twenty-one

Two days ago, I celebrated my twenty-first birthday. As I am known to do, I took the opportunity to reflect on life and self and soul and where I’ve been and where I’m going. Over this glorious birthday weekend at Bass Lake, one of my favorite places in the world, I slowly wrote twenty one somethings I’ve realized, I’ve discovered, I’ve learned, I am, I’m becoming, I’m considering as I end my year as a twenty year old and begin life as twenty-one.

21. I crave and require time with my pen and paper, coffee, and silence.

20. I’m not good at chronic injuries. You would think after seven years with a bad knee, in and out of physical therapy and with a section of my dresser designated for knee braces of all shapes and sizes, I would learn that I can’t walk eighty miles around England in 10 days, that I can’t bike 40 miles to Lake Michigan, that I can’t run up and down the sand dunes, or at least that I can’t expect to be able to walk for a few days after these decisions. But I’ve yet to learn this. Before I make these decisions, when the challenge is exciting and the air outside is beautiful, I say I’m not one to be limited by a faulty joint and that no pain is enough to stop me from doing things I love to do. After the fact, when I end up with my leg propped on pillows, braced and wrapped in ice packs, I say other things. I’m not good at chronic injuries. But I don’t regret those wonderful, wonderful miles seeing Big Ben at night or running over sheep-covered hills, the memories of getting 20 miles in to the bike ride before my bike, rather than my knee, broke. I’m not good at chronic injuries.

19. My favorite part of my now almost-daily yoga is when you are asked to sit and breathe and just be in gratitude toward yourself as it exists in that moment.

18. I am not the person I was when I first stepped foot into this college; I am not the same person as when I celebrated this birthday one year ago. Sometimes that comes with growing pains, mostly that comes with a fullness of heart.

17. I’ve learned solidarity. I’ve learned it’s not always about fighting against, but standing with. I’ve learned at some point, you have to commit to standing, even if that comes with sacrifices.

16. I get nervous when asked to share my post-college aspirations because the majority of the time, I’m either told I’m a saint, or my ability to ‘handle it’ is questioned. I don’t know how to respond to either, because I don’t believe either to be true.

15. There is a stress and a sleeplessness that comes with working so hard, but to me, there is also such joy and fulfillment.

14. It’s both terrifying and invigorating to have so much of your self and soul bound up in your dreams.

13. I would not be who or where I am without North United Methodist Church. But I like the energy of Quaker meeting and I am centered and made to stay through Zen Buddhist meditations and nothing has taught me gratitude like the sun and I have learned strength and kindness and presence through the trees and my Grandpa taught me about conversation and the power of words and dancing is how I learned to live and poetry is what keeps me whole and it is those with me on my path who have given me belief in the inherent capacity for good in all. I’m not sure all of that renders me religious, but I do believe.

12. Yesterday, sitting at my favorite ice cream place in the world, the owner said she was happy I was there to celebrate my 21^st instead of a bar. I said: “I’ll always choose ice cream.” That’s probably one of the truest things I’ve ever said.

11. Get me outside. Show me the field and I will run through it. Show me the tree and I will climb it. Show me the puddle and I will stomp in it. Show me the path and I will meander it. Show me the lake and I will jump in it. Show me the sun and I will raise my face to it. Get me outside and my soul will be lifted.

10. One of my favorite things is to take a day and bake a cake or cookies or a pie from scratch. Put on folk music, an apron, flour on your nose and measuring cups out. Take the time to follow the steps, to get it just so, to fold ingredients together, to wait as the scents fill the room. And then to sit together and en-joy the sweetness before it all melts away.

9. I believe the best thing you can often do for yourself and for others is both quite simple and vulnerably challenging to live out: stay. Stay, don’t run. Stay, be there. Be. Stay anyway. Stay.

8. I am a feminist who believes in equality, who aches for and holds up those who have been hurt, wronged, discriminated against, oppressed, and made to feel small. A feminist who gets angry at the injustices of the world and who is known to go on rants, to send article upon article and video upon video about feminism, to have to talk through the balance between standing with and fighting against. A feminist who is extremely grateful for those sisters, mothers, fathers, brothers, family and friends who care for me and who stand with me in my desire for social justice because I know I can always count on them to remind me of my strength.

7. In my year as a twenty year old, I passed time, got dirt on my feet, cared for others, discovered, watched the sun set, danced and laughed and thought in four countries on three continents. In my year as a twenty-one year old, I plan to be in two, hope to be in five, and dream to be in so many more. Suddenly the match of exploration has been struck within me and I want to see it all.

6. On my dresser sit three jars of varying shapes and sizes and all slowly filling with coins and bills of at least six currencies. The ‘small things’ jar is for seeing the world and all of those small things, those best things, it has to offer to your imagination and growth. The ‘red dirt’ jar is to take me back to Kenya so that my feet might forever touch its magnificent red soil. “Jërejëf’ is for saying thanks, whether that be to myself or to others, in times of good or bad, and in what form I am still unsure, just that it will someday help me to live out gratitude. Every week, I empty my wallet of change and distribute it equally among the jars, sometimes adding a little bit extra if I’m in need of a little more assurance that I’m on my way to the place each jar is taking me. Because I am.

5. I have a newfound commitment to living out kindness. In my stress and sorting out of the last couple years, I think I lost sight of this belief of mine. Not that I was unkind always or that I am not often sill full of sass and sarcastic sayings, but I have seen the grace of kind people in my life and so I will now drop everything to be kind to others. I will bake cookies and drink tea and laugh to distract and share words and give assurance that someone I care about, just as they are in that moment, is enough. I’m not sure I would have done all of that before; perhaps I would have, but not with the confidence with which I will now do those things of kindness for and with others. And this new commitment doesn’t make me anyone special or laudable, it just means I’ve learned a thing or two about life.

4. It was in my year as twenty that I discovered mornings. It’s fitting and wonderful that I was the first awake by hours on my twenty-first birthday. To me, being called an early riser is a source of pride in identity because so much of my strength and sense of self comes from the morning.

3. In a little over three weeks, I will embark on my first grand adventure as a twenty-something as I fly to Newark, then on to Brussels, take a re-fuel in Burundi and then finally place my feet on Kenyan soil, where I will stay for two months. In many ways, my joy about this hard-earned, impending departure is about a feeling of returning home. But my nervousness and frightened excitement are about this all feeling new. While I’ve done the takeoffs and layovers and baggage claims portion of this journey many times and alone, I have never been in Kenya on my own. I have never gone with the explicit intent of doing what I believe I want to do for the rest of my life, working with ill and dying children. I have never carried out my own research, holding interviews and doing field observations. So much feels uncertain, like I’m traveling uncharted territory to a place I will have been to on four occassions and for many months. I think above all, the uncertainty comes from realizing I am now a different person than when I was last in Kenya, a different person even more so than when I fell in love with Kenya. And so it’s all just a new adventure, one that, when I get myself not to freak out or I have those around me who can remind me I can do this, I feel I am ready and enlivened to travel through.

2. There are wonderful, wonderful people in my life who are just there, in hard and in joyous. People who buy chocolate to get through three late library nights in a row, who pick me up (literally) when I get overwhelmed and go into fetal floor position, who remind me of my strength by asking for my wisdom, who are the first I call when I’m sitting on the mailroom floor with shaking hands and a ripped open envelope beside me and remind me ‘Callie, this is great news’, who go with me to that mailroom because I’m afraid of what that envelope might not say, who take international calls and say they’re excited for me and for them, who reply ‘YES’ when I say ‘I’M GOING’ and that is enough, who spontaneously decide to drop everything and go to the beach after a hard week and amidst celebration, who dance and dance and dance with me, who send me wonderful birthday wishes from around the world, who just are as they teach me gratitude and light and humility and laughter.

1. Above all, what the past year has shown me and what I carry with me into the next, is a sense and strength of family. A family in all of its forms, including those who have loved and raised and teased and supported me from my start, those who have been with me as we played fairies in the woods and who gave me my first beer, those who were my home and sturdy love through high school and those first journeys away, those who I never thought I’d meet or come to call family but who, in their mutually-felt familial care, have never required walls and have embraced all contradictions, those who have laughed and danced and cooked and sung with me and made fun of me in French, Swahili, Wolof, Luo, and English, those who have instilled in me the most loving form of sass and sarcasm and who together create such a safe, dance-filled home that I would be totally ungrounded without, and those who are gone but whom I always feel within me when I witness red cardinals, summer sausage and tapioca pudding, cats, peanut m&ms, dates written on pictures, my middle name, and the sounds of flowing poetry and music. Truly, I would be but nothing if I did not walk my journey surrounded by these diverse, atypical and beautiful branches of family.

It was a wonderful, wonderful, soul-lifted and content birthday.