by the image. It wasn't until then that I realized there was a word for the way I felt on the playground in elementary school: I'll play with you if you want, but there's going to have to be at least one day a week where I play alone, thank you very much.

Not everyone has had this revelation. Not everyone has stopped beating themselves up when they can't hop from social event to social event to social event to social event without pausing in between to take stock. To those people I would say, check out Quiet. It seems like a pretty good book, all told. It's got a lot of people talking; even The Atlantic has started telling people to hire more introverts. I'll definitely pick it up again and finish it. I'll probably like it, even though I might start tearing out my hair when she tries to buck me up yet again.

And oh, right, I was going to talk about science. This one goes out to Roommate J, who was always the first (well, second or third if certain other roommates were there) to question the logic of things. I want to know more about this. I think it's awesome that Cain is basing her definitions of introvert and extrovert in Jung, because I kind of like the guy, but I would also like some scientific grounding (if applicable, but you don't even say if it is or not) right off the bat. I don't want to live in suspense and wonder whether Rosa Parks called herself an introvert, whether someone developed some Kinsey-esque scale and placed her on it, or whether Cain is making her own assumptions. If there is no mind-blowing science, I would rather just read Jung. I would rather contemplate identity, not read about what I can do to shine in board meetings, because that kind of thing stresses me out. (And, yes, I know that's because I'm an introvert, but I also know how to humorously rock the house right off the board meeting, so that's taken care of.)

Susan Cain may be a role model. Her book may be full of good ideas. There may be a person out there who needs repeated reassurance and that's fine. For my part, even though I hope to live a life as full as Cain's, for now I look to Hathaway and his tea-drinking, book-reading peace.

Open Letter To the Person Who Stole My Wallet Yesterday

Dear Sir or Madam,

Most of all, I really hope you enjoyed reading all those fortune cookie fortunes I collected over the years, perhaps while you were waiting in line at Target with my credit card in hand and maybe two dozen sheet sets and a bunch of DVDs on the conveyor belt. You seem like the type to hunt without a license, but just in case, I stuck a blank jackalope hunting license in there just for you! It's been signed by the mayor of Douglas, Wyoming, so just fill in your name and you should be good to go! I also hope that you take the opportunity to drive down to Urbana and eat four more meals at Basil Thai. Your fifth will be free.

Then, while you're lying in front of the fire on your jackalope skin rug, eating fried rice and watching the complete Friends, consider taking a moment to look at the wallet itself. It might not be your style--pink with red poppies on it--and at first I wasn't even sure it was my style, but I bought it in one of my favorite cities in the world and it held everything. It became my style, because it was my wallet and I liked it better than all the other wallets people gave me over the years, the ones that languished in my top drawer (well, aside from the replacement I whipped out yesterday) untouched.

You're mostly welcome to the cash in there, even though I was planning on spending the forty bucks at the grocery store today. Perhaps your need is greater than mine and you have children or nieces and nephews who could use a good meal. That part is fine. What isn't okay is the rest of the money in there, which my mother handed me when I left Kansas on Thursday. She told me to buy myself a nice outfit I could feel good wearing on my first day of work, which is tomorrow.

Now, I don't have the world's largest bank account, but I have enough that, if I wanted, I could go out and buy an outfit today anyway. After all, I left my debit card in my apartment for the first time this year out of some strange, premonitory luck and I have it with me now (in my new, perfectly nice, substandard wallet). It's not the money. Money is money. I have a job and my mom has a job and my dad gets retirement checks. What really bothers me to the point that it makes my skin crawl and my tear ducts fire up is that my mother, who loves me and wanted me to have a good first day at work because I've had a not-bad-but-not-easy year, handed it to me and I took it out of her hands and put it in my wallet and the next hands to take it out were...not mine. I wasn't standing in Express, and my mother's idea was temporarily hijacked by someone she would probably call "sad," "unfortunate," "an interesting adult."

So think of me in line at the DMV tomorrow morning, while I hope against hope that they can get me a new driver's license as quickly as possible so I don't have to call in late on my first day. And think of me the next time you access any of the services available to you as someone who has gotten to the point that you feel you must steal for a living, because somewhere someone is writing grants to keep those services available to you, and they might be doing it with a new (substandard) wallet in their purse.

Enjoy those CVS and Dominick's discounts!
Sincerely,
Nom de Plume

In Which I Am Claire Fisher

When I left work on June 29th and drove to my hometown (now finally revealed as Champaign, Illinois), I left work for the last time. On my last day, the kids threw a party. They wrote cards and hung streamers and made little protest signs out of Popsicle sticks urging me not to go. They girls created a stepping routine and performed a poem they had written to go with it. M, my coworker, ordered pizza and cake.

It's been a tough year, and one I would not care to repeat, but it has changed me in ways I wouldn't trade for anything and on my last day I felt very loved. To repay some of the kindness that was done to me by welcoming me to the Center, I gave each of the kids one of my books, carefully selected to match their personalities and needs from among the stack of books deaccessioned from my childhood library. FP, who is a quiet, deep-thinking writer, got a hardcover book of poetry. FJ, who I wouldn't be surprised to find myself working for one day, got Julie of the Wolves. Two of the boys, best friends and artists, got Dinotopia and The World Beneath. AP got Harriet the Spy. Her brother got Captain Underpants. And on and on and on. Since my precocity had limits, I went ahead and bought two Anna Deavere Smith books for the girls in the evening program who worked with me to write the play.

I think I may do more for literacy at the Center by my absence than by my presence, as I'm given to understand that letters may already be on their way to me in the mail.

I'm not going far. After taking July to help my parents move, I will be returning to the Center (different site, same organization) as a grant-writer. I'm happy because I'm not leaving entirely; I'll still have to opportunity to see the kids and coworkers I'll miss the most. It'll be very different, though. I'll have a desk, a computer, a filing cabinet, a phone extension, and a boss who checks in with me regularly. I'll have working adult hours. It'll be stressful, but not in the way this year has been. It'll be challenging, but on a professional and not a basic, personal level. I will miss those deep-digging revelations about the world and myself that I had on an almost weekly basis, but I won't miss the time I snatched scissors out of a girl's hand, or the time I had to break up a rapidly escalating fight, or the time there were shots fired outside the school where we did pickup, or those times I kept it together at work only to burst into tears on Lake Shore Drive on the way home.

But, wait, how am I Claire Fisher, youngest Fisher child and red-haired heroine of HBO's Six Feet Under? I have blogged before about my passing resemblance to Roland Pryzbylewski. Now, and not for the first time, I feel myself identifying with Claire, who is semi-catapulted into adulthood as she drives away from the place that has been her house for years while "Breathe Me" by Sia plays in the background.

Claire and I have very little in common in the grand scheme of things, but while I was driving away from Chicago to Champaign where I would spend one night with my best friend's family before embarking on my parents' big move the next day, "Breathe Me" shuffled its way onto my iPod. I found myself thinking of Claire, whose creative struggles I took to heart at the beginning of my time at the Center. "Maybe you're not an artist," her aunt says to her, and she gets really offended, because she knows fundamentally that she is but with every passing day she has less proof. She tries a job that isn't her before finding one that is, but going for it requires a big leap of faith. She leaves her home, and she's uncertain but she's hopeful.

I've found that dealing with uncertainty in one area of your life narrows your focus in others. You start to think of what's really important to you. You may not act on it immediately, but at least you know. Working with the kids at the Center changed my setting just as saying goodbye to "home" changed my setting, but these things also made me more myself. More experiences. More growth. More challenges. More people to identify with.