Empty

One of the best parts about being an RA in college is also one of the worst things. And no one can tell you or warn you out of it. You just have to go through the good (total apex high) and the bad (deep, valley low, so deep that no cellphones receive signals). You experience it first in the fall when you are fresh from training, armed with pristine door decorations and a bazillion and four ideas for programs. You are so ripe for meeting your ruddy-faced residents.

The rooms of your floor are all open, the floors are the cleanest they will ever be, and each open cellblock speaks of the real learning that will transpire here, nevermind the textbooks and lab reports, it is here where the hearbreaks and breakthroughs will go down, all of which you will experience, albeit sometimes tangentially, simply because you are RA. In loco parentis.

This is the best. But this is also the worst.

Because the same emptiness that was so pregnant with promise then in mid-August is the emptiness that you will meet again in May. When all the door decs have been defaced and discarded. When all the rooms are once again vacant. You will see the ghosts of your residents and hear the echos of their cries and their laughter.

And you will be left behind.

I know college has been over for a long, long time for me. I know I am no longer an RA. And thank God because drunk people pushing shopping carts up and down stairwells? Not as hilarious at 3a as they once were.

But I can still feel that emptiness. Like all of my residents had come for an extended stay in the hotel of my heart and then had ceremoniously checked out at the same time. VACANCY.

If there is one thing I hate, it is being left behind. I am a firstborn. I will try everything first, I will do everything fast. I will drop you off at the airport but then I will go do something fantastic just so I can feel that while you are readying for take-off, I will not be the one waiting back at Terminal A.

I have said goodbye to so many friends leaving Boston. But this time, I will not be left behind. And that is also the worst part. With each box packed, I am reminded. We are leaving nothing behind....

***

Fall 1999. Sophomore RA. My residents Kate and Leah snuck up and took this photo. They couldn't believe I wore that ugly coat in public.

'Hood

If you want to beam me Judy Jetson-like over to your house, you should text me multiple times while I'm at church petitioning me, "Can you be my hero? Huge favor!" and then call me and ask me to come over to watch your daughters while you go bring something to your neighbor who is in the hospital. That's what my dear friend and sweet neighbor Sierra did last weekend.

She asked me to come over by 3:45 p.m.

I was riding so fast with Baby Girl on the toddler seat of my bike, you could hear da-dump-da-dump-da-DAH-DUN, I was Mrs. Gulch pedaling fiercely against the din of reggaetone over to Sierra's. I reached her driveway by 3:42 p.m.

When I arrived, the scene was not at all as I expected.

Her daughter C was riding her trike. Sierra was totally at ease, like I had just arrived at a backyard party.

Oh wait.

Why is my friend Anna and her family following me up the driveway? Did Sierra frantically call everyone she could just to come help her with this neighbor hospital errand help thing?

Oh, wai--time out. Wait, what? WHAT?

Oh.

I seriously have the bestest friends.

***

The next four hours was a curtain call. Assorted cast members from This Is Your Life: Boston entered from stage left and stage right. Many wonderful cameos by many wonderful people.

Mid-way through the night, the following photo was taken:

The gravity of this moment, in an e-mail to Sierra, et. al.

As I stood in the backyard of my friend Sierra's last night, stooping down for a picture with all the neighborhood kids, there was another crowd that seemed to be posing for a picture. So many of my Boston friends converged in that same backyard looking back at the kids. Like two Red Rover lines Care Bear staring one another down. My young friends, my golden friends, friends who have seen me on my darkest days. Friends who brought me homemade food when I was wearing a veritable diaper in the hospital after having a turkey lifted out of my womb, friends who prayed for me, friends for whom I prayed, friends whose children I would run into a burning house to save like they are my own.

If you've made it this far, bless you. In short, I thank you for your love for me and for my family. I am so much poorer than that girl who had cab fare in 2002, but infinitely richer in love, laughter, and indomitable spirit. I hold you all close to my heart, tucked under a pink feather boa. I am honored to call you my friends.

Hello, Goodbye

We got a new car about a month ago. She's dreamy. We named her after my late grandmother, Eleanor Agnes, who drove until the fierce age of 91 years young. We were blessed to be able to purchase our new whip, and I'm particularly, profoundly celebratory over being a 30 year-old woman who owns and drives a vehicle. I know, for example, that women in Saudi Arabia are prohibited from driving. I'm suspecting, therefore, that if one went to an Acura dealership (how she would get there, I'll leave you to speculate), she would likely not be granted a payment plan for the TSX Sport Wagon. Driving really is a privilege, and it's one that I enjoy, and even though I try not to enjoy it so much (at the great expense of the ozone and traffic on I-93S and my wallet), I especially enjoy the view this new ride provides in its rearview mirror :)

Said goodbye to my hairdresser and my PCP this week. There weren't any greeting cards saying, "Thanks for ten years of putting up with my paralytic agony over lady land exams." Nor were there cards for "Thanks for keeping me mullet-free since '04." But hopefully they got the sentiment.

***