Crepe Myrtle Season, see also: when I cry on the inside

I'm not a flowers-phile like some folks who know all the pretty ones that grow in shade and bloom hard in direct sunlight. I do know crepe myrtles, though. They are the only thing in Tennessee that stands outside looking pretty in July and August. The rest of us are all drippy faint and upping our deodorant game.

***

In 2011, crepe myrtles greeted us as we drove up our long serpentine driveway when we first arrived to our rental home in Tennessee. They looked as though they'd been waiting just for us, practicing their pageant wave. Park here, they said. We've spruced up this place just for you.

*** The crepe myrtles remind me now that we are still here. We've lapped the sun four times and we know when to anticipate the chorus of cicadas, the halo of autumn leaves, the brisk mornings and the humid incubator that is crepe myrtle season.

***

I spend most of July and August in a state of homesickness, grieving a home and a people that are contained in one big amoeba of pain that globs around inside of me, never allowing me to feel perfectly at ease wherever I live. WAHHHH MEEEE. I'm a pilgrim from a lot of places and I ache privately because I think I'm alone in this. My country 'tis of thee, you confuse the heyyy y'all out of me, of thee I sing.

***

The beautiful crepe myrtles earmark another season of being here and being a misfit. They also usher in another school year. I've been so excited about sending both of the punks back to their school work-a-day routines that I practically forgot to mourn their own growth, to feel the full freight of their being a whole school year more advanced than the people they were last year when the crepe myrtles were in full glory.

*** Kids are only capable of two kinds of good-byes, it seems. The unceremonious "Bye Felicia"-esque dismissal, or the neck-wringing ugly cry adieu. How long, or should I say, how many crepe myrtle seasons until they realize their parents are all Bye Felicia on the outside but on the inside?

That one time I hung out with the cast of #OITNB

Prologue: That headline was a complete misnomer. It was only one member of the cast of "Orange is the New Black." Clickbait much? Also, Everyone I went to high school with who reads this will say, Kendra, please to get over yourself. To which I will respond, It's nice when some things never change, isn't it? ***

In 1998, I was a freshman in college. It is well-documented that the internet was brand new [to mine eyes]. I had also spent the prior four years in an all-girls Catholic high school run by nuns. It was everything you've read: strict, overprivileged, competitive, and raucous fun. But I was much too busy overachieving for the fun part, for which I was rewarded by a local civic organization with a sizable scholarship.

Pro-tip: don't ever give a 17 year-old a scholarship in the form of a check made out directly to her. She might use it for another kind of education.

Like she might teach herself how to use the internet. And buy a flight to New York City.

The plan for the weekend that I told my mom: I was staying with my high school gal pal at Fordham. The plan for the weekend that I didn't tell my mom: I was staying with Greg at NYU and would place a call on his landline to my gal pal at Fordham to say hello for two minutes.

In the weeks leading up to my maiden voyage to NYC, I realized I had no clothes that were not ill-fitting because for the 12 years prior I had worn a polyester uniform that resembled the upholstery of chairs found in nursing home lobbies. That scholarship once again came in handy when I received the most cliched of clothing catalogues in the college mail: Delia*s. I called 1-800-DELIA*s with debit card at the ready and proceeded to buy a full outfit that I deemed suitable for NYC hijinks. Per the custom of tele-service, the operator noted that because I had spent $50, I was eligible to receive the free Cosmic Kitty tote. Cosmic Kitty was not my style per se, which, we had established was Catholic tartan chic, but a girl needs a catch-all for NYC, surely.

Full disclosure: I no longer lie to my mom. I no longer use civic scholarships for weekend rendezvous. Or to buy clothes from Delia*s.

Fast forward to my arrival in NYC. It is hard to imagine but none of us had cellphones, so when I asked Greg to meet me at LaGuardia, the only thing he knew was approximately when my flight was arriving and that I would be wearing blue glitter headboppers. Somehow we found one another, like two star-crossed loves in a Rumi poem.

This is Greg:

NYC was a drug to my system. I was so electrified by the Big Apple. The Drifters were right--the neon lights ARE bright on Broadway!! There really is always magic in the air....

During my last full day in NYC, we went to see the debut of "Ragtime." On our way, we stopped at Greg's friend's apartment. His friend was named Chernus and all I knew was that Chernus went to Juilliard. Remember that I had spent four years besting other girls on geometric theorems and not watching "Party of Five." I didn't have ticket stubs from Barenaked Ladies Concerts. I didn't have an ex-boyfriend with a pager. I didn't (gasp) know what Juilliard was.

Pity. The. Fool.

I stood awkwardly in the doorway of Chernus' apartment. It had exposed brick. The walls were covered in posters of cultural things. The posters were in frames. Chernus was, like, a grown-up. Who went to Juilliard. Whatever that was.  Greg and Chernus joked and traded notes about Broadway shows. I stood frozen in the doorway, clutching my black tote, the embarrassing Cosmic Kitty reversed to my side so no one could see.

I bawled in the balcony at "Ragtime," all over my Delia*s cardigan sweater. I hadn't packed any tissues in my Cosmic Kitty tote because I didn't know that a live performance could wreck a person like that.

After the show, we met Chernus by the back door to the theater. And we met Audra McDonald and took a picture with her. We wouldn't realize that you could only see my forehead in the picture until we developed the camera film. So meta.

As we were walking back to the subway, Chernus said he had to go. Greg said, "Kendra, show Chernus how you do the reindeer dance from 'Waiting for Guffmann.'"

Hah. That's okay, I said.

"She has to protect her Cosmic Kitty," Chernus laughed.

And that is the story of the time I hung out with Michael Chernus, aka Cal Chapman from "Orange is the New Black."

Meow.

What #ALLinCLE means to me

I've been digging deep trying to figure out why this NBA championship means so much to me, why every floor seat of my heart seems sold out to the Cavs. It's an odd condition, this late b-ball season fever. Especially now, when I've lived the better part of my life away from Cleveland, Ohio. My reason is, superficially, one that many who grew up in Cleveland share--few of us have ever seen a pro sports championship for our hometown in our lifetimes. But I think this particular championship speaks to a larger narrative, the bigger story that kids from the rust belt know well. When you grow up in a place (think: Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh) where the industry has been steadily leaving since WWII, where the white flight epidemic has been dismantling the rich cultural vestiges of a city, where the uniform offered to the majority of black men is an orange jumpsuit or a suit for his funeral, the hope that Lebron James has offered to Cleveland is a hope of a certain resurrection. His story, the son of a single mother who was given a remarkable athletic gift, inspires us to remember not to buy the lie. The lie that steel was our only export when we know that we manufacture more heart, more resilience on any given day as gritty Mid-westerners than Steph Curry pops out his mouthguard. The lie that bombed-out neighborhoods preyed upon by subprime lenders cannot recover when we know our incredible power to hold Wall Street accountable and to do right by our neighbors. The lie that young people are all bound for destruction, corruption, or death when we know that Gina deJesus, Amanda Berry, and Michelle Knight survived the worst kind of evil and haven't moved elsewhere--they've remained in the city that loved them and will continue to honor their matchless courage. No man or woman, not Lebron James, not Amanda Berry, not Moses Cleveland (the guy who "invented Cleveland"), can single-handedly lay claim to the renaissance of a city or its industries. It is by our hope -- an illogical, irrational, indefatiguable hope--by which we will be known.

It hurt when Lebron James made his Decision to "take his talents to Miami." At the time, it seemed like an impossibly arrogant statement. (The man never runs the risk of being humble.) In retrospect, I hear the echo of a different chorus, though. He may have taken his talents to Florida, but he stored his beating heart in the Ohio that raised him, a state whose monicker was once "the heart of it all." To me, "All in CLE" is more than a clever hashtag that will earmark a certain set of games in history. It's not just the condition that we fans are "all completely invested." It's that we all, we in every zipcode and every exurb and every far-removed pocket from Cleveland, are actually all IN Cleveland. Because that is where our hearts live and from where our exhaustless hope derives.

Back to Believeland Tuesday. I'll hear you there. #ALLINCLE

Photos by Fr. Patrick Anderson