46.

Halloween

Alright, when did I become the crazy lady who dresses up her dog on Halloween and waits by the door, huge bowl of candy under her arm, peeking anxiously through the blinds? When did I become the person who says, in a high-pitched voice, “And who do we have here?” I just said that: “And who do we have here?” By “we” do I mean “And who do me and my small dog dressed in a wee leprechaun outfit have here?” Seriously, what am I doing with my voice? I can’t seem to just say, “Oh you’re so cute.” Instead, there is giggling and “ooooohing” happening: “Ooooohing, you’re so cute!” I’m basically squealing.

And holy crap, I just said, “Hey, where’s my trick or trick?” to a little Thomas the Tank Engine. Who am I?

During my first semester teaching at the U of A, I dressed all in orange, put on a headband with two ghosts on springs, and brought a giant bag of candy to my 8:00 class. This morning at 8:00 I met with a group of my Business Writing students and they gave me a full run-down of their client project proposal. Really, the “And who do we have here?” excitement makes sense. I don’t know who to be on Halloween, so I’m performing the role of the women who used to give me candy when I was kid (or a teenager, because let's face it I went trick or treating way beyond the appropriate age). I don’t want to be the crazy candy lady or the all-business teacher lady—I want to be somewhere in between, preferably wearing a springy headband.

45.

Crafty Animals

I’m dogsitting for Katie and Matt this weekend, which means a weekend-long dog party with Jeb, Cielo, and Short Dog. If I’m being honest, the dogs are a little needy—a twinge emotional and perhaps a hair neurotic. I’m a poor substitute for Matt and Katie, the cross-eyed old lady who shows up in homeroom when everyone was hoping for the hip young guy with the spiky hair and sweater vests. No matter how many times I wrestle Jeb or rub Ciel’s belly, they just look at me from across the room and sigh: Oh, you’re still here.

For the last two and a half hours, Jeb has been chasing the same lizard. I watched them for awhile and I swear the lizard is deliberately messing with Jeb. At one point it was hiding at the top of a tree stump and when Jeb got within an inch of the spot, it sprung into action, executing a Mountain Dew X-treme leap off the edge, landing perfectly between two pieces of bark. There’s something going on with this lizard, honestly, no one’s that good. Wedged between the bark, the lizard breathed heavily, clearly calculating its next move. This is spy tech lizard—or the spy tech lizard training ground. It’s hard to imagine how a lizard could get wilier than this one, but I’ll remain open to the possibility. Jeb just came in for water, every part of his body shaking. The lizard is clearly winning.

Last night when I was at the movies, the dogs banded together to lash out at me—and I know that Short Dog was the leader. I have a history of animals T.P.ing my house, starting with Abe Froman in New Hampshire. After making the fateful mistake of leaving Abe alone for a night, I came home to find that he had busted out of his cage, grabbed the toilet paper with his very small hands, and darted madly around the house. He was exhausted when I got home, stretched out on his belly under the couch. Last night I arrived home to a similar scene—an entire roll of toilet paper spread out through every room of the house. When I finally found the roll it was wedged in a small nook between two pillows at the top of the couch: Short Dog. I like to think that when I left Short and Abe alone together, they had long conversations, sharing stories and talking about world events. As I went from room to room scooping up toilet paper, I made a series of loud, sarcastic comments (“Oh no, you are right Milo—the one thing that I was hoping to do tonight was to collect streamers of toilet paper tossed wistfully around the house. Honestly, I can’t imagine a better way to end an evening”), but ultimately I’m considering it a tribute to Abe Froman. His legacy lives on.

44.

Dress Up

A few years ago, I bought a pair of huge, round, orange-rimmed sunglasses—not because I thought that I could pull them off, but because I really like to the idea of that person, the version of myself who can jauntily throw on a pair of outrageous sunglasses and stroll out the door, carefree and fabulous. On the real life me, those sunglasses look ridiculous, but they are connected to this idea of myself that exists vividly just outside the realm of reality, one that I have held onto for years—desperately at times. As my mom and sister will remember, when the orange sunglasses went over the side of the paddleboat and into the lake, I did not hesitate to throw my body overboard. I dove down after them and opened my eyes under lake water until I saw them. The whole thing lasted a total of about four seconds and as I climbed back into the boat there was a moment, before the laughing, where my mom and sister just stared at me, frozen in a shared state of utter confusion.

There is this long-lived part of my personality that feels compelled to wear mildly strange and surprising things on my body. It’s not a constant compulsion, but it has surfaced consistently every few years. The first incident I can remember was in sixth grade when I insisted on wearing big plastic earrings shaped, in perfect detail, like pieces of popcorn. I loved them, but more than that I loved the idea of me in them. They were just weird enough, hinting at an inner weirdness that I imagined people would find irresistibly charming and unique.

When I was a kid I used to have a little trunk—and later a huge cardboard box—full of “dress up” clothes, grown up dresses and jackets and costume jewelry and hats. The thought of that dress up box still thrills me, butterflies in the stomach thrills me. It held the possibility for transformation. I would go upstairs, close the door, and try on grown up lives. Sometimes I would play with other people, but mostly I would slip into the clothes by myself, imaging, even acting out, the lives I was trying on. They weren’t often very glamorous lives, just different. They were always me somehow, but they were different versions of me.

I can see now that have spent a lot of time living between myself and imagined versions of myself. I think that such imagination is essential for growth and aspiration, but there has to be a balance, an appreciation of all that I am in this moment, along with hope and desire for new elements of my personality. I guess the big picture thing here is that I’m living the part of my life that I used to act out in the dress up clothes. I’ve reached a point where my imagined self and current self are coming face-to-face more dramatically than they have before, which means I have to be honest in new ways about who I am and what I want and why I want it. That doesn’t mean letting the orange sunglasses go overboard, but it does mean looking more carefully at the fears and desires that they represent.

43.

Moving

My friend Anna has talked about how she feels the need to travel on a bodily level. When she stays too long in one place she can feel the next place pulling her—and, from what she has said, it seems like she can feel it in her skin.

In the last year, two of my friends announced that they have moved into the house where they will spend the rest of their lives, one in California, the other in Alaska. In each case, they played a role in the construction of the home, pouring themselves into the fiber and foundation of the place in a way that they tell me feels permanent. There is a part of me that likes the idea of a home that holds that much of me, but mostly I feel deeply unsettled by the thought of such stability.

I’m caught somewhere in between, a place that demands a blend of movement and home. It’s like the snails. For twenty-six years I believed, strongly, that snails shed their shells. I was convinced that they had a system of shedding and replacing that kept them outfitted in the right size and shape of shell. For decades, I imagined snails moving easily up hills, down sidewalks, across yards, always motivated by the hope of a better place—a home perfectly fitted to their bodies. It was a theory I developed when I was kid and saw all those empty snail shells in the ivy at Nanny and Uncle Tommy’s house. It made sense then and it makes sense now.

I’m not sure when I’m going to get to stop moving and I don’t know that I want to, but I do know that I need to keep home close to my body as I go.

42.

Vowels

At the table next to me, three friends have gotten together for a Sunday morning Scrabble game. I walked by their table just as one of the guys was announcing that if he ever has a daughter he's naming her A-E-I-O-U.