Thinkin Hard

Its 10 am here in Ecuador! I am under my covers like crazy rich uncle Dana eating a banana with peanut butter, God's Gift to Food, and my head itches mercilessly. Just giving you my vital stats, you know.

As this program winds to a close, I'm thinking a whole lot about time and how it's expanding and snapping shut and shrinking in front of my eyes. For example, in late January at some point in my life, my mom and sister came to visit me in Kalamazoo. I was almost completley sure that that was one year ago, but once I really think about it, it's clear that it was two years ago when I was a freshman. They visited me in Hoben, my friends in Trow, we walked around the snowy campus and I skipped out on my caf meals to eat at Saffron and The Strutt. Last year, late January? We were cuddeled up in the sus house, trying to not turn on the heat. Zak had just gone to THAILAND. ( I tried to find your Thailand blog, Zak, and couldn't) I was taking sculputure, statistics, and beginning to gnaw my way through my independant study.

And three years ago? Slogging through twelth grade, knowing I was going to Kalamazoo, a secret warmth to get through physics.

Five years ago? I'd just started reading Cat's Cradle with Zak for the first time, and we all know how much that book means to me.

But no matter how many Januaries and Julies pass, each morning I wake up and slip on my glasses and pray that I haven't peed my pants while sleeping. It's not an issue for me, peeing my pants, it's probably happened five times since being potty trained but it remains something that I am afraid of having happened when I wake up.

With that confession over, I guess I could start actually start making sense here. What I mean to say is that no matter how time stretches and rips and gets tangled up on itself and in my mind, there are some things that stay constant. My anxiety about silly things definitely counts as something that's been there for me forever, and it's probably going to be there until my end. Sometimes, often, its no fun, it holds me back, it keeps me in my room writing furiously or imagining my death via food posioning.

However, the strength of the anxiety does help me remember parts of my life that might have faded otherwise. The churning stomach, the paralyzed brain, tight fists and though loops provide strong, clear points of recognition that might have gotten smoothed over it the physical fear wasn't so strong. And now, in a part of my life that's less riddled with anxiety, I can look back and learn from it.

For example, when I was little, I had this big thing about loosing teeth. I felt so miserable, like a part of me was dying or had abandoned me. I remember being six or seven and loosing a big tooth near the back. This seemed worse than anything, I was crying so hard. My mom, genius that she is, gave me a little potted plant from the drug store to help me feel like life was still going on even though I lost a part of myself.

Yesterday, quietly flipping out about how Ecuador is coming to an end and I'll never travel again and I don't know what I am doing with my life and have no friends, I rewound back to the lost tooth and the little plant. Its the same worry and solution all over again: loosing what is yours, the only thing you can identify and grab onto in the messy world, soothed by the reminder that the universe is larger than your bloody mouth, and that this giantness and variety can be a comfort.

So I keep losing teeth, knocking them out, they fall out while I'm sleeping or in class or at a party. And sometimes they hurt, and sometimes I don't notice until months later, but I always miss them, and I can't resist running my tongue over my bare gums.

But then in my backyard, under my bed, in my notebooks and friendships and heard in my conversations, are a million tiny trees, ferns and bonsais, dying or dead or growing strong, moments that I remember the bigger world around me, stop crying over my teeth, and just chill out and go with it.

So yesterday I lost a tooth and today I found a tree: the sounds people make when they are togehter. I heard in in my house growing up, Ma and her friend having coffee at 8 on a weekend morning. Later as I entrerd the teenager-sleep-forever phase, Ma and Lesters talking artifically loud to wake me up at 11.

"SHOULD WE HAVE FRENCH TOAST, DEAR DAUGHTER WHO DOES NOT SLEEP TILL NOON?"

"WHY PERHAPS WE SHOULD LOVING MOTHER! IF ONLY THERE WAS A THIRD PERSON HERE TO MAKE THE COFFEE!"

"ALAS, YOUR SISTER HAS JOINED THE CONVENT OF HER BEDROOM AND WILL NOT ROUSE HERSELF"

The Sus House bickering and disecting of what happened last night, or the frantic key-board and pages turned as an all-nighter winds down.

And now here, with Pilar and Jimmy, just this morning

"Ma, we have to go!"

"Ok, I just have to find my toothbrush. Did you take my toothbrush?"

"Ma, why on earth would I take your toothbrush?"

"Well, you took my hairbrush yesterday."

"That's different. We both have hair that we need to brush"

"We both have teeth my son. And I am going to brush mine before we leave this house"

My teeth make me cry and my trees make me giggle, and both of them help me remember my complicated, boring, wonderful, thrilling, scary, adventuresome life.