City Wendy

Alphabet: A History (P)

Alphabet: A History (P) Patton Avenue

It's summer and I'm 9 and we're visiting my paternal grandparents in Illinois for a few days. In Springfield, they live in a 3-bedroom house on a street called Patton. It's the house my father grew up in and the only place my grandparents have ever lived together as a married couple. They keep a little bowl of hard candy on a coffee table in the living room and my maternal grandmother asks them once if they ever find wrappers tucked between the sofa cushions like she always does at her place. They laugh and tell her they do, and when my grandma says she even finds them in the air conditioning vents at the end of summer, I can't help but blush a little.

My grandparents have an enclosed back porch in their house on Patton that overlooks their yard and a huge tree that my grandfather hangs at least half a dozen bird feeders from. They both wake up really early in the morning and drink coffee, eat Frosted Flakes and do the crossword puzzle together. Afterward, my grandfather fills the feeders, sticks a corncob into a post for the squirrels, and then sets about watering the garden. I ask him a million times what all the flowers are called but it's not until I'm a florist many, many years later than any of the names actually stick. 

They have two big beds of flowers, my grandparents do, and that's just in the backyard. On the other side of the house, the side that faces their crazy old cat-lady neighbor, is another garden with lots more flowers — tall, unruly ones — as well as a bird bath and one of those reflective balls that sits on a stand. Behind that garden is a vegetable patch where they grow things like tomatoes that I sometimes take back to my other grandma in St. Louis who bites into them like apples and declares them the best she's ever eaten. 

There's a sidewalk path that runs from my grandparents backyard, past the big tree and the vegetable patch, all the way to the backyard of another neighbor. Sometimes I run as fast as I can from one yard to the other, back and forth so many times that I climb the steps into my grandparents porch afterward and collapse onto their black vinyl sofa, a little pile of folded limbs. In the summer — the only time we ever visit — the vinyl sticks to the backs of my legs and squeaks beneath me as I shift. I like to rest my head on my grandmother's lap there as she reads the tales of ol' Brer Rabbit from the Uncle Remus folk stories, the cadence of her voice lulling me to sleep. 

Years later when I'm a junior in college, I'll live in another house on Patton — this one in Springfield, Missouri. This house is a 2-story white duplex that I share with my friend, Becky, and though we have no yards or gardens or vegetable patches, there's a Rapid Roberts gas station across the street where I go for my daily candy fix. There's an old redheaded lady who hangs out there named May who wears long dresses, high heels, and big, fancy hats. When it rains, she ties a shopping bag around her head, knotting the handles just beneath her chin, and wears ziplock baggies around her heels. She usually sits at one of the three little tables in Rapid Roberts and smokes Virginia Slims, one after another. I like to wear sunglasses when I buy my candy so I can study her without being noticed. One day May isn't there and I brazenly ask the guy behind the counter if he knows where she is and he tells me she goes to Branson once a month to drop off her costumes. "Costumes?" I say, "Is she a seamstress?" "Yup," he replies, handing me my change. I decide I want May to be my Great-Aunt.

I live in that house on Patton for two years, and in many ways I think it's where I come of age. I'm a college graduate when I move out, in love for the first time, but jobless and broke, completely unsure what the future holds. The months and years that follow jar me, make me wistful for less complicated times, make me hopeful for smoother terrain. I move 7 times over the next ten years, from Springfield to Chicago and then to New York, and every month, without fail — sometimes even twice a month — I'll dream of those two houses on Patton and I'll remember when my biggest worry was where to hide the candy wrappers...and I'll wonder: why didn't I just throw them away?

Alphabet: A History (L)

Alphabet: A History (L) Lake Michigan

It's May, 2008, and I'm visiting Chicago for the third time since I moved to New York less than 8 months ago. May is tied with October for my favorite month here and the colors at the lake today are a big reason why. I'm with Chad who took a day off from work and we're the only people here. We run around and cartwheel with our shoes off and do a photo shoot on the spread of bright green grass between the water and Lake Shore Drive and for a moment it feels like I never left.

I don't feel at home in New York yet, not like this. From the lake I can walk to three of my old apartments in less than 15 minutes. I can peek into the windows from the street below and imagine the lines of my bookshelves, the curve of my couch, the shape of my cats peering from behind the pane. These images are like lifelines across a palm, filling the gaps between stories I tell, the moments between the events.

At Lake Michigan I can see half a dozen summers stretched across the beach, and countless rides through falling leaves all along the bike path. There's a grocery store a few blocks from here and if I went there right now and bought some cheese to have back at Chad's, the cashier would ring me up and ask where I've been. I could stop at the Middle Eastern Bakery and pick up some baklava and pita and hummus and the beautiful Palestinian owner with the black eyes and raven hair would hand me my change and say, "Thank you, my friend."

One time, when I still worked at the flower shop, I took home a small bouquet of white roses that only had one day left. Chad picked me up from work and we stopped by Bi-lo to get some wine. When the owner eyed the flowers, I told him we just got married and he raised his eyebrows at Chad, who flung his arm around my shoulder, kissed my cheek and said, "It's true, we did." For months after that, every time we'd go into Bi-lo together, we'd call each other "hon."

At the lake today on the grassy part between the water and the road there's only one tree that's in full bloom. The first weekend Drew came to visit, we lay on a blanket under that tree and he told me New York had a lot of stuff, but it didn't have anything like this. 

Over the next year, I went to the lake more than ever — every day when the weather was warm, usually in the mornings, sometimes in the late afternoons, always on the weekends. Sometimes I'd go alone, sometimes I'd meet friends for happy hour and we'd sit on the beach and hide our beers in bandanas until the sun went down. In September, the month I moved, fall took its sweet time coming. Each day we'd head to the beach and think it was the last, and the next day it would still be warm enough for bikinis. I moved on the final day of the month just as the leaves were starting to turn. It hasn't been warm enough for bikinis since.

Alphabet: A History (K)

Alphabet: A History (K) Kimbrough

It's 1998 and I've just graduated from college. I'm moving out of the 2-bedroom duplex I've shared with my friend Becky for the last two years and moving into a 1-bedroom apartment on the bottom floor of a big, white, dilapidated house on Kimbrough. It's the first time I've ever lived alone and I piece together a home with hand-me-down furniture and thrift store finds. I paperclip postcards to a long string and hang them across my ceiling, an idea I stole from some design magazine I saw in Borders one time. On the mantle above the faux fireplace I arrange a few candles, a couple of artsy greeting cards and a framed photo of my boyfriend and me. He has the same picture on his fridge in his apartment, just a few blocks away.

Just before I move in, he goes away for ten days, to stay in a log cabin on a mountain top in Colorado to meditate. I water his garden and watch his cat while he's gone and try to imagine the summer ahead. We've only been together for a couple of months but we're in love and he tells me he wants to marry me someday. Most of my friends have graduated and moved away and I'm looking for a job and I'm not sure I want to stay in Springfield much longer and he thinks this is where he wants to settle down and everything is just kind of up in the air and I don't really know what's going to happen exactly, but for now I just want to think about warm nights on his porch and cooking breakfast on Sunday mornings in my new kitchen.

I've never really watered a garden before and I'm not sure if I'm doing it right, but the peonies have started blooming like he said they would so I don't worry too about it too much. I write a lot of letters in those ten days and that's pretty much all I do. Well that, and I go to Borders almost every day, and I read books about writing and about finding a job, and I go for a lot of walks and I call my friends who have left town and I listen to their big plans. One afternoon I even make a key lime pie.

I won't find a job this summer...or even this fall, not a real job, anyway. I'll temp, and I'll telemarket, and I'll drive to Branson 4 days a week and give away Mel Tillis tickets to anyone who will sign up for a timeshare tour. I'll stand in a darkened wax museum next to a fake Johnny Carson and Bill Cosby and listen to a loop of their interview on repeat over and over for weeks before I quit. When I finally find a job in the  Spring, one with an office and a desk and a title — if not a competitive salary — I'll be so broken I'll hardly know even know who I am anymore.

But it's still early in the summer and I've got this new apartment on Kimbrough with a faux fireplace and hanging postcards and a boyfriend who grows peonies and says he wants to marry me. He calls me from the road on his way back to town and says he driving with my picture on the dashboard and his foot heavy on the gas. I don't see it coming yet, but he'll dump me in a few months, on a cold morning in January. He'll tell me to be happy and go live my life and for a long time I won't really know how.

But it's May now and the summer lies ahead and my boyfriend's at the door and I let him in and he's wearing a goofy smile and a baseball cap I've never seen. He picks me up and twirls me around and says in a big voice: "Girl, I missed you!" and I laugh and say, "Do you like my place?" because this is the first time he's seen it. So he puts me down, takes off his hat, looks around, and says "Yeah, it works, it's really you."

I move out four months later.

Alphabet, A History (J)

Alphabet, A History (J) Jefferson St.

I can hear my neighbors on Jefferson St. having sex again. Our bedrooms share a wall and I can hear them screwing from the other side on a near-daily basis. They're both women, not that that matters, but they are. Angel and Dawn, or "Heaven and Sunrise" as they like to call themselves. They're both big and sloppy and that's basically how their sex sounds, too. Like a walrus mating session.

Angel doesn't work. She stays home doing God knows what while Dawn goes to her telemarketing gig 4 nights a week. They both smoke Marlboro Reds, maybe 2 or 3 packs each a day and I can smell their apartment on the second floor from the bottom of the steps. One time Angel was leaning over the balcony smoking a cigarette when she saw me pulling into the parking lot. "Wendy!!!" she shrieked, like I'd been away at camp all summer. She promptly flicked her cigarette over the ledge and barreled down the stairs to greet me, her long loose top bouncing up and down all the way, revealing a totally naked bottom half, her big, hairy crotch in plain view for me and anyone else to see.

It's winter now so thank God Angel's dressing in more layers these days. She doesn't hang around the balcony or in the parking lot too much anymore, but that doesn't mean I don't have to see her. Now she just comes over whenever she's in the mood to visually assault someone. She'll come over with magazine clippings or homemade cookies or a couple of beers, and I'm too nice and too bad of a liar to ever say I have somewhere I need to be, something else I need to do.

One time she brings a photo album filled with pictures of herself and all these different kids.
"These are my babies," she says matter-of-factly like she's pointing to a picture of a mountain range she visited on vacation.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"They're my babies," she says again, grinning.
"Like, yours-yours?" I say, "I didn't know you had kids."
"I did. I do." she says. "I have four kids. I had five, but one died. And I had three abortions, so I've actually been pregnant eight times."
"Wow." I reply. "That's a lot."
"Yeah. But I'm done now," she says decisively like she's just announced she's giving up meat. Or men. Or smoking.
I'm not sure what question to ask first.
"So...you were married?" I say. "Or, I mean, well, where do your kids live? With their dad?"
"No, I was never married," she replied. "And they all have different dads. Well, they have three different dads -- Bobbi and Belinda are twins. They're in foster care now in Florida."
"Oh," I say and finish my beer.

I don't ask any more questions. I don't really want to know anything else. I try to imagine Angel as a mother and all I can picture is that hairy crotch barreling down the stairs towards me, it's all just too much.

Dawn is teaching herself the guitar. She knows I like Patsy Cline so one day she comes over plays "Crazy." "I learned it just for you," she says smiling, after she's done. Her voice isn't half bad, actually, but she's got a face like ground-up beef, uneven and pockmarked, and when she asks if I think she can be a big star one day, I just shrug and say, "Absolutely." After all, who am I to crush Sunshine's dreams?

Alphabet: A History (I)

Alphabet: A History (I) Icy Steps

It's the middle of January and I'm 27 years old. My boyfriend of 4 years is moving out today and I'm in the kitchen packing up his plates. I've negotiated a lower rent with my landlord for a couple of months while I look for a place of my own. Brian says I can keep the cats with me until I move out. He thinks I'd be too lonely without them, and he's probably right. But the truth is, I think I'll be lonely even with them.

As I try to remember which plates, what silverware, which glasses were his before we moved in together three years ago, I imagine what it will be like when we finally say good-bye. Sometimes it feels like I've been imagining it as long as we've been together.

The night we first kissed, I saw 18 shooting stars and convinced myself I was falling in love. There was a meteor shower that night and we drove out to the country and he let me wear his fleece sweatshirt while I shouted numbers at each falling star: "One! Two! Three! Fourteen!" On the way back to town, Brian opened the moon roof of his black Nissan Maxima and I watched the sky all the way home.

A week later, I crashed my car on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago on my way to a friend's Halloween party, and when Brian came all the way from Missouri with me a month later to pick it up from the shop, I knew he was worth keeping around. We spent the weekend there together and I showed him my favorite neighborhoods and told him my plan for moving there soon.

Back home he told me he was ready to skip town too, to go somewhere else, to start a new chapter, and I said he should think about coming with me. Eight months later, he sold that Maxima with the moon roof and we packed up a Ryder truck with our cats and plates and beds and headed east to Chi-town. I followed behind him in my trusty Ford and watched until Springfield was just a dot in my rearview mirror.

"This will be an adventure," I said to him before hitting the highway.

Our first apartment in Chicago was tiny, overpriced and freezing in the winter. We bought 3 space heaters just for the living room and I wore tights and two pairs of socks for 4 months straight. As soon as our lease was up we moved to this apartment on Winthrop where we painted the kitchen green and I made curtains from remnant sari material that I found in a bin on Devon street. If we could just make a comfortable home together I thought we could learn to be happy. But now I'm in the kitchen dividing our things and wrapping his plates in old newspaper.

All of a sudden, I hear a noise just outside the kitchen door and when I open it, I see our upstairs neighbor on the stoop, holding her baby in her arms and screaming. The steps are icy and she's slipped on them carrying her baby down to the car to take him to day care.

"I fell on him!"" she screams, "I fell on top of him!"

I call 9-1-1 and help her back up to her apartment, carrying the baby in my arms as carefully as I can. We lay him on the floor, propping his legs on a small pillow, and I rub her back as she strokes his face and cries. When the baby hears the sirens, he suddenly smiles and I think to myself he's going to be okay. I ride in the ambulance with them and stay at the hospital long enough to learn he has a broken leg, but everything else is going to be fine.

Back home in the kitchen, I finish packing a box of Brian's stuff. Later that evening, after he fills his new car with one last load, he hands over his keys, kisses me on my cheek and promises to call me later. I struggle for something to say, something besides just "see you later" or "so long." He takes the houseplant I offer him, opens the back door, and just as he walks out I call after him, "Hey! Be careful on those steps. They're really icy today." Then I shut the door behind him and go looking for the cats.

Alphabet: A History (H)

Alphabet: A History (H): The Hollow Men

It's August, 1994 and I'm in my second week of college in Springfield, Missouri. I live in Woods Hall, the only all-women dorm on campus and share an 18' x 12' room with a square dancing, biology major from Colorado. Across the hall are my new friends Katy and Jessica. They're both in the dorky new student showcase with me, a performance where incoming theater students show themselves off to prospective directors...and suitors, I suppose. Katy and I have decided to do a piece together since we're both totally interested in being avant garde and making people think and stuff. Somehow we decide to act out a poem and before one of us gets the brilliant idea of writing an original, I suggest "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot.

I find the poem in a book at the library and make several photocopies for us. In the evenings after we eat dinner in New Hall cafeteria, we practice our performance in our lobby and sometimes walk down to the tent pad where we hope cute boys will notice us. We're assigned a senior theater major to help us prepare —  this guy, Kory, who really spends more time making passes at us than anything; we're not interested.

Katy drives a brand new Honda Prelude and promises to take me on a road trip to her parents' house two hours away in Rolla some weekend. I'll go with her several times, but the visit I'll remember the most is the time her parents are out of town and she invites her friend Paul over who goes to the University of Missouri and he brings a friend and the four of us order Chinese food from Lucky's and watch Jaws on TV and drink vodka and grapefruit juice cocktails all night long and I end up barfing on my orange striped sweater sometime around 4 AM and I'll never be able to tolerate the smell of grapefruit again.

For some reason, I decide it'd be an awesome idea to write the name of our poem vertically on the wall of my dorm room, and so I use some sidewalk chalk and write in capital letters in the corner, "The Hollow Men." It speaks to my sheltered existence thus far, that this act makes me feel suddenly rebellious, like the first time in high school I paired my new Doc Martens with a flowy skirt.

My favorite part of "The Hollow Men" is where Katy and I say, "Here we go round the prickly pear/Prickly pear prickly pear/Here we go round the prickly pear/ At five o'clock in the morning." I even act out the part of the prickly pear! While Katy walks around me! Needless to say, the night of the showcase we're a huge hit — totally avant garde and provocative. If it were ten years later, HBO so would have given us our own show.

I leave "The Hollow Men" up on my wall for a few weeks and then wash it away one afternoon while watching Ricki Lake on my little 12 inch television. I'll live with Katy the following year in a different dorm — a co-ed one. We'll make up a card game we call "fortune" with our two other roommates and every time we play we have to name four boys we like to see who's good for us and who's just all wrong. One October evening 14 years later, Katy will text me as I'm writing a blog post about us and say, "In that fortune card game we played all the time in college, hearts were love, spades were sex, diamonds were money, but what were clubs?" And I'll immediately text back,"Trouble. Clubs were trouble." And then I'll imagine us as freshman on that big, empty stage, saying with earnest gusto to a theater full of people, "This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper," right before we head out to Applebees in Katy's Prelude for a big old plate of chili cheese fries.

Alphabet: A History (G)

Alphabet: A History (G)

(G): Going Back

My parents got hitched nine months after they met. My mom had just turned 22, my dad was ten days shy of 27. Three weeks after the wedding, they moved halfway across the world to Asia, where they remained for the next 16 years. Along the way, they stopped in Hawaii for a short honeymoon, and then Saigon. It was 1973. I was born three years later during a typhoon right off the beach on Okinawa. From there, we moved to a little village in southern Korea, then to Tokyo, and then to Seoul.

My childhood memories are peppered with images of open air markets and women carrying produce and fabric piled high on their heads. I was an anomaly then, a redheaded child in a sea of inky black hair (even my parents were brunettes). I learned early to ignore the stares, to tolerate all the strangers' hands on my head.

I learned to use chopsticks in 1st grade — the same year "Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto" became a catchphrase in the states. My mom took cooking classes and learned to make the best Bulgolgi for us. Our cleaning lady, Miss Lee, patiently taught me how to make Kimbop and Mandu. In Seoul, the smell of Kimchee wafted through our neighborhood day and night. In Tokyo, we ate sushi dinners with our friends, Eijiro and Miyoko, always stopping first for McDonald's Happy Meals because back then my unrefined taste buds didn't yet understand the awesomeness of Unagi and Maki-mono.

I remember the gifts Eijiro and Miyoko brought me throughout the years: kimonos, origami paper, fancy pencil sets. I remember when my dad got acupuncture for a bad back and I couldn't fathom anyone willingly getting pricked by needles, that it could possibly feel good. In 4th grade, I joined the ski club at school and on weekend trips, we'd stay in resorts deep in the mountains, with sliding paper doors and rolled mats on the floor for sleeping. In the morning, we'd sit cross-legged at a long table and eat noodles for breakfast. I remember shrines along rolling hills, and the congestion and smog of the cities. In the country, women  wearing pointy hats and babies strapped low on their backs dotted the rice fields for miles and miles and miles. I remember squatting over porcelain-lined holes in the floor of public bathrooms, and dodging spit on busy city streets. And I remember the glamorous Korean soap star my mother taught English to in our apartment in Seoul, how tiny her feet were. When I was sure she was deep in a lesson in the den, I'd sneak into the foyer and slip on her leopard print high heels and trot oh-so-softly down the parquet wood floor to the full length mirror in the hallway and smile at my reflection, imagining myself a glamorous star, too.

I was 13 when we left Asia and tomorrow I'll go back again — my first time to China, but a homecoming of sorts. It's been nineteen years.

Alphabet: A History (E)

E: Eight-Sixteen

It's August, 1994, and a week ago, I left my parents and sister at the Frankfurt airport in Germany and boarded a plane bound for the states. I spend a few days in St. louis first, eating Grandma's chicken and rice and making multiple trips to Wal-Mart, seamlessly transitioning into my new role as a college student in the midwest.

It's a Wednesday and we load up my Aunt Laurie's mini-van with the suitcases I brought from Germany and my brand new purchases, including a boom box I bought for $150 at K-Mart. I've still got over $1200 of the money I saved working at Baskin-Robbins and I plan to blow it on new clothes at The Gap and fried food from every fast-food drive-in all over Springfield, I can't believe I'm finally living in the states.

Back when I was growing up on military bases in Japan and Korea and Germany, whenever we'd get a new kid in class, we'd press him for news from the states.

"What shows are on TV now?" "What are you listening to?" "Are people still wearing leggings?"
And that new kid, with all his answers and connections to the promised land, would be the most popular kid in school for at least a week...at least until something else exciting happened, like another new kid from a different town in the states with different news we could use.

Now I'm the new kid and I'm starting college and I'm finally in the states — the trifecta of major life events.

On my new campus, I have a room in the same dorm my aunt lived in all four years that she went here. It's still an all-girls dorm and "it's still beastly hot" my aunt informs me after we finish carrying all my stuff up to my new home: Woods Hall, Room 816.

That evening, after my aunt leaves, I stand in the hallway on the eighth floor waiting for my new roommate to show up. All I know about her this: she's from Colorado, she plans to major in Biology, she loves to square dance, and she's bringing a green comforter with burgundy accents. It's the square dancing that's tripping me out and when she finally shows up, I can't decide if I'm disappointed or relieved she's not wearing a hoop skirt. But one thing I'm sure about is we have nothing in common.

We spend the first month together in our 11' x 18' room staking sides, and claiming times. Or, rather, I'm staking sides and claiming times. Aarin just wants to be my friend. "I'll have the room from 3 to 5 when you're in class," I instruct her, "and then you can have the room to yourself from 5 to 7 when I'm out for dinner." This way, you see, I kill two birds with one stone.

But Aarin has a car and it doesn't take me long to realize the joys of a friend who can get me to The Gap and those fast food drive-ins I so desperately crave. By November we're not only eating our dinners together every evening at 6 PM, we're eating our dinners together every evening at 11 PM, too. I quickly gain 20 pounds. Aarin says she does too, but I can't really tell.

We have a ritual now where we drive out to Mr. Eggroll on Glenstone every night and get a large Cashew Chicken and an order of Crab Rangoon (both of which I will one day learn strangely don't seem to exist in New York City). We'll arrive back to our room just in time for Letterman, which Aarin will watch from her bottom bunk and I'll watch from my top bunk, both of us shoveling fork-fulls of Chinese take-out into our mouths, and trying to decide if we like the length of Dave's hair and whether Drew Barrymore is a flooz or not.

When we aren't eating or watching TV, we go for drives — long drives to towns an hour or two away, and short drives around Springfield, to Andy's Frozen Custard or the Music Warehouse on Battlefield where we browse the aisles for Tori Amos, Radiohead, Greenday, and Weezer. Back in our room we listen to music for hours and we make tapes to take in the car. On our drives, we turn the speakers all the way up and roll the windows down and sing at the top of our lungs over the sound of the wind whipping around.

One afternoon, towards the end of the school year, Aarin asks if I want to room with her again next year and I tell her "I can't —  I'm rooming with Katy instead," our friend from across the hall. "But you should totally try to get a room next to ours." I say, " That way we can still see each other whenever we want!"  She just nods and shrugs her shoulders.

Before we say good-bye for the summer — Aarin's going back to Colorado and I'm going back to Germany — we make one last mixed tape and fill it with our favorite driving-around songs. Aarin puts "The Joker" by The Steve Miller Band on it and I make sure we've got the Cowboy Junkies' "Sweet Jane". Years later, when I leave the Midwest for New York — the city of no Cashew Chicken or Crab Rangoon — I'll find that old mixed tape in a box full of random stuff. I'll take it out of its plastic case, read the song list, and decide to play it again for old time's sake.

I'll forget momentarily that I no longer own a tape deck.

Alphabet: A History (F)

Alphabet, A History (F): Foster Beach

It's May, and I'm 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and Foster Beach opens up to me like an outstretched palm holding all the secrets of the summer ahead.

It's June and Chad has just finished school for the year. He waits for me on his bike outside my apartment on Winnemac and I rush out, wearing a short black sundress over my bikini; I'm carrying a vintage boho bag Chad found for me at a tag sale in New England a couple summers ago, and I've got sunscreen in it, the latest In Touch, a couple bucks for some ice cream, and a hot pink batik tapestry I use as a beach blanket. Chad has remembered to bring a bottle of water and the transistor radio i gave him for his birthday the year before.

At Foster, we lie on our backs and stare at the blue expanse of sky and lake and inhale the summer deeply. It's 1 PM and we've got the whole rest of the day to do whatever we want.

"Remember the summer we became friends?" I ask still staring at the sky, "And we hung out on your deck every night and I kept trying to get your to kiss me and you just kept moving your furniture around and re-decorating instead?"

"Man," he replies, laughing "I blew it."

"If only I'd been a cute dancer boy or something..." I say,sitting up and grabbing the sunscreen to rub on my nose.

"DAMN!" Chad yells to the sky after a minute, "Wahoooooooooo!!!" He thrusts his arms in the air and throws back his head, bathing his face in sunlight.

I smile, flip on my stomach, bend my knees, bobbing my legs in the air, and pull a magazine from my bag.

Chad turns the dial on the radio and lands on "Spirit in the Sky."

"Goin' up to the spirit in the sky," I sing, "That's where I'm gonna go when I die/When I die and they lay me to rest/Gonna go to the place that's the best."

*********************

It's July. It's Nicki's birthday and Chad and I meet her and Sam on Foster Beach. They're finishing sandwiches from the Thai bakery on Broadway and Nicki holds hers out and asks if I want a bite. "Ew," I say, holding my hand up, "Those things stink! How can you eat them?"

It might just be the only thing we ever argue about — these smelly Thai sandwiches. The summer before, on Nicki's recommendation, I buy  two Thai sandwiches with Drew on one of his earlier visits to Chicago. We keep them in their bag until we park our bikes and find a spot on the beach. And then, eager to taste the delectable treat Nicki raves about, we tear into the bag, only to gag on the stench and rush the sandwiches to a far-off trash can.

"Oh, they're good!" Nicki replies, waving away my criticism and polishing off the last bite, "you don't know what you're missing."

I've brought champagne and plastic cups and we toast to Nicki's birthday. I suddenly wish I'd brought baklava from the Middle Eastern Bakery.

*******************

It's August and Terry is in town with the kids for less than 24-hours en route back to Springfield Mo.

"I drove the wrong way for 2 hours before I realized I was heading north and not south," he says of his detour from Ohio.

"Lucky for us," I reply.

In college, Terry is like an uncle to a bunch of us. Chad introduces me to him that summer he can't stop redecorating his porch, and Terry entertains me with stories of Woodstock and San Francisco in the late 60's and the Merry Pranksters. Sometimes the three of us go swimming in Fellows Lake. Sometimes Terry has us over to his little apartment on Walnut, which is unlike any apartment I've ever seen before. Stickers, album covers, newspaper and magazine clippings, tin foil stars, photos, and old postcards adorn nearly every inch of wall space. Even the ceiling is covered with stuff — with homemade mobiles, paper lanterns, and plants hanging from it lazily, gently swaying whenever a breeze blows through the open window.

A year after I meet them, Terry and his wife Mary move to a house, even closer to campus now. Mary is pregnant, and most of us can't believe Terry is going to be a father. They have a girl in June and name her Terra and a year after that, I move away to Chicago.

On Foster Beach during Terry's detour back to Missouri, we wade to our ankles in Lake Michigan. It's night time and dark and Terry doesn't want the kids going out too far. Terra has a brother now —Jules. He's 6 and has the same thick, wavy chestnut colored hair as his sister and mom, and a wide, mischievous grin and twinkling eyes. Terry and Mary still rent the little apartment on Walnut to escape during fights or when one of them needs space. I wonder if the kids even know about it, if Terra knows lived there once.

The next afternoon, I bike to the beach after work and meet Terry and the kids before they head home. They've been at the beach all afternoon waiting for me and now we have time for two songs and a quick dip in the lake. While Terry strums his guitar and sings, Terra and I bury Jules in the sand up to his neck and then run into the water as he kicks himself free, laughing.

Afterwards, as they pack up their rented 2007 white Maxima, I promise to keep in touch. "Maybe Chad and I will come visit one of these days," I say.
"Oh sure, oh sure," Terry replies, stuffing a bag into the back seat with the kids. They're in a change of clothes, but still sandy from the beach, and look exactly how I imagine their parents looking at their age. "We will" I say, "sooner or later...We can't stay away forever." And it's not until I say it, that I realize how much I mean it.

Four weeks later, when I leave Chicago for New York, I tell my friends I'll be back before they even have time to miss me. "I can't stay away from Foster Beach for too long," I say.

And everyone knows what I really mean is I can't stay away too long from them.

Read the whole Alphabet series here.

Alphabet: A History (D)

Drew

It's early spring, late afternoon, I'm having beers and burgers with girlfriends at The Edgewater. It's warm enough that we can sit on the patio outside, which is a good thing because some of us haven't remembered locks for our bikes. We lean them against the unpainted picket fence where we can keep an eye on them while we eat and drink and talk about boys.

I'm the youngest in the group — still a few months shy of my 30th birthday and conversation turns to the challenge of finding a good man before we become old maids.

"I don't understand why it's so hard," I say, "I just want someone who's funny and charming and kind and gracious and creative and ambitious and smart. Curly hair, glasses and dimples don't hurt either," I add.

"I know the perfect guy for you," Meg says, putting her beer down, resting her chin in the palm of her hand, and looking at me intently.

"You do?" I ask, "Who?"

"This guy, Drew," she says, leaning back in her seat. "He's everything on your list."

"Everything?" I ask, sceptically.

"Pretty much," she says.

"Well, why haven't you introduced me to him yet?" I ask.

"He lives in New York," she replies.

"Well, why would I want to meet a guy in New York?! I don't want to meet a guy in New York." I say.

"Weren't you just saying that you have to be open to finding love?" she asks.

"Yeah, but like, in your own city. New York's on the other side of the country!" I say.

"Aren't you going there in a few weeks?" she asks.

"For a weekend," I reply, "I'm not moving there."

"You should meet him while you're there." she says in a way that suggests it's a done deal.

"But —" I begin to protest as Meg pulls her phone out of her purse and starts dialing a number.

"Hi Drew, it's Meg!" she says into the phone a second later. She talks to him for a minute and then hands me the phone.

"Uhm...hi." I say. "Meg says we should meet?"

"Okay." Drew says easily.

"But...you live in New York and I live in Chicago..." I say.

"I can commute," Drew replies.

Five minutes later, I hang up the phone with plans to meet Drew for a sushi dinner later in the month when I'm visiting New York. For the next two weeks, Drew and I email back and forth every day, exchanging stories about our childhoods, friends, travels, hobbies. I'll save these emails and will print them out eventually for safe-keeping, but for now, I don't even know what he looks like. I just know that when I log onto my email account and see a message waiting from him, I get an excited little thrill that catches me off-guard. He makes me laugh and even though I can't see his face, can't hear his voice, wouldn't recognize his handwriting, I'm getting to know him. And everything I don't know about him — what he looks like, for example —I've filled in with guesses and assumptions and wishes of what I might like him to be. That he lives on the other side of the country is something I've pushed out of my mind. For now, I just want to enjoy the fantasy of it all.

The day comes for us to meet. It's May 5 — my mom's birthday. I dress carefully in a knee-length apple green corduroy skirt, a blue tank top, a brown leather belt with a green and blue belt buckle, and green wedges. I wear just a touch of eyeshadow and my glossiest lipgloss. My hair is still long — it's three months before the infamous mullet cut and subsuquent chop-off of all my layers. When I'm ready, I take the subway from Astoria to the Prince stop in Soho and as I walk up the steps to street-level, I see him right away. He has his back to me, but I know it's him. He has the curliest hair I've ever seen and is shorter than I imagined. He turns to me and I see him make the connection. We walk towards each other. I suddenly start panicking. What am I doing? Why am I about to have dinner with a stranger? In an unfamiliar city? How do I know he isn't some kind of kook?

"Are you crazy?" I ask him two minutes after we meet.
There's been an awkward silence between us since we exchanged 'hello's' and now he seems lost and completely unsure where he's going.
"What?" he asks, nervously.
"Are you crazy?" I repeat.
"Oh," he says, "Yeah, I am."
"I thought so," I reply.

We're silent for another couple of minutes while we keep crossing from one side of the street to the other, never really getting anywhere.

"Do you have any idea where we're going?" I ask finally.
"Not really," he says.
"Hmmm." I say, wondering if I should just go home. I'm not even that hungry.

Somehow, by some miracle, we finally cross the right street and end up at the sushi restaurant. They've messed up our reservation, though, and the table we were supposed to have out in the garden is occupied by another couple. I sigh. I don't mean to, but I'm suddenly under-whelmed by it all. Things aren't going at all as I imagined. I meet Drew's eyes and he looks equally unenthused. How could this happen? We had such good chemisty 1500 miles apart. We stand in silence for another five minutes while the waitstaff clears a table in the garden for us. We sit and order white wine and some gyoza. I tell Drew about growing up in Japan and how my parents would pick up McDonalds for my sister and me before we went out for sushi.

We finish out appetizer and wine, the sun sets, he seems a little less neurotic. By the time our entree comes and before we finish our second glass of wine, he's growing on me. I like the way he looks in the candle light, I like his smile, he has nice teeth.

"You have nice teeth," I say, sipping my wine.
"So do you," he replies.

The people at the table next to us are smoking a joint, they're passing it around in a circle, clinking glasses and laughing loudly between inhales. They speak Japanese and sometimes they lean in together and say something in hushed tones and look over at us and giggle.

When we finish dinner, I find myself nodding when Drew asks if I want to get a drink.

"Sure," I say.
"Yeah?" he asks, "Are you sure?"
"Yeah," I reply, "it's still early."

At the bar I tell Drew how I'm writing my masters thesis and it's the last thing I have to do before I get my degree.

"After that," I say, "I can pretty much do whatever. Go wherever. I mean, life's kind of an open path, you know?"

The next day, Drew calls and asks if he can see me again before I go back to Chicago.

We have brunch together the next morning and go for a walk in Washington Square Park. We sit next to an elderly couple and watch the man sing songs to his wife (girlfriend?) and the fly on his shoe. The fly keeps leaving and coming back, leaving and coming back.

"I've got a friend!" the old man says in a thick New York accent, "Look at that."

Drew and I laugh into our hands.

Later that night my friend has a performance at a club right across the street from Drew's apartment. I tell him I'll be there, but I don't invite him to come along. I'm not ready yet to introduce anyone. After my friend performs, I get a text from Drew. He tells me he's recording Grey's Anatomy if I want to come over and watch it later. I've told him it's one of my favorite shows. A half-hour later I go over. I like being at his place. I like sitting on his couch, I like being next to him.

"I have to go now," I say as soon as the show ends.
"Right now?" he says, disappointedly, "Right away?"
"Yeah..." I say. I'm afraid every minute longer I stay will just make it harder to leave.

I cry on the stairs on my way out. I cry the next morning in Astoria Park as I look across the river into Manhatten. And I cry on the plane later that day on my way back to Chicago.

I don't know yet how it's going to work out. I don't know that we'll spend the next year and half criss-crossing the country every two or three weeks to see each other, that we'll rush to one another's homes after tediously long delays in airports and become experts in national air travel. I don't know yet that I'll leave Chicago and move in with Drew into his apartment in New York and spend the first 4 months of my time there unemployed and frustrated. I don't know yet about planning a trip through China together, or how he'll feed my cats in the morning when he wakes up before me, and about the New Year's party we'll throw and the confetti we'll still find in the rugs three months later.

Meg was wrong. Drew doesn't have dimples. And he doesn't wear glasses. But he is "funny and charming and kind and gracious and creative and ambitious and smart." And I still love his smile (dimple or not).

Happy Birthday, Drew. Here's to lots more together.