The things they found when they were moving

Everyone always hails the purge when you move, the commendable, enviable ridding of Excess Stuff that one accumulates from living for too long in a particular place. We could all Marie Kondo our way through our domiciles on a weekly basis but sometimes you still open a door and lo! The entire Oriental Trading catalogue appears to have been deposited, in glow-in-the-dark form, where your cookie cutters should be. I do not exaggerate that the moving out of our Tennessee rental home was a six-month liquidation of crap. I don't know if my kids are just at that fringe age where they are still clinging to ye toys of olde whilst embracing the accoutrements of Tomorrowland but they were categorically unhelpful when it came to parting with any of their possessions. I was all, "I put this in the basement for a whole year and you never asked about it once," and they were all, "Wait, Mom, that's my favorite band-aid of all time!" So we sent them to my parents' house for two weeks. Seriously. This was hard but necessary. Separate, stop, collaborate and listen. We sent them away and made 23824390234 trips to the donation bin at Goodwill and finally we only had one truckload of stuff to move into our new Boston apartment and we're here. Yay. Somehow still unpacking boxes of stuff. Weird.

In the wake of this move, here are some interesting artifacts discovered:

Exhibit A: Charlie Sunshine Lotion - The lotion itself is starting to sort of ferment but you can open the tube and catch a whiff of Summer 1999. The sense memory is fierce with this one. One sniff and I am transported to  early college years and all of the homes of my high school friends who were still working high schooly jobs for one last summer. Lifeguarding and nannying and working at the mall and whatnot. This perfume smells of being young and mostly dumb and patently irresponsible and yet I always had enough money to fill my Honda Civic's gas tank. So basically this lotion reminds me of a time and a metabolism I will never get back.

Exhibit B: Costco Calling Card - This item is not only completely obsolete but is incredibly sentimental. This was The Calling Card that made possible the 1.5 year long-distance relationship between Loverpants and myself. Any time one of us would get paid, we'd load a hot $20 onto that ticket. For a time, Loverpants had the phone number and code memorized. It's a hell of a thing to be able to look at a 2 x 3 sheet of plastic and think, you were indispensable. Upon you were all anecdotes about his grad school endeavors and my undergraduate misadventures and all the sighing and crying in between. I'll never know how much money we logged onto that calling card, talking about everything from the ridiculous to the sublime, but kids today will never understand why one was necessary and this makes us Betty and Barney Rubbles: The Long-Distance Courtship

Exhibit C: 8th Grade Math Trophy - It may not have had my name on it (because I was part of a team! A team of mathletes!) but kids, there is now proof. Mama was once smart enough to do math and get a trophy for it. Nevermind that I was 12. Nevermind that it was on a Saturday and everyone else who could add and subtract was probably playing football or watching VH-1 Pop-Up Video. Mama got herself some heavy metal for her mad math skillz. I took a picture of it so it'd last longer, yep I sure did, Pee Wee Herman.

The most expensive T-shirt I own

I didn't buy this t-shirt nor did it come with a price tag affixed. But I know that it's the most expensive piece of clothing I own.

I don't treat it as such. I don't handle it gingerly, afraid that it might tear at the seams or unravel at the edges. I don't wash it irregularly so that its painted letters don't quickly fade. In fact, I wear it often and with pride because, as I mentioned, it is the most valuable piece of clothing I own.

When I was a youth worker for the City of Boston, I served every day at a community center in a neighborhood I had never been to before, not even driven through once. I didn't know anyone who lived there, in the patchwork of tidy triple-deckers and eateries that ranged from Salvadorean pupusa shops to Italian eateries to Chinese restaurants to Vietnamese pho houses. The neighborhood comprised effectively an island and most of the kids who grew up there knew one another. They confessed they didn't bother skipping school because someone would see them on the corner and call their mother.

Most of the youth I worked with lived in a housing development complex. I had never visited a housing development, never walked through the block after block of unimaginatively designed structures and marveled at how there was no green space, how there were so many children living throughout the complex and yet there was no space for them to play that was not concrete.

So the kids came to the community center where I was based, where I did a job for which I received no training, in a place I wasn't so much as even acquainted with, with a population of kids whose lives were unfathomably different than anything I had known. In my arrogance, I thought that I was the good thing that had come their way. A college graduate, a creative program person, a self-proclaimed lover of kids.

I did everything wrong. I presumed when I should have asked. I got angry when I should have laughed. I muscled through on my own when I should have sought help. Most of the programs I ran were a bust. The boys humored me, the girls came and asked me questions about sex. I thought I had what they needed, if I could just organize a better program of activities. If only they would come every day, I could meet their needs. My bosslady was so patient with me. She would say, "The only problem with you is that yaw not from heeyah." I laughed and only sort of knew what she meant. I started asking a music shop if they would let me take their leftover sample CDs to give away as prizes. The kids started looking at me like a prize dispenser, popping them out like Pez. I made $22,000 a year before taxes. I still thought it was about me.

During an outdoor program I organized, there were a ton of water balloons which, since these were teenagers, became a ton of water buckets filled and thrown. I didn't have a change of clothes. Someone handed me this Mayor's Cup t-shirt, one from a stack that were just hanging around in the closet.

By the time I was a year into the job, I knew that I would be getting married, that I would be moving on. I took the LSAT with my co-worker Kamau. We knew we couldn't stay making the money we were making. We wanted to do the most good.

After I got back from my honeymoon, I started interviewing for other jobs. I had deferred law school but I still wanted get home earlier in the day to spend time with my hew husband. I soon found 9-5 administrative job that I could walk to from our apartment.

On my last day working at the community center, I had not wanted to make a big deal about my departure. I wasn't sad that I was leaving, but I was sad that I wouldn't see how the kids would grow. I wouldn't know who went to college and who had a growth spurt over the summer. I wouldn't hear their voices change and watch their girlfriends change and offer to drive them home when they didn't have enough change for the bus fare.

On my last day, only one kid came back to say good-bye. He had been by far one of the hardest kids to reach. He hated school and just wanted to play basketball. He seemed to break one girl's heart on Monday and have found a new one to break by Tuesday. I didn't understand his goals; I didn't understand how I could help him.

But he came back to say good-bye. He sat with me in the office, his pristine baseball hat with the manufacturer's silver sticker still on the underside of the wide brim. He looked up from under that wide brim and asked me about my plans. I told him I thought I'd probably go back to school so that I could eventually teach. He nodded and bounced a basketball under the table. We hugged it out and he went to go shoot hoops.

Whenever I wear my Mayor's Cup t-shirt, I think of what it represents. I think how it was handed to me when I had nothing else to wear because I was a pilgrim. I remember how hard it was to earn respect as a pilgrim. I think how I'd never had to learn how to love kids who were hard to love before. I remember how after nearly two years, they returned that love to me. At least one did. He handed it to me like it was a free t-shirt. One that I would be so grateful to receive, one that still makes me feel so privileged and proud, not only because I got to love but was loved well in the end.

To the young friend who can't take more tomorrows like today

To my dear friend whom I've never met but whom I know so well: Your life right now as a young person is anguish, yes? Maybe you are bullied or depressed or abused or addicted or caught up in a shame spiral that keeps pirouetting and shows no signs of slowing down. There is no exit from this ride. Today blends into tomorrow and on and on the days and nights blur and you push through in autopilot, three turns to the right, two turns to the left, over and over and over, you wait for the click on your combination lock. What's in that locker you've got packed so full and so well? Is it a relationship you can't get over, even though you know it wasn't for your benefit? Is it tension at home that won't evaporate? Is it a looming decision that seems to eclipse all the other things that are meant to bring you joy? Is it the sense of belonging that everyone else seems to have but for you, it's always fleeting, always vanishing like sand held in your hand? Is it all of this and so much more, and you just can't take any more tomorrows if they are like today? The heaviness, the sourness, the emptiness, the pain.

My friend, I see you. I feel all that. I have felt all of that.

I want you to know that I'm sorry. This is a hard season of life for you and I am sorry for all the crap you have to navigate. A show* that I loved, one that was only around for one season (adding injury to insult over the anguish of being young) had a main character who said, "When your parents ask you how was school, it's like they're asking you how was the drive-by shooting?" Just existing in this hard season is subjecting yourself to all manner of assaults and offenses you don't expect. You are subjected to the drive-by, maybe multiple times a day.

*

The real drive-by is not the pain that people or situations in our lives cause, though. Rather, it's the lies we choose to believe. And that's where I want to tell you not to buy the lie. This is your greatest weapon in the battle.

So much of the counsel we give young people points your focus in the wrong direction. We tell you how bad the bullies must feel about themselves to have to prey on someone like you. We tell you not to get involved, not to feel so sorry for yourself--think of all the kids who would kill to have what you have. That still doesn't advance your game piece very far, though, does it?

If you were really involved in a battle, you wouldn't spend all your time looking to the opposition, studying their weapons, memorizing their tactics, predicting how they will plot their course and none of the time training yourself, right? You would build up the muscle and agility to fight back, or perhaps strategize a plan that would circumnavigate the enemy all together.

I don't know much about fighting, but I do know about enemies. I know about the enemy that lies to our minds and hearts about who we are and what we're worth. I know about an enemy that used to push me onto a hamster wheel of busy, keeping so busy all the time with two jobs and a full load of high school classes and leadership in all the clubs and a saint-load of community service. The busyness became my identity. I was The Busy Girl, so talented with all the flaming torches I was juggling, the one relied upon, the one who had no time to reflect or eat or be anything but kind and dependable on the outside, whereas on the inside I was a decaying sack of depression, anxiety, and serious feels that I could never be enough--not for my parents or teachers or people I called friend--not even for God. I had bought the lie that I was not enough and needed to work to be valuable.

The good news, friend, is that just because you bought the lie, you don't have to keep it. However, you will have to fight to return it. And the fight will make you stronger for future battles. The enemies that lie about who we are and what we're worth never go away. Seasons will pass and life will not get easier. It will increase in depth and complexity. But training yourself to spot the lies will better equip you for the battles ahead.

For most of us, friend, training ourselves to refuse to buy the lies starts small. You are going to just want to put on that brand new life of Not Buying Lies and to coast freely down the hill where all the other rah-rahs are in a huddle cheering for everyone UP WITH TRUTH! DOWN WITH LIES! The reality is that sometimes you are going to have to strive to wake up and pledge to not buy any lies about your worth today. Or maybe to pledge not to buy any lies for just the next hour. Or next minute. Or next fourteen seconds. It might sound like this:

I am part of an amazing creation. I am made for more than this. I am loved. I refuse to believe anything to the contrary. For the next four seconds. Amen.

Or your fight might look like a Napoleonic side-eye. Get thee behind me, lies.

Or a MCG power stance. No lies here. Only Superstars.

Or a Drakeoneon dance. That can only mean one thing.

I wish I could tell you, friend, that you could perfect your stance or just Drake dance through life and lies will have no more power over you, but the lies continue. Sometimes they slip them in our coffee or sometimes enemies visit us just before we're catching sleep. When the lies stack up and seem to hop into our shopping cart, remember that you are not alone. You are never alone. Call on your friend, call on your Higher Power to get in your corner and speak truth back into your life. I did this just the other day. I was simply not strong enough on my own two legs so I had a friend pray me out of a hard place. Enemy lies are strong but truth and love are stronger.

Young friend, I so wish for you a more peaceful season. I hope in the meantime that you grow strong and brave on the battlefield. I pray that you may stay strong and brave for the next day, the next hour, the next fourteen seconds.

Your friend, Kendra