#BridesmaidDiaries

Thanksgiving

This time last year I was sitting at a bookstore in Los Angeles, looking at an Annie Leibovitz book. (Which, admittedly, was incredible.) I was huddled in Barnes and Noble because the house in which I was staying was meat locker-cold, and all my Los Angeles friends were off living their Los Angeles lives without me. So I went to Barnes and Noble to try and pretend like I was having a good time all alone the night before Thanksgiving.

Tonight I walked through my beautiful, glamorous, shiny town that feels like my own personal promised land, cheeks chilled by the cold breeze blowing down 10th Street, fat yellow leaves making a saffron carpet underneath my sparkling sequined sneakers, shaking my shoulders and mouthing the words to the happy Simon and Garfunkle in my ears. I hugged my wide cream scarf tighter around my shoulders, and smiled at a doorman inside his glowy post. This beautiful town will be home for my first ever East Coast/ New York Thanksgiving, and oh how I have so much to be thankful for.

Flower and Sun

Romantic relationships in modern society are usually so physically driven that sex becomes the center and friendship becomes the fringe, but that is an inversion and perversion of the true purpose and structure of an affair, which is to chase and cherish a lover's soul. The old Christian restriction upon sexuality in a relationship was meant to allow friendship to be the flower and sex to be sunlight. The prurient modern bachelor only knows sunlight, truly he only wants sunlight, and he shall see oceans of it in the desert where he lives.

Gabe Finochio

Psalm 3:6-9

My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, Lord, how long?

Turn, Lord, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.
Among the dead no one proclaims your name.
Who praises you from the grave?

I am worn out from my groaning.

All night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.
My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes.

Away from me, all you who do evil,
for the Lord has heard my weeping.
The Lord has heard my cry for mercy;
the Lord accepts my prayer.

Birthday Girl

Yesterday was wonderful. I woke up and put on my birthday dress and birthday shoes, and walked to work where I was serenaded, hugged, Skyped, called, texted, surprised, Facebooked, gifted, surrounded by gorgeous flowers, and just generally made to feel incredibly loved and special. Then I got to spend the evening with my favorite New Yorkers.

Thank you for being so sweet. I can't tell you how much it meant to me.

Office birthday loot.

Philadelphia Story

On Saturday, Allison and I decided to expand our East Coast horizons and take a day trip to the birthplace of our great nation. We awoke and got on a bus at an hour too unholy to repeat, and spent the day touring Philly learning about America's history, eating ice cream, and trying on dresses. Oh, and standing in Rocky's footsteps. Natch.

T'was a good day.

(Some of the below were stolen borrowed from Allison. Thanks, AD!)

Philly foliage

Just a coupla' girls, out on the town, visiting the first senate room.

Gee Dub

This was right around the time I was developing a sizeable crush on George Washington.

City Hall

The Lady and the Liberty

Occupy Philly (insert pithy/Philly/hippie joke here)

This seemed rude. (smoked [non-chubby] fish)

"Adriennnnnnnnne!"

Allison is the king of the world.

The greatest.

Unsatisfied

Most people, if they have really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings that no marriage, no travel, no learning can really satisfy. I’m not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called successful marriages or vacations or learned careers, I’m speaking of the best possible ones. There is something we have grasped at in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent and chemistry may be a very interesting job, but something has evaded us.

C.S. Lewis

Five Years

Got a lot of love today.

Miss you, Momma.

-Kit Kat Girl

Anything Goes

Amaaaaaazing night. Best show I've seen in New York. Followed by me dancing in the street in stilettos trying to hail a cab. (I'll tell that story later)

If anyone wants to know what will be stuck in my head for the next week...

My friend Joe says incredible things

"Women need to stop worrying about what a man can buy you. And find out what a man could build you."

My Night

Tonight was one for the books. Dinner and drinks on Eataly's rooftop (who knew?!), and more red wine than I think I've ever consumed in one sitting. Emily and Greg, my two sweet married friends in town from LA, were there, along with their two sweet friends from the other LA-- Louisiana. Rounded out with a sassy Latina from the upper west side (I never did catch her name), and we had a party.

Lots of wine, salumi, cheese with honey, fried shiitake mushrooms, pretzel bread so hot the steam burned our fingers when we passed it to break off crunchy hunks, all consumed quickly and with vigor as the tenor of our conversation rose. We talked over each other, laughing and shouting, moving wine glasses and carafes, stacking plates and passing bread.

Greg is from Indiana, and he sat next to me as he talked animatedly about his upcoming film projects and asked with his sweet Midwestern twang about my job and life and church. It should be noted that Greg gives one of the top three hugs I've ever received in my life, and I can blissfully report that I was lucky enough to be on the receiving end of more of these than I could count over the course of the evening. As we all drank our wine, we talked about politics and fiscal policy (the two Louisiana boys are investment managers, a fact easily and wholly tempered by their southern-ness I discovered) and Full House and whether this was clover or orange blossom honey. If we were ever to glance up in contemplation or ecstasy, the Empire State building gleamed overhead in full view, so close it felt touchable.

This was how I spent my Saturday night. One of the boys bought our dinner. All of it. From the wine to the pretzel bread to the awful salad the waiter recommended I get. The other bought our gelato downstairs, and listened rapturously as I told him my Dustin Hoffman story. (He earned it.)

It's nights like these that make me so happy to be young and fun and living in the greatest city in the world. So happy that this is the exciting world I get to live in and enjoy and call my own.

I'm so happy that today, this is my life.

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Loving the King

I have no idea how to be in love with Jesus.

I am rendered useless when it comes to loving nearly anything at all, much less the King of all heaven who ransomed my heart and my soul, my life and my mind—but how could one so perfect, so holy and whole, ever desire my affection or need my heart’s embrace? When I think about Jesus—my imperfect, distant, flawed, speculative knowledge of his person and character—all I can think of is how dimly I grasp his goodness. And how utterly ill-equipped I am to respond even to that.

From what I know about Jesus—from what I understand about things I’ve heard other people say, things I’ve experienced and read—what echoes in my soul, the deep calling out to deep, is his utter goodness. He is good. He is rich and holy and wise and smart and playful and sweet and persistent. He is respected and feared but tender and kind. He wants to hear everything I have to say and is never frustrated by or disappointed in me. He gives the best advice and tells the funniest jokes and is the safest company I’ll ever keep. He knows me better than anyone will ever know me, and loves me better than anyone will ever love me.

He is good. He is good. And yet with all this, with all he has saved me from and given me, I have no idea how to love him.

How feeble my attempts seem, and how frequently I fail as I blunder in my affections and selfish, short-sighted grace. All I can do is hold out my hands in the darkness.

Find me. Please find me. You who ransomed my heart and mind, make known to me the path of life. Let me love you. Help me love you.

There is nothing I am less good at than love. I am far better in competition than in love. I am far better at responding to my instincts and ambitions to get ahead and make my mark than I am at figuring out how to love another. I am schooled and trained in acquisitive skills, in getting my own way. And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily— open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride. (Eugene Peterson)

Help me. Help me be in love with you.

Brooklyn

I went to Brooklyn tonight. Stood on a rooftop with the gentle late-summer breeze ruffling my hair, taking in what was quite possibly the most stunning view I’ve seen since moving to New York. The lights stretched from La Guardia’s air traffic control tower in Queens, all the way past the Chrysler and Empire State, down through the Battery and across the Brooklyn Bridge. I left the party as my eyes grew heavy, and went and stood in the sticky hot subway station waiting for the train to come.

Brooklyn is wonderful, I thought. More and more people flooded the platform, and everyone was creative and interesting and glowing with youth and excitement and late-summer heat. The man with the guitar had a tambourine around one ankle and a ring of homemade wooden bells on the other, and he strummed and stomped along to “Hotel California” and “Brown-Eyed Girl” as the crowd grew denser. 45 minutes later my feet were hurting, still no train, and the station was closing. We all rose to the sidewalk, spreading in clusters to street corners to fight for taxis, or to line up for the shuttle. I walked blocks and blocks and blocks and finally flagged down an off-duty cab.

“Are you available?” I asked. He nodded. “You going into the city?” He nodded again. I got in, feet weary, ready for sleep. “You’re my hero,” I sighed.

“And you are my heroine,” he replied.

New York is wonderful.

Rock Me Like a Hurricane, Day 2/2

So that was it. After tossing fitfully for hours last night I finally drifted off to sleep right as Irene rolled into town. I heard a few whistling whines, a howling wind or two, and when I woke at noon she was all but gone.

Spent the day inside watching footage of news anchors up to their ankles in water somewhere in Long Island, baked cookies, and did not watch the Friday Night Lights I promised yesterday because sometimes your heart just isn't ready. Don't push it.

After the worst of the winds died down, I pulled on my jeans (WHICH-- sidebar: either I am wasting away or said jeans have gotten significantly larger, because... well, I literally had to hold them up to keep them on. Like, two steps hands-free and they were threatening to hit the concrete) and grabbed my camera before darting outside to get some pictures of the last of this hurricane sky. The light was fading, so I had to move quickly, but I managed to take over a hundred photos in about half an hour. It was liberating to be outside with the wind still blowing ferociously, scattered little rain drops sprinkling my face tilted toward the pink and purple sky beneath my camera. Pretty wonderful.

This doesn't have anything to do with Irene, but I discovered it while I was out and thought it was pretty cool.

Hello Hurricane, Day 1/2

Well. Today couldn't have gone any better unless I'd spent it making out. ...Oops.

(Goal for day 2...)

My activities for the day included, but were not limited to, the following:

**Packaging up and mailing back a gold sequined evening gown (!) that was perfect, but for the 2-3" gap between the bottom of said dress and the floor. Le sigh. #tallgirlproblems

**Hand washing all my sheets and pillowcases in the bathtub. This is not for the faint of heart. I felt like a pioneer woman, wiping sweat from my brow with the back of my wrist as I churned that king-size fitted sheet and the pillowcases for my unnamed number of pillows in the sudsy, near-scalding water. Then I let them soak for a few hours before running downstairs to plop them in the rickety old washing machine for a final spin. (This was where my visions of wooden washboards and damp tendrils ended, in case you were wondering.) BUT! I cannot begin to describe to you how gloriously sparkling clean my sheets are, rendering my big bed on par with an oversized, plush hospital gurney. With a satin and feather throw pillow. Natch.

**Coming up with witty/ vaguely inappropriate tweets and status updates, of which I used one on Facebook and more than I'd like to admit on Twitter. (There's a reason the latter is protected.)

...Aaaaaaand, that's it! Some cleaning, some cooking, some puttering around on Pinterest and the like... On deck for tomorrow is cookie baking and probably more Friday Night Lights than one person should watch in one sitting. But, you know, SOMEBODY'S got to make sure Riggins gets into college...

See you tomorrow.

Psalm 45

Listen, O daughter, give attention and incline your ear:
Forget your people and your father’s house;
Then the King will desire your beauty.
Because He is your Lord, bow down to Him.
The daughter of Tyre will come with a gift;
The rich among the people will seek your favor.

The King’s daughter is all glorious within;
Her clothing is interwoven with gold.
She will be led to the King in embroidered work;
The virgins, her companions who follow her,
Will be brought to You.
They will be led forth with gladness and rejoicing;
They will enter into the King’s palace.

In place of your fathers will be your sons;
You shall make them princes in all the earth.

I will cause Your name to be remembered in all generations;
Therefore the peoples will give You thanks forever and ever.

The Hearth

"Resettled farm child. From Taos Junction to Bosque Farms project, New Mexico."

Dorothea Lange, December 1935

I saw this photo of a little girl in the Depression today. Delicate slouched socks, hunched back, crumbling fireplace facade all bathed in shafts of sunshine glow. And my quiet heart said, "How nice it would be to have your outsides match your insides."

Jealous. Something in me was softly, sweetly jealous of this little girl.

In no way do I mean to negate the pain of her circumstance, or somehow elevate my own agony above her own, but in an odd way I thought it must be nice to have everything around you, all physical representations, in line with how your heart is feeling. Instead I sleep in a big bed, put on mascara and fill in my eyebrows and touch up my lip gloss, pull on my jeans, walk to work and sit at a desk in a well-lit office with a nice view, chat with friends, banter, laugh, eat ice cream, go back to my big bed... And all the while I feel like that lost, forlorn little girl. I have no ragged bench to huddle on, no cold coals to stare into with impunity. Instead I stare into the soft glow of my computer screen and feel my heart still slowly breaking, broken, broke.

"How nice it would be to have your outsides match your insides." Have some obvious, out-in-front, red flag-raising reason for feeling the way you do. Something that sends people with soft hands and kind words and warm hearts rushing to your aide. But my lip gloss/banter/ice cream combo brings no aide.

So I sit, in my heart, by the crumbled hearth and dream of what life was and how awful that it isn't here any more. And think that maybe someday, whether here or somewhere else, this hearth will have new life.

A New Yorker's View from 9th Ave.

Actual Conversation

Setting: Her kitchen.

Several deep guffaws pepper the exchange.

Me: "Ugh, do I reeeeeaaaally have to go to work tomorrow?"

Her: "Well, did you go yesterday and today? I mean, that's two days in a row so I think you're due for a break."

Me: "You know, I agree. I'm just going to write them a note. Will you write mine and I'll write yours?"

Her: "Of course. I mean, it's only healthy."

Me: "Weren't we supposed to be married by now?"

Her: "At least trophy wives."

Me: "Dammit. I just want someone to want me for my body, not my mind."

Her: "Dammit."

----

Dammit.

Proud

“You look proud,” he said.

He was tall and tan and young and blonde with a gleam in his blue eyes and a tender smile pulling at the edge of his lips. When he started walking beside me, brushing through crowds of people on the sidewalk, smiling at me handsomely from the side of that mouth, I tossed my head in his direction. “Proud?” I retorted with a glint and a grin.

I had seen him coming and I knew he saw me— walking through the post-work masses throbbing along the sidewalk in and out of busy storefronts. He was standing in his navy polo, facing the oncoming crowds, looking for someone. And as soon as I saw him out of the corner of my eye I knew he was looking for me. The same intangible quality, upon which I have yet to lay the proverbial finger, that makes taxi drivers give me marriage advice and old ladies confide in me at lunchtime, makes these men/guys/boys who stand in the middle of the sidewalk looking for someone to talk to about impoverished children, talk to me.

So as I hustled through the bustle, the crowds parted around us and he said, “May I talk to you?” I glanced up at his cool blue eyes and saw them soften. “No, I’m sorry I don’t have very much time,” I said quietly, “But thank you very much,” and continued to press on. As I passed him he said it. You look proud.

I didn't sense any meanness in his tone, but in an effort to give him a hard time I smiled broadly and threw back my retort, face contorting in mock offense. Proud??

He stopped and stood beaming. Lifting his head, elongating his neck, and opening his chest he said, “You know… Proud. Regal.”

My laughter bubbled over the din of the swarming sidewalk. “Thank you,” I said through the parted crowd. And I meant it. The golden evening sun gleamed all around us, and we shared grins as I turned and continued walking away.

I smiled for the rest of the walk home.

From the Window Watchers

Son, son, you have been mad and drunken, furious and wild, filled with hatred and despair, and all the dark confusions of the soul-- but so have we. You found the earth too great for your one life, you found your brain and sinew smaller than the hunger and desire that fed on them-- but it has been this way with all men... And now, because you have known madness and despair, and because you will grow desperate again before you come to evening, we who have stormed the ramparts of the furious earth and been hurled back, we who have been maddened by the unknowable and bitter mystery of love, we who have hungered after fame and savored all of life, the tumult, pain, and frenzy, and now sit quietly by our windows watching all that henceforth never more shall touch us-- we call upon you to take heart, for we can swear to you that these things pass.

Thomas Wolfe (You Can't Go Home Again)

A Land More Kind than Home

Something has spoken to me in the night... and told me that I shall die, I know not where. Saying: "[Death is] to lose the earth you know for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth."

Thomas Wolfe (You Can't Go Home Again)

This Day

It was this day last year that I applied for this job... This day after last week when I traveled to New York for the very first time and thought, "I think I'm going to move to New York." This is funny because last week-- present tense-- I traveled to California for work... For my job... But last year's last week I was in New York. The same week. Flip flop.

It was this day last year that I applied for this job. While I was in California, while I was in LA, working at a restaurant wearing ill-fitting pants and orthopedic shoes, listening to Florence and the Machine and thinking that her screaming bellow perfectly matched the current state of my tumultuous heart. It was there that I applied for this job. The one I now have, the one I'm now sitting in and have made my own. Soon it'll be a year until I moved to New York, but for now...

It was this day last year that I applied for this job.

Tonight's Dinner

YOU GUYS. I just discovered goat’s milk ice cream and holy hippies this stuff is good. I stood in my kitchen for longer than is acceptable eating spoonful after spoonful dipped straight from the carton, shell-shocked and marveling at how something so calorically good for you can melt in your mouth like sin.

It’s like that guy at Whole Foods with the side part and the slim cropped jeans who’s been eyeing you over the Granny Smiths, who’s not really your type but you’ve been eyeing too because you’ve always had a bit of a (morally conflicting) thing for guys with haircuts like SS officers, coming up and French kissing you in the middle of produce. Unexpected but -- oh wow -- SO OKAY.

But this is better than okay. This is creamy and delicious and riiiich and… I’ll stop with the kissing analogy. But… Goat’s milk ice cream. YES.

Tonight

A week and a half ago I was talking to Cheryl on the phone from my rooftop in Manhattan, and tonight I fell asleep nestled against her shoulder on the couch watching one of those hokey psychological thrillers she loves.

It's good to be home.

Cuddle

This is just the most perfect and hilarious...

Some friends in LA put this together and I can't stop laughing. Currently scouting volunteers to help me with Vetruvian Man-ing.

Removal

I cried at the dermatologist’s today. It wasn’t anything serious-- two moles removed, no biggie. But I’ve never had moles removed. I’ve been to a dermatologist twice (?) in my life, each time poked and prodded for a second before being pronounced clean and sent on my way. Today I was poked and prodded, but then told, “I really don’t like that one. Or that one. I want it gone.” And then HE was gone.

I didn’t even know him! This man in the preppy plaid shirt and ironic J.Crew tie who kept me waiting, perched atop his old examination table huddled in my crispy robe, said barely ten words to me before making two marks on my flesh with his blue ball-point pen and instructing the nurse to prep my moles for biopsy. I was left standing naked in the middle of the room, clutching my crumpled gown as he went on to another patient and the nurse turned her back to me and started setting out bottles and vials, swabs and band-aids.

“Wait. What exactly is this? How does it work?”

She very kindly but very quickly explained that he was going to razor off my two moles and that there would be a scar and I would need to keep a band-aid on it for two weeks and then always—ALWAYS—apply sunscreen because it’ll get really dark and noticeable so apply sunscreen especially since it’s summer and you seem like you naturally already have a good amount of pigment in your skin…

I was scared. But I nodded my head.

She turned her back again and I started thinking about my moles. One was new… A recent addition in the last few years, appearing in a fairly prominent position on a very prominent part of my upper body… If you know what I mean.

The other has been with me since birth. On the inside of my right arm—the smooth and tender part—a pencil eraser-sized birthmark of irregular size and shape. It’s always been this way. When I was in high school working at Starbucks, customers would occasionally try to helpfully point out that I had splashed mocha on my arm. I remember looking back at baby pictures of me as a fuzz-headed, Michelin-armed baby in a soft pink t-shirt and pudgy diaper butt crawling around the living room floor, and spotting a tiny chocolate-colored mark inside my upper right (Michelin) arm.

I laid down and the nurse had me lift my arm and place it above my head, slowly injecting local anesthetic. And I thought more about my moles.

As for the first… I sort of liked it there. Perfectly placed, almost as though an 18^th century beauty queen positioned it on my bosom herself. Would there be a scar? A reminder of this lunch break front and center every time I wear anything but a crew neck? Would my décolletage be forever marred by this man in Hamptons chinos and a buzz cut?

As for the other… All I could think of was that happy baby in her soft pink t-shirt, laughing and playing with toys on the hardwood floor of her parents’ San Francisco home. I heard my mother’s soft voice narrating the home video my dad was recording with a borrowed video camera, and his rumbling chuckle as I dove into a drawer of his cassette tapes. This mark, this melted chocolate chip on the inside of my arm that has been there for as long as I can remember, was about to be lanced off by a man who had probably already forgotten my name.

I started to cry. Slow, hot tears puddled on my cheek and ran into the brittle paper beneath my head. I felt like I was losing that baby with her fuzzy blonde head and rose-lipped grin. Everything sweet and dear and true—from when life was that way, from before Momma left and everything broke—was going to be gone. Suddenly and inexplicably I wanted to talk to my grandma. I should say that I love my grandma very much, but we are not particularly close—so this impulse was even more unusual than the fact that I was lying on a table in a dermatologist’s office on Wall Street mourning a mole. I wanted her to tell me it was going to be ok, that she’s had lots of moles removed in her lifetime and it’s just part of growing up. The skin will be okay, and it’s very important to be healthy, she’d say.

The warm tears continued to run.

He came back in and I turned my head away. I felt a slight pressure on my arm, and another on my chest, and within a minute I was bandaged and sitting up. They said things about coming back in two weeks and that it was probably fine but just a precaution… I clutched my robe and they left. Pulling my dress over my head I went to the window and began to fasten the front as hot tears blurred my vision, dripping heavily onto the floor. I couldn’t see anything so I had to stop, dress undone, crying silently against the window overlooking the bustling street.

It was gone. My reminder was gone. My souvenir from when life was good and normal and sweet. It was gone. And all I had in its place was a cheap band-aid laid across my soft bicep.

I left and walked back to the office, tired and numb. I kept to myself for the rest of the day, working quietly, occasionally chatting aimlessly with coworkers, seeing their eyes flicker down to the garish, “nude”-colored bandage on my chest.

I wanted it back. I wanted them both back. But now they’re gone and I’m googling “scar prevention” and “mole removal scar healing” and reading Bio-Oil reviews. The one on my chest will get the most care, tenderly trying to make it invisible. But as for the scar on my arm… I might just leave it. I think I’d miss having something there too much.

It was just a mole, but it was also a reminder. And I want it back.

I want my mole back.

Bonus

I got a bonus today. I don't know who to tell, so I'll just write it here. I got a bonus-- my first ever bonus-- today.

My boss sat me down for a routine meeting, and she started talking about things I needed to improve upon. It stung the perfectionist within, but it was good. Course correction... Little things...

Then she slid a check across her desk and told me what a great job I was doing.

My heart softened. I needed that.

I really, really needed that.

I got a bonus today.

Mother's Day

Every year I think it’s gotten better... Life gets more and more "normal". The tough, achy times are spread further and further apart. Laughing is more frequent. But then the shake comes back—the one that rattles and quakes its way up to the base of my neck, catching my breath and spinning me into a quiet frenzy before making its home, heavy in my chest. Dizzy, insides roiling, it usually takes me a few days to realize... Oh dear. There's a big day coming up.

July, 2006

It is times like these that I miss her the most. Times when “Mother” is plastered in every shop window, every spam e-mail, every greeting card headline…

Mother.

Even her name is soft and comforting.

I remember after she died, I flew with Dad and Brother to Hawaii, her favorite place, to shake her body's ashes over the crystal blue tropical waters she had loved. Sitting in the airport on a layover from one island to another, my blank gaze landed on a family encamped in the row of chairs across from me. Father, Mother, and two daughters sat in their shorts and sandals, bags and magazines and colored iPods spread out over several chairs. The girls played with each other occasionally, but mostly the eldest sat with her headphones on, while the younger asked Dad for money to buy M&M’s, if she could go to the bathroom, how much longer the layover was, and if Mom had remembered to pack her favorite My Little Pony. Busy and dizzy with anticipation and boredom, she finally settled in the seat next to Mom and laid her head in her lap. She laughed and chatted and haphazardly ran her hands up and down her mother’s legs as Mom absentmindedly stroked her hair while reading a magazine.

Something about the scene hit my heart, and suddenly the back of my throat was very tight. Stinging, stinging eyes, and I tilted my head back, trying to hide the hot tears rolling across my temples in the forest of my hair. It seemed so familiar. So easy. So average and normal that it hurt like a knife coming out. Probably the way a permanently injured athlete feels when they watch the game they can never play again, or what rushes through an amputee when they go to buy pants. Loss afresh.

I watched this little girl with her stringy hair and bunchy shorts strewn across her mother’s lap, and her mother’s calm, tired face as she ran her hands through her daughter’s hair, and the thought came: “Don’t take it for granted. You may not always have this—this ease, this thoughtless love, this perfect informality. Don’t take it for granted!”

But then even quicker I thought, "But isn’t that the benefit of a mother?" Isn’t that the built-in perk to the relationship? It is so deep and permanent and constant and unchanging—the most lasting, eternal bond we will ever know… Isn’t part of the greatness of the relationship that we GET to take it for granted? The way that the sky is blue or the sun rises in the morning-- it is and was forever. It’s something good you can always rely on, and a blessing don’t have to think about. There are other things to write thank-you notes for.

No, as I sat there I realized the real beauty of what I was seeing was the fact that this excited, bored, restless little girl could sit and laugh and talk with her mom, and never once have to think about whether her mother loved her or thought she was special or wanted to spend time with her. She could just exist in her mother’s love, and not have to apologize for it.

Sunday is a special day. It’s a day when children across the globe honor and thank their mothers—their suns, their blue skies, their eternal love. That day, more than any other day we are encouraged not to take our mothers for granted, but instead to acknowledge their tireless efforts and many sacrifices for our good. I cannot tell you how I wished I had a reason to buy a card this week. How I would love to see my momma in church wearing the corsage my dad would have picked out for her, and sit across the table from her at brunch in the afternoon. How I wish I could whisper, "I love you, Momma," in her ear one last time. She was an incredible mother, and she deserves more honor than she received.

But more than anything else, more than all these things, I wish she were here to rest my head on her lap. To squeeze myself into the little nook in between the back of her knees and the back of the couch, and curl up on top of her as we watch baseball or American Idol. I wish she was here to show around New York and tell me how proud she is of me for moving to the big city. ("My big girl," she'd say, "I'm so proud of you.") I wish she was here to tell all about my day at work and to ask about relationships, and how do you tell when a mango is ripe again? I wish she were here to say, “I love you,” as we get off the phone…

I wish she were here so I could take her for granted. And I don’t regret a single day I did.

November, 1990

Happy Mother’s Day, Momma. I love you.

Oof.

Mother's Day is coming up. Awesome.

Thursday Serenade

First Lady

I was in D.C. recently. It was a sun-filled but chilly day as a small group of friends and I wandered through the capitol city dappled with cherry blossoms. We tucked into one of the many Smithsonians, losing ourselves and each other in the maze of flags and memorabilia, when I stepped into the room that housed the gowns and personal effects of our First Ladies. It took my breath away.

I walked slowly along the display wall, pausing to read the caption cards, gazing intently at the beading on Mamie Eisenhower’s pale pink inaugural gown and smiling when I saw Nancy Reagan’s white satin Cinderella slippers. I felt a kinship with these women, seeing the gowns and accessories, dishes and stationery, all picked out lovingly, carefully, to make the White House their home. They weren’t so different than I, I felt, when I saw Edith Wilson’s bawdy purple feather fan and Abigail Adams’ glass pearl necklace… We’re all still girls.

I traced the perimeter of the room, finally settling on a small bench in front of a screen tucked into the wall. It was playing the tape from the ceremony when Michelle Obama donated her inaugural gown and just nearing the end, so I waited through the credits for it to loop back around and start.

The couple next to me got up. The tape started to play again. An open shot of the main hall at the Smithsonian, rows of seats in a sun-filled room all facing a small podium at the front, and beside it, four chairs. An announcer came on over the loudspeakers, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome designer Jason Wu… The Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History… The Secretary of the Smithsonian…” Three men strode from a hallway in the corner of the screen, and I watched that spot waiting for Mrs. Obama to appear.

I started imagining what she must be thinking, feeling—while she was surely undoubtedly honored, this fuss probably wasn’t a big deal to her. She’s the First Lady, after all. Pomp and circumstance had probably gotten fairly de rigueur at this point—she just wanted to get on the stage and do the thing.

Finally I saw a flash of her short white day dress peeking from around the corner, and those telltale toned arms. I read the white captioned words at the bottom of the screen as I heard, “And finally, the First Lady of the United States of America…”

My whole body lurched. Like I was about to be sick or immediately start bawling, a strong and sudden bolt starting in my stomach shot to the top of my head. Inexplicably, hot tears began making warm rivulets down my face as Mrs. Obama walked nonchalantly up the steps to the small podium and sat in her chair.

Whoa.

What was that?

“The First Lady of the United States of America…” The words echoed.

I was taken back to a night in LA. A night after college. I had been sitting in a medium-sized Bible study at a small café in Studio City when a guest speaker called me out. “You… Yes, you. I feel like there’s something I need to tell you.” I lifted my head and blood rushed to my cheeks as many sets of eyes turned to me in the darkened room.

“I just keep looking at you and hearing, ‘First Lady… First Lady…’ And I feel like the Lord wants me to tell you that that’s how he sees you—as his First Lady. And just like no one is allowed to speak disrespectfully to the First Lady of the United States, or dishonor her, that’s the same way the Lord sees you. You are his bride. And he is your defense. He respects you, honors you, and expects people to do the same. You are his First Lady.”

I was floored.

“What… in… the… “

Even now, retyping these words, my heart can hardly believe it. But in the humblest way I know how to possibly say, it felt true. While I rarely feel worthy of any special respect or honor, and am certainly aware of numerous shortcomings and faults which would immediately discount me from many forms of esteem… Her words spoke to something deep and noble in me.

“The Lord sees me as what…? Really?”

I remember once hearing an interview with one of Princess Diana’s childhood friends, and she spoke about how young Diana never smoked or drank or slept around or got into trouble because, “she always had this uncanny sense that her life was made for something greater. She knew her actions would count someday, so she preserved herself for a noble cause.” I was only 13 or so when I heard these words, but they immediately branded themselves on my heart. That’s exactly how I’ve always felt. Set apart. Preserved. Branded for something noble.

So as I sat on that small bench in a dark room at the Smithsonian, brushing away the now-drying streams of tears, I savored those words. “The First Lady of the United States of America…”

There’s power in those words. Power in nobility and grace. Power not from man, not from earned prestige or ill-gotten influence… But power from the Lord’s hand. I may never marry a president—country, company, or otherwise. I may never have a title or cause or crown that brings people to awe. …But I am the bride of the Most High. And I want to live worthy of that call.

I want to be His First Lady.

A Year Ago...

He picked me up at 6:45. I was wearing a white dress. Its silken folds flowed down in rich pleats from my shoulders, meeting in a knot at my waist before pouring out like milk over my Botticelli hips.

I was beautiful.

My hair was curled in big, golden, undulating waves that framed my face and tumbled down over my shoulders. Long rows of sparkles hanging from my ears lay against the glistening blonde of my hair, and my feet were wrapped in silver; high heels that sparkled and added inches to already long legs.

"Fuck me," my friend Zoë said when she saw me standing in the doorway.

I had bought the dress for just this moment. Five hundred dollars— a Diane von Furstenberg. I couldn’t afford to keep it, so I tucked the tag into the back of my bra, ready to return it the next day. It was the one giveaway that all was not as it seemed; that this was a departure, a rarity in my life of restaurant work and grocery store runs and not having enough money to pay the electric bill. But in this dress, with these shoes and these earrings, with my hair curled like that and my makeup on just so—I was more.

I descended the stairs as he came to meet me striding across the street, his face red from one too many hours spent in the California sun. This was our first meeting, and so I needed a minute to take him in… His saunter as he walked, the camel of his suit, the way his smile beamed like he had just won the biggest prize at the fair. His golden hair gleamed in the glow of early evening, and his blue shirt reflected the soft azure of his eyes. When he said my name with that delicious English twang, the end of his words liltingly betrayed his Liverpool roots. “Jessica Doehle, as I live and breathe…”

It was perfect.

Little City

There's something funny to me about living in a city so populously large, so dense with people from all corners of humanity, all living and thriving in one place, so completely different from the whitewashed suburbs I grew up in, and the homogeny of washed up TV stars and their wannabes in LA.

New York is the mother of all Big Cities. It's dense, rich with culture, opportunity, fortune, fame... Bright lights, big city, yadda yadda yadda. But once I heard someone say New York is really more like a small town, and I think it's true. Yes, there are Big, Ambitious, Exciting things happening here... But when you've got a Fruit Stand Guy who gives you an extra carton of strawberries because he thinks you look pretty this morning, and a dry cleaner who knows your name, and you wave to the same housewife walking her dogs every night... That's small-town stuff.

I was on the train yesterday, standing in a crowded car pressed between the door and a silver bar, when the doors opened at yet another stop that wasn't mine on the local line. A few people brushed by me to escape the overcrowded confines and give the rest of us a little breathing room, but as the tell-tale ding resounded from above and the doors began to shut, I heard, "Esscuse me! Esscuse me!"

A small man with tan skin and dark hair was behind me suddenly, forcefully pushing a small stroller into the car. I heard a few muffled groans as he burrowed his way into the crowded train, followed by his wife and several other small children, and I pressed myself further into the silver bar against my hip.

The doors finally closed and I rested against them, turning my head to see the smallest toddler I had ever seen staring back at me. His little brown eyes were wild with confusion and curiosity, and his mother held him tightly to her chest as we all swayed, bumping along the tracks. He took me in and I smiled at him to see if I could coax out a grin, eyeing his jagged teeth and smooth, caramel skin, when I became aware of a large, soft pressure against the front of my legs.

I lifted my purse and adjusted my scarf to see another little boy-- his brother-- leaning back into my legs, head resting on my tummy. He had one hand on his dad's stroller, with his feet planted between mine, resting fully against me. Nestled in a sea of grown-up legs. His thick winter coat softened the already light weight of his small body, and I returned my scarf and purse to their original positions as I smiled at the soft weight of his innocent familiarity.

As I stood in the crowded train, back pressed to the door next to this large family of little people I didn't know, and felt this tiny boy using my legs for refuge... The city definitely didn't seem big.

Street Scene

The wind was blowing. My golden hair whipped around my head and face, twisting with the cream scarf slung around my neck. I was walking to meet a friend, hustling through tangled crowds, when he appeared in front of me. This short, round figure in a bright yellow jacket selling tickets for a view looked up at me from his round, brown face, eyes gleaming. “You look beautiful,” he said across a crowd of people.

“Thank you,” I tossed back with a wide smile. His gaze was fixed on me as I continued to walk through the blustery wind toward him and he turned as I passed. “You’re glowing… Like you got a spotlight on you.”

I laughed and turned my head to look at him, raising my voice as our distance grew. “Thank you!”

A cold gust blew thick curls into my eyes and teeth, and I whipped my head back 'round again to see my way.

Glowing? Funny. That’s exactly how I felt.

Currently watching...

Silence (si·lence, Refusal or failure to speak out.)

I remember lots of things about my mother. I remember the way her laugh shook her shoulders as she cackled, I remember the smell of her coffee before I went to bed and when I woke in the morning. I remember her rough feet curled under her as she read her Bible in the morning sun. But I don't remember where or when or why she told me something I remember so well.

My momma never spoke ill of my father in public-- ever. She explained it to me once, and while I can't remember the event, I do recall her telling me explicitly why she did it and what for. She said that her vow to my father was sacred-- that he entrusted her with his heart and life-- and to bring up his shortcomings in public, even in teasing, was to betray that trust and dishonor him. It wasn't a promise my father asked for, but she freely gave him her confidence in honor and love.

We were at a bridal shower once when I was very young, lots of ladies sipping tea in a sun-filled room, laughing and eating finger sandwiches. My mom had brought me along because she knew I loved these feminine gatherings (and so I could wear the new frilly dress my grandma had made me), and after a while the topic of husbands arose. Eyes started rolling and each woman's pitch rose as she recounted a husband's recent indiscretion and roaring laughter ensued. Toilet seats left up, forgetting this, losing that (again!)... All was fodder for their popcorn grievance session. I turned to my mother at one point, half expecting her to chime in with a sarcastic gripe about something equally cringe-worthy my dad had just done, but she just sat there smiling softly, sipping her tea, and gave me a wink.

My mom defended our home ferociously, both from attacks outside and within. Hurtful teasing or sarcastic jabs at home were quickly met by her fierce gaze. "We do not talk like that at home. Apologize, NOW." Her goal was always to make our home a haven, a safe place, free of hurtful teasing and danger, and she modeled that with my dad. She saw his commitment to her as something to honor-- how could she disrespect his vulnerability by griping with girlfriends or her sister on the phone about his socks on the floor and that dumb thing he said last weekend?

Her honor changed him. My dad-- the oldest of three, son of an army colonel, having grown up rootless all over the world-- was never familiar or friendly with his emotions. Trust was foreign. He was by no means a perfect, or always respectable, husband. But as my parents' marriage grew, he transformed. He softened, learned to trust, and relaxed within the tender confines of unconditional love. And my mother continued, despite his consistent shortcomings.

I don't know why this memory has surfaced in the pools of my mind recently, but I can't stop thinking about how brave and strong that love of my mom's was, how integrous and whole. While my dad was the oldest of three, my mom was the youngest of five, growing up with a bipolar/schizophrenic mother and WWII vet father. She was raised in extreme dysfunction and pain, and at 18 bought a one-way ticket for as far as she could go. Her ticket took her to the place where she met Jesus and my dad. What strikes me about all of this is-- how did she know? How did she know how to love unconditionally when she had hardly ever been loved at all? How did she know how to create a safe home when she had never felt at home anywhere? How did she know to build a healthy marriage when she had never -- ever-- seen one?

The only answer I have is Jesus. His love and perfect protection, in stark contrast to all she'd ever known, taught her to love and protect like he does.

I can't stop thinking about how I want to be a friend like that, a wife like that, a mother like that-- someone who honors and loves even in silence. Someone who respects even when the other person is undeserving. My mother is gone, but her love is still here, still silent. I want to love like that.

Craving California

This song reminds me of that afternoon I danced in the kitchen with the dog. We had just gotten back from the beach and I went in the kitchen to get us a snack when this came on. The dog bobbed his head as I swayed my hips and shook my hair. My skin was dark and golden. I was still wearing my bathing suit and had on that breezy white dress with the wide skirt that billowed as I twirled.

Let's go back.

The Explanation

We were walking to get lunch, he and I, the chilled late winter wind slipping through the seams of our coats, under loose hems and up flapping sleeves. Wall Street comes alive at lunch hour, and sidewalks fill with street vendors selling children's books and scarves and incense as stock brokers in their perforated blazers and executives and their assistants all pour from high rises to fill their stomachs.

We were among the hungry masses, making our way two blocks over and down chatting about the normal things: How was your weekend, Tell me about your trip, What is that new project you're working on... He-- my short (hairy) Russian Jewish friend with the wicked, frat-boy sense of humor-- started telling me about his brother's surprise party on Saturday and the christening he attended on Sunday. With a good humored glint in my eye I asked him what it was like to be in a church, and he cocked his head back, grinning as he retorted, "I felt something burning."

He went on to tell me, serious now, how bored he was and how he kept watching his friend (the father)'s parents-- traditional Jewish immigrants also from Russia-- squirm in the Catholic ceremony. He felt sorry for them and wondered aloud why his friend and his wife couldn't honor both their faiths when raising their child. "You shouldn't indoctrinate a child with what to believe, they should be able to choose what they want when they grow older."

We were standing in line for lunch at this point when I responded, "But doesn't that invalidate the very idea of believing something? If you believe something is true and that's the way the world works, wouldn't that affect the way you raise a child?"

He protested and we went back and forth for a few minutes as we placed our orders and paid. Finally I said softly, carefully, "I guess it's hard for me to say because I don't think you should marry someone who doesn't believe the same way you do."

This was it. I knew where the conversation was going after this, and I girded my proverbial loins.

"You don't??" he asked, eyes widening.

"...I don't."

We stepped back out into the winter wind and he probed further dubiously. "So you... You wouldn't marry someone who didn't believe the same as you?"

I smiled and said, "No... I wouldn't."

"What if he supported you entirely and said, 'Whatever you want'?"

Still no.

His large brown eyes were growing larger with every response. "Not even if he said, 'I support you in whatever you believe, whatever it takes, I just want to be with you'?"

I laughed softly and shook my head.

This was clearly beyond his realm of reasoning.

"Why??"

I paused. "Well, to me, the most important thing in my life, the foundation of who I am, is my relationship with God. ...I believe the reason I was created, the reason I am alive, is to know him. He made me for himself, for me to know and be in relationship with him. And every decision I make, and the way I view my life, is based on that. So if I were to marry someone who didn't fundamentally believe that, then at some point our relationship would begin to splinter and we would separate because we weren't building our lives together on the same foundation..."

He didn't like this. I remembered the guy in college with whom I had had nearly this exact conversation... He didn't like it either.

We continued in silence for a few steps before he said, shaking his head, "...So why do you believe what you believe? Is it because you were raised that way?"

"Partly. I grew up in a Christian home-- both my parents were Christians, we went to church every Sunday... But when I was a teenager I thought, 'I'm only doing this because my parents want me to. If I'm going to keep doing this, it has to be because I believe it. I want to know who God is, and if all this stuff is true or not for myself.' So I asked. I asked God to reveal himself to me and I wanted to know that these things I had been believing all my life were true. Because I'm not interested in being part of a big club... If I'm going to do this, it has to be real."

"And it happened? You found it?"

"It did. I asked God to reveal himself to me and he did. And I decided that I wanted to continue in that relationship for myself-- not for my parents, but because I knew for myself that it was true and that being in relationship with God was the only thing that would ever satisfy me."

We passed through security and waited to board an elevator.

"People will disappoint me, my career-- no matter how hard I build and work and succeed-- will disappoint me, relationships will disappoint me, the only thing that will never disappoint me is God."

This was too much for him to handle, and he spat out, "GOD will never disappoint you? Are you kidding me?"

"No. He never will."

"You're telling me that when bad things happen, you get hurt, you don't wonder, 'Why did God do this to me?'"

I shook my head and opened my mouth to respond, but suddenly there was a flash, and I saw my mother's swollen and incoherent face as she lay in her hospital bed dying. A flood of pain and heart scar tissue started to throb, and suddenly all the nights I spent crying myself to sleep on the floor of my apartment, all the tears poured out onto pillowcases and journal pages, began to fill my vision until I could hardly see him standing in front of me. The scars on my heart opened their jagged mouths to speak, "Really? You think you can honestly say you've never felt disappointed by him? We're STILL wrestling with that right now! LIAR!"

The elevator doors opened with a ding and I snapped back.

We walked in relative silence back to the lunch table and were joined by more friends and the conversation turned to other things, but for the rest of the day the sting from that aggravated scar tissue lingered, tugging on the edges of my concentration.

Was what I said true? Did I really believe that? For so long, no matter how much I didn't want to, I had felt so betrayed by God-- abandoned and rug-ripped-out-from-under. I had entrusted him with the biggest, most important thing I would ever trust him for-- my momma's healing-- and my heart had been broken. Abandonment, mistrust, hurt, and anger all came like infections, seeping into the cracks in my heart. In the four and a half years since her passing, many of those broken places had been healed, cracks filled, wounds salved. But scars remain.

I just kept picturing her face, her grotesque, once-beautiful face, staring at me from that hospital bed. How could I say God would never disappoint me... when he had?

Lies are loud but truth is soft, and as the questions started to die down I began to hear, "He is alive... He is alive... She may be gone, but he is alive."

He is alive. He died so her death wouldn't be forever. He is alive. He saved us from death and sin forever. He is alive.

What I already "knew" began to register... She is alive. He died for her, and for me, to take our sins and death forever. My pain, as awful as it is at times, is temporary, and the only hell I'll ever know. Her death is only temporary. She is alive.

He does not fail, he does not let down, he supersedes my disappointment and understandings of failure.

He is alive.

And that is when I knew what I said was true. He will never disappoint.

He is alive.

A Day in D.C.

Spent the afternoon in our nation's capital, feeling like the First Lady in my royal blue coat. What a beautiful day.

Sipping wine with lunch at Union Station

The Lincoln Memorial

Abe

The only cherry blossoms in all of D.C.

Back-up gig

America

Can't get enough of Adele lately...

Taxicab Confessions, Part II

It would be neglectful to tell the story I just did without telling the story that preceded it. Several months ago, before the sleepless night, before the swollen eyes, before caramel handshakes and grins over the partition, there was another.

I don't know his name because he never told me, but I climbed in the back of his cab one chilly morning in November, lugging a big navy suitcase with a broken wheel, and settled in the back, shaking out my sore hand as he asked where I was going. After I gave him directions to my office he chirped, "You hungry?"

I was hungry. But I wasn't accustomed to partaking in food from strangers, much less cab drivers on cold November mornings on my way out of town. But before I had a chance to respond he was handing me half of his bagel, clean cut and carefully wrapped in foil. "Oh no, I'm okay, really!"

"No no. You hungry. Eat! Is good."

I eyed the breakfast and the driver, the latter tallish and Middle Eastern with dark and silvery hair that was almost elegant. Both seemed clean and fairly trustworthy, so I tentatively asked, "What kind is it?"

"Cinnamon raisin. Toasted. With butter. Eat! Is good."

I was hungry...

"Where you going?"

I took a bite of the bagel. "I'm going home to California. I'm so excited-- all my family is there."

"Oooh your family live out there?"

"Yes. I miss them a lot."

"Your husband live here?"

"No, I don't live with a husband."

Immediately I could tell something was wrong. Even through bleary morning eyes and the crinkling of foil I could see the back of his neck tense up and hear the pitch of his voice raise.

"That is no good. You must live with husband! Man and woman no live apart! You must be in same house--"

"Oh no no no! I don't have a husband! NO husband! I live alone-- no husband! If I did we would not live apart. You're right! It's NOT good. No husband, but I definitely would..."

He was visibly relieved.

"Oh. Is good. You have boyfriend?"

"No boyfriend."

"You know, I tell you something. Marriage hard work. But good work. You find good man to marry, love him. All people these days, they marry, and like moving into house-- you have house and light bulb break, you move house? No! You fix bulb! So many people just move house! Stay-- fix it! Good house!"

I loved this conversation already. Crumpling the now empty sheet of foil, I was about to ask him a question when he reached into the bag beside him and pulled out a steaming styrofoam cup.

"Tea?"

I refused again, this time for good, but not without so many protestations on his part. "I won't drink! Is good! You sure? Here. Napkins."

I cleaned my fingers and he continued. "Woman like egg-- what happens when you hold egg too tight? ...That's right, break! You hold tender. Gentle. Egg not fragile, but you hold too tight, too rough-- squish! Gentle with egg, gentle with woman."

He continued in this way, expounding passionately on simple yet profound analogies for marriage and relationship that would have silenced Dr. Phil and befuddled half my generation. I loved every word.

We were nearing my destination by this point so I kept asking questions and offering my agreeing opinions, trying to get any more from him. When we stopped he looked at me in the rearview mirror and said, "You have safe trip! Tell your family taxi driver from New York says hello and greetings!"

I couldn't contain my laughter as I swung open the door. "I will!"

And I did.

Taxicab Confessions

It was morning, early before work. I had awoken swollen and tired from a rough night of too little sleep, and decided that the stairs of the subway were too much for me to conquer. A taxi was called for.

I stepped out my front door and onto the curb where, with clock-like precision, a sullied but still-gleaming yellow taxi appeared. Ducking in and shutting the door firmly behind me, I said, "I'm going downtown-- Broad and Beaver, across from the Stock Exchange," and settled back in my seat, letting my puffy eyes drift closed as the cab rattled down the road.

"You from here?"

My eyes blinked open.

"...No, I'm from California," I said, wondering if it was my shock of blonde hair that had given me away to the small, middle-aged man I could hardly see over the partition. "Where are you from?"

"Oooh, California people very nice. Best people. I'm from India. My English not so good. You work downtown?"

"Yes I do."

"You have good job? Benefits?"

I was sitting up now. "I do. I'm so lucky. In California I didn't have a good job, but here I do. Yes-- I have benefits."

"You have job for taxi driver?"

"Haha-- not at the moment, but if we did I'd hire you!"

My new friend laughed with me and started to talk about how lucky we are to live in America (this opinion is a common thread amongst cab drivers, I've discovered), how the economy is so much better here than at home, how California people are the best ("So nice. The nicest people."). He asked if my family was in California, and if I lived alone in the city.

"No-- I mean, yes-- I mean, I have a roommate but all my family is in California."

"You no have husband? Boyfriend?"

I shook my head.

Shocked face. Then, a pause.

"You have girlfriend?"

I shook my head again, laughing.

Relieved face.

We were at a stoplight and he turned around, grinning at me over the partition and extended his hand to shake mine, "You are exceptional!"

I laughed out loud. "Thank you! I think you're exceptional too."

Then he started telling me about his marriage, and why people should date before they get married, but "people marry someone light outside, black inside... No good. You marry someone light inside. Good inside. I'm married 14 years--"

"Was your marriage arranged?" I interjected.

"Oh yes. We get married, she is my best friend. At beginning, no crazy sex, no crazy nothing, she is best friend. I don't need money, I don't need Princess Diana-- I come home, see happy face, kiss my wife. All work go away. Happy! That is all I need."

Through his cracking English I was amazed by his wisdom and the simple yet profound way he talked about marriage and his love for his wife. He went on to talk about how I was young and shouldn't worry about needing to get married-- but he was still shocked by my unattached status (which, I cannot feign, was deeply flattering), and just kept saying, "You are exceptional person. I could drive you around all day."

When we had reached my stop I wished him a wonderful, rich day and slid my credit card to pay the fare. He turned around again, reaching his soft, caramel colored hand for mine across the partition and said it one last time, "You are exceptional. Hope I see you again! Have a great day!"

As I slid from the leather seat onto the black gravel of Wall Street, my eyes didn't feel puffy any more and a smile was tugging at the edge of my lips. I walked past security in my office and waved at the guards and thought, "Why is it that taxi drivers give the best marriage advice?!"