The English Geek

I'm Out.

A memory card (well, two) full of photos from my weekend adventure.

A mind full of images I'd like to get down in words.

Hamstrings that hurt more than any muscle soreness I've experienced since my extra-tough gymnastics conditioning days.

This wrangling argument going on in my heart: should so close make me feel encouraged or disappointed?

Books to write about.

Entire trains of thought that could be developed into blog entries.

But I don't have a spark. The pictures are on the memory cards, the images in my mind, the hamstrings throbbing. The argument unresolved.

My mojo is as depleted as my glycogen levels.

More later, I guess.

After I eat the pomegranate chocolates I've been hiding, and take a long hot bath involving bubbles and self pity and questioning everything.

Or maybe just a bath with a book.

'Till the Usual Amy finds her way back from wherever it is she's lost...I'm out.

You Know What's Embarrassing?

No, it's not the fact that my 4-year-old somehow managed to break the entire door handle off of my van yesterday afternoon, in the time between when I said "I'll get your white blankie for you, it's in the van, I'm just going to grab this garbage" and when I actually grabbed the garbage and walked to the kitchen door. In the space, that is, of less than 15 seconds. I walked out and there he was, sprawled across the garage floor (unbruised and unscraped, by the way) holding the door handle in his hand. No, that's not embarrassing.

That's frustrating.

And it's not embarrassing that Kendell insisted I come with him when the mechanic called to say "I have time now, bring the van over." Even though I was in the middle of cooking dinner, and had to leave the boiling of the potatoes to my daughter, who couldn't drain the potatoes when they were finished (and let them cook a little bit too long) because the pan was too heavy (not blaming her here!), so they sat there absorbing all the cooking water and when I got home the chicken was burned and the potatoes were this gooey, moist, disgusting mess. I don't know why he couldn't go without me, but: he couldn't go without me. That's not embarrassing (although it is, oddly, the tiniest bit endearing).

That's maddening.

No, what's embarrassing is that somehow I ended up sitting in the middle of of the Toyota dealership---the posh-ish, new, filled-with-leather-couches Toyota dealership---surrounded by shopping bags full of stuff from Walmart. Because, what better way to kill time, waiting for the van door handle to be repaired, than to walk across the street and do some grocery shopping? Only, I spaced the fact that yeah: the van was being repaired. So we had to walk back across the street carrying six sacks each, and then, where else do you put all your purchases but right next to you?

That's embarrassing.

Ever have...

one of those days when you think: wait a second, all sarcasm aside, maybe I really AM the worst mom in the world?

And then you think: ok, I'm going to try extra hard today to make things right and good. I'm going to be a super mom: make dinner and dessert.  Get the kids to church almost on time. Not lose my patience, not even once.

And then despite all the resolutions and the squaring of shoulders, the renewal in your spirit to try harder and be better: everyone still complains at dinner, and one kid even pukes he thinks it's so disgusting. The husband yells, the kids remind you that if you'd just made mashed potatoes no one would have thrown up, and even someone offering a tentative "I liked the dinner, Mom" doesn't make things feel any better?

And suddenly you start to realize that maybe, despite all the crazy in your house, it wasn't ever the crazy, it was always you, you were the problem all along? Walking around, thinking you were doing OK, thinking you were a good cook, a good wife, a good mother, and yet look at how it's all messed up, despite all your best efforts.

Feeling like someone should have told you, only: someone did tell you, only you didn't believe them, you tried to argue your innocense.

And all you'd like to do, really, is crawl into bed and sleep for, like, forever?

Yeah.

Having one of those.

Before.

I was thumbing through some photos this morning—older, pre-digital photos—looking for a picture I haven't found yet. I came across this one, though:

That's Nathan, barely six months old, with my dad, in Hobble Creek canyon. Kelly's Grove to be exact. I've forgotten the family function we had that picnic in the canyon for. Father's Day? My mom's birthday? Just because? I don't remember.

What I do remember is being the woman who took that photo. Twenty something. Surrounded with little kids. A baby in my home who I could scoop up and kiss, rock and nurse and snuggle and smell, whenever I wanted. Having my dad around to talk to, even when his hour-long phone calls secretly made me a little bit crazy. Secure—absolutely, stupidly secure—in my faith in the future. Not even hopeful, really, but certain that life would give me exactly what I wanted. I thought that because the desires of my heart were righteous ones, I would be able to achieve them.

I know we're supposed to feel grateful for the knowledge life brings us. I know that the struggles we experience make us wiser, and that that wisdom is supposed to be good. Wisdom is supposed to make up for the anxiety, disappointment, and heartache. The struggles are supposed to be valuable because somehow they transform us into better people.

And yes: I do know much more than I did the summer day I took that photo of my dad and my Nathan. I've had experiences I never imagined I would have, and joyful, unexpected surprises along the way. I have also struggled, and I have come out of the dark times with more wisdom. But I don't know if the wisdom has made me a better person. It has hollowed me out. I have become jaded and brittle along the edges, quick to answer any real question with sarcasm. Quicker to push life away, to pull into myself, to not reach out.

What I know now that I didn't before is that trying to do the right things, to have faith and hope, to make sacrifices, isn't a pathway to what you desire from your life. Sometimes you can do everything as right as you possibly can but you still are going to be left wanting what you wanted in the beginning—and you'll keep wanting it even when you can't have it anymore. And I didn't know that my great struggle would be balancing all those hopes I had—the things I didn't even question I would be able to have—with the reality of what I would be given instead.

Part of me wants to think that I was stupid for ever being as hopeful as I was, before. But what I sometimes wish is that life would have taught me something different. That I could have learned that hope was enough. Or that I would have hoped for the right things. Or that I had known how to make the transformation—better person by way of struggles—work for me. More than anything, right at this moment, I wish I could be the person I was that day, behind the lens. I wish I could set my camera down on the picnic table, sit down next to my dad—my rotund, never-afraid-of-an-off-color-joke, talkative dad—and laugh over Nathan's chubby body together. Tell him I love him and know that he understood instead of flinging the words down a dark well, hoping he catches them.

I wish I could put my knowledge down and not have to pick it up again. Just for today. I wish I could feel like I used to: certain that life would fulfill my hopes, simply because they were good, honest ones. I wish I knew how to return to that feeling I had, before my life turned itself upside down and shook me out here, where I have landed with experiences I had no idea I would need to have. Even though, as I write that, I am filled with knowing that, even if I couldforget what I have learned, I couldn't, because along with it came those unexpected joys—even though I know that, I still find myself weeping, full of longing. Wishing I could go back to my before self, shallow and clueless, if only to keep part of that hopeful surety to bring back with me, a bright feather to keep with my dark stones.

Just to return to myself a little bit of the hope I used to fly with. Before.

Old Friend

Yesterday, along with 99% of Utah County, I took my boys to the Thanksgiving Point dinosaur museum. (Haley was swimming with her friends.) Apparently I wasn't the only one who couldn't resist the lure of $2 Tuesdays. Despite the crowds, a good time was had by everyone. Kaleb, who'd been there once before with his friend Mason, kept talking excitedly about the sand and the water and the digging in the sand and was thoroughly bored until we finally made it to where the sand is. Jacob, who used to be passionately in love with dinosaurs---when he was barely two, he'd answer "paleontologist" when you asked him what he wanted to be when he grows up---was annoyed at how slowly we worked our way through the museum, not appeased at all by seeing skeletons of stegos and T-rexes.

Maybe only Nathan had a good time.

At least I tried, I suppose. *I*, however, happened to enjoy myself immensely. I love museums of any kind, and once we made it to the sandy, hands-on section where everyone could happily dig, something fortuitous happened: I bumped into an old friend. Hayley and I met in our secondary ed classes; we were the Old Ladies, the only students not in our twenties. We were instant friends. Compadres in arms against grumpy husbands, difficult exes, stupid teachers, and way-too-cheery-and-optimistic (not to mention thin and unwrinkled and non-jaded) fellow students.

That time in my life felt like God was asking me to do something I didn't want to do, for reasons I still don't completely understand (although I know a few of them now), and He was like "OK, I know you'd rather be staying at home with your babies, but you need to do this even though it feels like your heart is being ripped out of your nose, and I'll give you people along the way who will help you." Hayley was one of those people. I'm not sure if I helped her much, but she was an immense blessing to me; she listened to my rants and had a way of calming me down with her practical approach when I got too frantic. After classes we'd stand in the parking lot by our mini vans, talking. She made me feel like I would be OK.

Plus we could laugh together. We could both be snarky as we wanted with each other, or bitter, or frustrated, but one of us would manage to make it into something funny. She taught me exactly how curative laughter is.

The thing with old friends, with old real friends, is that no matter how long it's been since you've seen them last, you can pick up the string of conversation in a second. Hayley and I sat together while her grandkids and my boys dug up fossils, talking just as fast and hard as we had seven years ago in the parking lot. Laughing. And just as she was a timely gift during those school and teaching years, she carried a bit of advice with her that I needed to hear right now.

She's still teaching, and the school year starts for her on Monday. We might not talk again for another year or so. But what a comfort it is to me to know that when I do see her again, we'll pick up where we left off yesterday. Talking and laughing and maybe even swearing just the tiniest bit. Still friends.

Off...

to finally see Harry Potter today. I'm not really sure what's wrong with me, as every single other HP movie I've seen on opening day, but this one...I'm totally excited to see, and to be re-immersed in the Hogwarts world, but actually gathering everyone together and, you know, goingto the theater has felt like too much work. And maybe the reviews have tempered my enthusiasm a bit. The most disheartening review was the one that said the movie fails to focus on Harry's relationship with Dumbledore and instead looks at everything through the romance angle. I have this theory that the Harry Potter people are afraid of the Twilight people being more successful so they're trying to appeal to the Twilight crowd. Forgetting that A---Harry Potter is way better than Twilight and B---most Twilight fans are also Harry Potter fans. At least, if the conversations I've had with library patrons are indicative of the rest of the world.

At any rate...we're seeing it today. And hoping we won't be disappointed!

more on Forgiveness

I think that life continually tries to teach us truths. Believe something and, eventually, life will hold it up for your inspection: do you really believe this? What effect will believing this have in your life? Prove that you believe it by acting on it.

The Incident that let to me writing my last blog post was one of those times. Since The Incident, I've been thinking. Thinking a lot. Roll-around-awake-at-midnight thinking. Thinking about the responses I received from you, and the conversations I had with my sisters. Trying to find answers to my questions. Strangely enough, an image from a line in a Billy Collins poem wrapped itself into all this thinking: "I say drop a mouse into a poem/and watch him probe his way out." Somewhere I realized: this isn't only about my philosophical struggles over how forgiveness might impact me. It's also about me acting on my beliefs. If I believe in forgiveness, and I also believe that forgiveness doesn't take away consequences; if I apply that to my own mistakes, then doesn't it follow that I also have to apply it to other people's mistakes, too?

The Incident was ugly. Use-inappropriate-capitals ugly. Ugly words, ugly accusations, ugly emotions. Maybe the worst of ugly incidents I've had ever. I cannot forget, yet, what was said and what those words implied; they won't stop whispering in my ears at importune moments. I am only in the very beginning of even thinking about trying to forgive the ugliness, and I cannot tell, yet, what the consequences will be. But aside from my feelings about the person who instigated The Incident, I am learning a truth that life has dropped inside of me, wants me to know, to see how it shapes me; maybe if I can understand it and apply it---can turn it into something I live---then it can be a good consequence.

Here is what life is teaching me: all the ugly incidents have piled up within me. I have turned them into slats of wood and shuttered myself off. I am walking through life but not really feeling it because of my tendency to pull away and live in my dark rooms. I don't know that I know how to not keep my shutters tight.

I don't know that I know how to feel much anymore.

But all of this revolves, somehow about forgiveness, and about me needing to drop the "forgiveness doesn't eliminate consequences" mouse into the maze of my heart and watch it---no, experience it---working its way through me. Here's another belief I thought I knew about forgiveness: it's not always about saying "it's OK. It doesn't matter what you did, because I forgive you." I thought I knew that, but looking at the crystalized person I have become, I don't think I do. I think I have made clumsy attempts at forgiveness by saying "it's OK" to all the earlier ugly incidents, rather than really trying to forgive. Because a true attempt at forgiving a person doesn't have anything to do with that person, or with the thing you fall victim to. It doesn't have to do with letting yourself be OK with the mistakes. It has to do with yourself and with what you choose to do. Will you let the person's mistakes fester inside of you? Let them make you jaded or mistrustful, angry or shuttered away from real emotion? Or will you work on not allowing the negativity to grow and continue to influence you?

I have not managed that last. I've shuttered myself away, and all around me stinging nettles have taken root. "It's OK," I've said, trying to forgive. What I have really done is tried to keep the consequences at bay. As the mouse works its way through me I find it is changing me. I find I do not want to say "It's OK" anymore. It isn't OK. I want a real consequence to happen. I want to not let The Incident become just another slat in my defenses. I want to let some light in.

To do that, though, I have to really forgive. Have to not savor the sting. Have to not sit in my darkness, pondering its depth and texture. Have to, in other words, not let what someone else chooses to think about me affect how I feel about myself. And honestly: I'm not that good at that. Sure, I offer up resistance at first, sometimes a furious volley of it. But I always get tired. I always grow weak and begin to think: you're right. I store up that defeat in my darkness, too.

But the mouse is still working its way through. Not just following a maze, but making new paths. I am still thinking. "What saves a man is to take a step," Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, "Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it." What is my next step? I am walking in the dark. But soon, perhaps, I will find a little light to follow. Or grow brave enough to step into the dark anyway, trusting that I might find my way.

on Forgiveness

You know how, when you have a canker, it’s almost impossible to stop rubbing your tongue over it? This week I’ve had a similar metaphorical sore spot I can't quit rubbing over and over, trying to puzzle out how to make myself feel better. Instead, I’ve felt like drawing inward: not talking to anyone, not blogging. Certainly not laughing. More like constant weeping and wishing I were a drinker. Or a drug addict. Or that there were some way to turn off the feelings that I’ve had. And while I can’t write about the details that would help this make more sense, I am left with questions I can’t find answers to, and maybe the questions themselves are worth writing about.

 

All of this goes back (as, seemingly, everything does lately) to my execrable adolescence and its questionable decisions. Still, there is such a thing as forgiveness, and I had felt, up until this week, that I had attained that. Perhaps I was wrong. I didn’t understand, while I was making those decisions, that I would have to be forgiven by people who weren’t in my life yet, some who didn’t even exist yet. I believe in forgiveness. I believe it can bring you peace. I also believe that it cannot eliminate the consequences of your mistakes. This week has forced me to examine how that concept works within the scope of my life.

 

Ultimately, here is the question I am left with: if you’ve been forgiven for a mistake, and yet the consequences of the mistake are that you can be reminded of it at any time and that it can continue to affect how people think about you—if, in other words, the mistake continues to haunt you in a worldly sense even though in an eternal sense it has been forgiven—then where does the peace that’s supposed to come with forgiveness figure in? How does forgiveness really help you when you are in the world? It hardly matters that I feel at peace with my mistakes (I understand why I made the choices I did and, if I am being honest, cannot say that I would change many of them because of the things they taught me) when the people I love cannot. Or when my mistakes, whether or not God has forgiven them, can influence someone else to make his or her own bad decisions—how, then, does my claim of being forgiven even matter?

 

Maybe it is simply that the letters we are branded with in consequences of our mistakes never really fade here on earth. No matter what the scarlet letter is or what sin it signifies, there will always be someone who is able to see it and unafraid to pass judgment. And maybe I am deluded for expecting it to work any other way than that. If you are, say, a thief (choosing a mistake I did not make) for a while in your life, how can you expect people to trust you with the key to their house, even after you stop stealing? What I am left with is one last question: How can forgiveness relieve sorrow for sin when, at any odd and unexpected time, the relentless consequence of how others feel about that sin can push you back into the sorrow?

Thirty-Something (one to grow on)

Today's my little sister's birthday. We weren't always good friends, Becky and I. Truth be told, I was a mean and horrible big sister when we were growing up. She can tell you stories about the horrible-big-sister things I did, some of which I have conveniently blocked from my memory. Still, despite my failures during our early years, I always loved her and we did have some good times together. I hope she knows how glad I am to have her as mysister! So, in lieu of birthday cake, which is fairly difficult to easily transmit via Internet, a random list of stuff you might never need to know about me, Becky, horrible-big-sisterness and grown-up good times:

1. She knows why I cannot be trusted in a McDonald's drive through.

2. The moment I really got over my horrible-big-sisterness happened in the parking lot of a doctor's office after my first-ever visit to a gynecologist. I had to tell her something I didn't want to tell her but had to be told anyway, and you know? She didn't freak out, and we acted like grown ups even though we weren't, yet, really, and things were always better after that.

3. One of my favorite pictures of Becky and me, from Kaleb's blessing day:

4. 
   

5. She used to be afraid of dogs, but maybe she is over that.

6. Runs-From-Dogs Story: Once upon a time, Becky and I were riding bikes. As we came down the hill near our house, some dogs started chasing us. She started screaming and shaking and doing a little I'm-scared-out-of-my-mind dance, having dumped the bike. Then she ran inside a complete stranger's house. I continued riding my bike home. My intentions were to get my mom and/or dad, but until a few months ago she thought I just left her there.

7. Ask each of us what my first floor routine music was and we'll each give a different answer. One day I need to just dig out the tape and figure it out. Except: while I still have the tape of my floor-routine music (thereby keeping any "I'm in the middle of a gymnastics meet and I forgot my floor exercise music" dreams at bay) and could put it into your hands in approximately eight minutes, I no longer have a tape player to play it on.

8. Speaking of gymnastics dreams? We both have them.

9. And. I could call her and say "last Tuesday I dreamed I had a baby" (I did) and she would know exactly how I feel, and the conversation would spin on for hours after that.

10. If I could give her anything for her birthday, it would be her own daughter.

11. She had a really bad club foot as a baby. I remember the day she left with Mom to have a surgery and I was so jealous of her, getting to go to the hospital and whatever else I thought was special about having your leg/calf/ankle sliced open and put back together, that I said something really mean. I can't remember what the mean thing was, but I still remember watching her start to cry, and how I felt less jealous but also considerably more horrid. Told you: horrible big sister.

12. When I was pregnant with Haley, my two older sisters were also pregnant, and I always felt like Becky got left out of the pregnant-with-your-sister thing. Until she was pregnant with her son Ben, and I was pregnant with Kaleb. We got to be pregnant together! I loved being able to commiserate and appreciate pregnancy together.

13. Our youngest sons are about three months apart in age, and whenever Kaleb is listing off his friends (something he does quite often, counting them on his fingers as he names them), he never forgets Ben in his list.

14. Many of my gymnastics memories have her at their fringes. I still feel bad that I, having figured out that the meanness our coach Jack exhibited during our daily workouts---the meanness that terrified her---was nothing more than a training technique, didn't ever clue her in and let her know she didn't have to be afraid of him. He was only trying to scare her into doing her handstands the right way.
15. We both have high foreheads and forehead veins. The veins pulse when we are laughing, happy, stressed, or angry. (Julia Roberts also has a forehead vein, were you curious.)
16. We both have English degrees, only from competing universities (hers is from the University of Utah, mine is from BYU). We graduated in the same year, 1999.
17. I call Haley "Becky" all the time. It's a miracle she doesn't think her name is "Beck-I-Mean-Haley."
18. I once spent a night sleeping on her couch while her cat sat on the back of the couch, hissing at me every time I rolled over. OK, maybe "sleeping" isn't the right word for what happened that night. Still, Becky has gorgeous kitties and I love even the one who hissed at me all night.
19. When we hiked Timp together, we both brought notebooks in our backpacks but both felt sheepish until we each confessed. Then we sat on the top of the mountain and wrote.
20. We shared a bedroom until I was twelve. Or maybe thirteen. At night, while we were trying to fall asleep, we'd play the "I'm her, I get him" game, listing famous women we got to be and famous men we got to get. I totally got the best guys. Because I was mean.
21. One day we were playing in the boat in the garage. I can't remember the entire context of our game, but I told her she needed to go into the house and say this to our mom: "Amy's gone, gone with the wind like Scarlett O'Hara." Except she said "like Scarlett O Well."
22. Once, when we were at Lake Powell, she dropped my favorite pink shirt in the lake and it was lost forever. Mean Big Sister was out in full force that day.
23. She told me a few weeks ago that she used to sneak into my bedroom and listen to my tapes. She had to sneak because I would have killed her otherwise. Now if we could just figure out which song from my music she loved but can't remember, it'd be all good.
24. Sometime I should ask her: Did she hate ringlets as much as I hated ringlets? Because, seriously: I hated ringlets.
26. Once, when Kendell and I were dating, he was teasing Becky. They were outside in our front yard, rough housing and laughing, and a policeman stopped because he thought Kendell was attacking her. This still makes me giggle!
27. Speaking of. Becky is WAY better at keeping a clean house than I am, which makes me think that maybe Kendell chose the wrong Allman girl.
28. When I bought my camera, she bought my old one, and she's first in line for my current camera when I buy a new one.
29. We ran a half marathon together in 2003. She came with me but wasn't really ready yet, especially for an all-downhill course. I don't think her quads have ever forgiven me.
30. My family went to Las Vegas nearly every summer when we were growing up. One of my clearest Vegas memories: going to the water park with Becky. The one that was right on the strip (don't know if it's still there or not). This might have been the first vacation we went on without our two older sisters coming along.
31. Another vacation memory: we drove to northern California the summer after sixth grade. On the way, we stayed the night in Reno, then drove to Lake Tahoe where we were going to eat breakfast. Becky and I both got carsick. Every time Haley starts to feel carsick, I remember sitting in the back seat with Becky on that winding road, trying not to throw up.
32. Becky and I have similar taste in books. Whenever we talk on the phone, one of us will ask what the other is reading.
33. Last Christmas Becky made this gorgeous holiday wall hanging. I am totally borrowing her pattern this fall. We both made a nativity quilt, only they turned out completely different. At least, I think they did...I just realized that I've never seen hers. Obviously we both like to quilt. She's much better at piecing than I am, having managed to perfect the triangle. (My triangles never turn out right.)
34. Becky's dedication to her faith is inspiring to me. She just goes about quietly living it, without being judgmental of anyone. She and I both went through a rebel-against-the-church phase, only hers was much milder and shorter than mine. The wisdom she's gathered since then continues to help me, too.
35. All of our shared history means that we can catch each other's eye at appropriate moments, give a roll or a head shake, and know exactly what the other one is thinking. I didn't know as a child just how blessed I would be to have her as my younger sister, but I am certainly grateful now!

(And, if you know Becky, or even if you are just mildly curious, you could visit her blog to wish her a happy birthday!) 

Curly-Haired Self

Back when Haley was 11, we had some stand-by plane tickets fall into our lap. Kendell and I discussed and debated where to go; we wanted to do something together, just him and me, but Kaleb was still just a baby, barely one, and our options for leaving him with someone else were pretty limited. Instead, we decided that Haley and I would take a trip together, and thus the idea for the 11-year-old trip was born. Each kid, we decided, would get to take a trip with just me sometime during the year they were eleven. Haley got to go to Niagara Falls. This summer, Jake is eleven, and his 11-year-old trip sort of fell into our lap, too.

Only: Haley, who is perhaps part mermaid or siren or fish—she loves the beach so much she must be part sea-creature—would have never forgiven me for Jake getting nine days on the beach. And Jake didn't even hesitate, but agreed that she could come along on the trip. He wasn't getting me all to himself anyway; we went with my mom and my sister, plus her four daughters, one son-in-law, two granddaughters and her brother- and sister-in-law, their children and one son-in-law. It was a big group, not too conducive for only one-on-one time, but we couldn't have done something so fabulous as a week on a beach in Mexico any other way.

I'm still pondering how to write about the way our trip benefited my relationship with Jake. As that thread of narrative works its way out in my head, another one is more clear. Of the 19 people in our group, seven were between the ages of 11 and 20. Being around so many adolescent types brought back quite a few memories of things I'd forgotten from when I was an adolescent type. Well, that and my mom, who brought up the time my friend Jennifer and I stole her credit card and headed off to Lake Powell for Spring Break. I had to correct her on one point: it wasn't a credit card but a gas card I stole, and the punishment was that we had to live on convenience store food for five days. (I still feel a little twinge of relief mixed with annoyance—"I can eat! Doritos again!"—at the sight of a Phillips 66 gas station.) She also brought up the fact that I once stole an entire book of checks, no doubt to fund nefarious projects. (Probably quite a few, but I know I used the majority of them to buy music.)

Obviously my horrible teenage years have not yet been forgotten by my mother. And who could blame her? I'm just glad that things like fruity drinks and walks on the beach were able to distract her from telling all the stories. And that, thankfully, she doesn't have a clue about the truly terrible tales I could tell.

I wasn't really crazy about Haley and Jake hearing my wilder stories, especially since I'd forgotten the details and so would've never brought them up on my own. My nieces listened, a little wide-eyed, to the tales of Amy's Dark Years (seriously what my mom calls them) and my children looked astounded. Almost as shocked as when they first saw me walk out of the bathroom with curly hair. I used to wear my hair scrunched and curly, but I changed to straight after I got married. I realized, seeing the look on their faces, that they'd never seen me go curly, but in the heat and humidity, not to mention my general vacation laziness, straightening was just not going to happen.

(A blurry shot of me + curly hair + Jake at dinner.) Plus, I was vacationing with my mom and sister, without my husband, and with no work or laundry or yard or really any responsibilities. I felt a little bit more connected to the Amy I used to be, the braver one, the freer one. The one with curly hair. And it wasn't only the curly hair and the crazy stories showing my kids a side of me they've not seen. It was my devil-may-care attitude. You want another pinata or mango smoothy? It's happy hour, get one for me too! You want to see the ocean at night? Let's go right now! Want to try to speak in Spanish to the jewelery-store vendors? Well, even if you won't, I will! I tried mole (ehhhh), went body surfing in my swimsuit bottoms and sports bra (best-ever way to cool off from a long, hot, humid run, even if I did finish with a compact lining of sand between my skin and my dubious outfit), succumbed to a free foot massage from a complete stranger. And, you know: I laughed. I talked to my mom like I haven't in years. I forgot all about cell phones and kitchen anxiety. I relaxed into my vacation as if it were a hammock between shady trees, dropping everything that makes my stomach hurt next to my shoes and belt and work clothes.

I'm glad my children got to see me like that. Two of them, at least. I wish I could know how to be my vacationing self all the time, wish I could be the relaxed, confident, courageous person I used to be. Because, despite the obviously stupid motivations and methods, I didn't used to let anyone stop me. When I wanted things, I strode out, found a way, and got them. But now—now that what I want is much larger and more important than spring breaks at Powell or the latest music release—I let myself get stopped. All the time, I let myself get stopped. Fear of shaking the boat, of failing, of my own weakness stops me.

Maybe, though, the cat is out of the bag. Maybe by reconnecting with my curly-haired self, I've reconnected with some of the courage I used to have. Maybe I'll stop being stopped. Maybe I'll start.

Maybe tomorrow I'll scrunch my hair.