Happy Birthday, Mia

I was afraid to talk to you in 2012. Wit and charm and specifically, my sister's friend -- something that now makes me laugh because of how much it precluded me from ever speaking to you.

It's not that you were particularly scary. It's that there isn't a prepping-for-friendship act in the world -- nerve included -- that's appropriately fitted for what you really get, but how could there be? How could you possibly measure the space in a heart -- one you don't even realize exists -- that is made for someone whom you had no idea would become one of your best friends? How could you summarize the feeling you're supposed to feel when someone you've never connected with physically, is one of the most steadying things in your life?

It's not that you were scary. It's that, from that tiny second when I pressed "Tweet," I couldn’t have imagined the great breadth that you would take up—the great breadth that you already were the moment I finally found that nerve I needed. I've known your magic for over two years now.

You turn twenty three today. The earth has made its long journey around the sun not once but twenty three times since you took your first breath. The thought of that journey can be overwhelming sometimes—such a long trip and such slow progression around the sun. But while we wait for it to make its cycle, we have small, more important progression to celebrate. It spins! The earth spins while it moves, giving us days. Lots of them. Learning and accomplishing and forward movement that is so recognizable, we have to take hold of the things that don't spin to stay grounded. The tilt of the earth's spin that I feel when we have those once every six months super-deep-life conversations, your smile at the moment you catch sight of me on the Skype screen, your encouragement to our friends when they're upset or insecure about something (I got to witness that one on Skype a few months ago. You are beautiful.) And we celebrate you today. Oh, how my Earth spins with you in it.

It’s not that I don’t realize that two years is just the beginning, a sliver of beauty for all that is to come. It’s just that it seems you’ve been here my whole life, and two years makes the most beautiful eternity.

Happy birthday, Mia. I love you.

Creative Wave

It's creative flood time. I never know when it's coming, which is half the fun. It just arrives, like a tsunami, sent by the universe to swallow me whole. I want to inhale books and buy flowers and write poems and paint masterpieces and dance and listen to new music and log ideas in notebooks and try new lipstick colors and cook amazing food and send compliments to my friends and paint a rainbow step stone path all the way up my driveway.  If I could map these creative waves out with some regularity and study arrival patterns, I would, but it doesn't work that way--at least not the tsunami kind. It's unpredictable.

Flowers: Which, when you're a kid and especially when you are a teenager, are very exciting.

The first bouquet inevitably setting off my spring cravings which include pink, pink, mint and pink.

 Also ranking in exciting newness:

New paint
New shoes
A new jar of peanut butter
New dish towels
New printed photos
New pens--the slick gel ones that glide nicely on paper
A new mug
New mascara
New found music

A week off of school: Thank you, George Washington. We all knocked out our teeth and replaced them with wood ones to celebrate you.

Most importantly -- Baby Shower:

Most excited about for Spring: Easter dresses; a good deep house cleaning that doesn't involve shoving anything into a drawer, closet or under a bed to get rid of it; decorating projects; flowers, flowers, flowers; Peeps. And yellow...everywhere.

New

Four months since I've logged onto my blogger account and written a post.

I don't have much of an excuse--"I started high school" has long since been worn out.

By the way, I started high school.

college campus I visited last week

Alas, it is a new year, and with new years come new goals and the need to satiate my desire to record it all. So, hello, blog. I'm back.

It's 2015 and work is aplenty. And there is biology homework to do. And beaches to visit. And stories to write (28 chapters into a fanfiction, and mind you it is a lot harder than it sounds). And my mom walked into my room today and mumbled "Gross, there's a scalloped potato stuck to the door." And I ignored her, pretending that if I didn't acknowledge she said it, it wouldn't really be there. Because there are resolutions to be fulfilled. And pictures to edit. And blog posts to complete.

And with all that comes writing and screenshotting writing resources and taking photos and recording everything that happens through words and images. And maybe cleaning out my closet, which I swear, I can hear growling at night. It's alive.

****

The beach.

Just when I'm dropping terms like 'snow' as if poor California couldn't live up to the south's performance during the winter shift, California got all pissed off. "I'll show you," she said. "You wanna compare me with South Carolina? Fine. I'll have the last word." 

And then she did. California, with her kaleidoscope skies and salty waters, had the last word. 

She doesn't like to be challenged, that California. She'll pull out the big guns. 

Bam. 

Bam.

Welcome to the gun show.

Last minute trips to the beach are the best. When you have homework and your room is trashed, so an attractive alternative is to ditch. Head out from under the cover of gray clouds toward the open air of California's pride and joy--her welcoming coast. She has 840 miles of it to share. 

The year has seen a lot of the beach so far. I hope the pattern continues.

To the return of the blog.

Falling Into October

Flour covered every inch of the kitchen counter last night, and buried in its scattered dust were measuring spoons, spices and fingerprints. It was our first batch of pumpkin bread--a tradition which launches the season for us, as funny as that may sound coming from a girl in southern California.

It feels like summer, but alas, it turned fall this week.

And because of this, I feel compelled to rattle off everything I want to enjoy now that it's fall. Like fires and blankets and movies and cider, nature walks and baking and decorating and friends.  Even though it's ninety degrees outside right now and the closest apple orchard is a plane ride away.

I might not have golden fields or fiery foliage to tell that it's fall, but I have my own memories--rituals I want to recreate that rely less on weather and environment and more on effort and the need to keep up with this season, which happens to be my favorite.

Summer is free and alive, spring is renewing, and winter has the whole Christmas thing going for it, but fall? Fall is home.

This, of course, doesn't mean I won't go to the ends of the earth to bring a little bit of fall environment to our otherwise barren landscape (by barren, I'm referring to majestic palms and calming ocean--I'm exaggerating due to my current South Carolina withdrawl). 

My Top Five Fall Memories and Favorites:

1. Living in South Carolina when fall meant drives to the orchard, oatmeal apple crisp after dinner, and cider with our lunch trays.
2.  Warm sugared donuts 
3.  Building giant piles of leaves just to jump in them for a moment of satisfaction.
4.  Wearing tights--even in California, even if it's hot
5.  The Elementary School Leaf Project--saving maples and oaks and aspens between sheets of waxed paper, thumbing through leaf identification books, making crayon rubbings from my favorite leaves.  

Free

Long blog pause due to proper living.

Today began with the sound of my alarm going off. I opened my closet and a pile of clothes came tumbling out, probably because I folded them in a too-high tower or didn't position them correctly. Blame is important in these situations, you know, but I'm still the victor because... hello, I folded my clothes--a feat always worthy of applause in this home.

Lemon squeezes nicely into lemonade when you figure it was a good opportunity to re-organize them and pick off some lint balls. Plus, I found a dress that I forgot about.

But then, inconvenience struck again. When we got home from school, the front door was locked, and so were all of the windows. And I was mad. It's one thing to bang loudly on the door and shout for someone to open it, but I even made turning the knob and opening my backpack to get my phone into a loud activity. Like "SOMEONE (BANG) OPEN THE (BANG) DOOR".

I was supposed to work on homework and a story that's been brewing in my mind for a week, and I ended up hiding my backpack on the porch and walking to the library. This is where I'm supposed to say "This blows, what a waste." Alright, it totally blew. But I have this theory on nights that blow. There's this old Top Chef episode where, in the quickfire challenge, contestants were given a selection of ingredients--one of which happened to be SPAM. Given a choice between fresh, flavorful foods and SPAM, you would assume any chef in his right mind would scurry to score the good stuff and the last rotten egg would, begrudgingly, claim the SPAM. But any smart chef knows, SPAM's a challenge. Anyone can whip up something good out of fresh produce, but SPAM? It requires ingenuity, a look outside the box. If you can turn SPAM into something good, it's a guaranteed win--an unforgettable victory. A risk, yes. A disadvantage, definitely. But an edge.

An edge that makes you realize...
Wow, I did that. I made something good out of SPAM. Imagine what else I am capable of.

*******

If my entire life is like this, loud laughter and bold action and the kind of exhaustion you feel after a hard but satisfying day, I will be content.
thank you, veronica roth, for your always perfect quotes.

T'was a gauntlet week, last week. The kind you dread on Monday but makes you feel victorious on Friday.

And last Friday, it felt just like Friday should feel.

I never expected that I would actually enjoy football games (I hardly understand them), and I never have before. But last Friday? Good lord, was it fun. The screaming and the cheering and the clapping and pounding and noise and smells all came together into one of those "life is good" moments that make Mondays worth it.

peace is restrained. this is free.

I hope today feels like a Friday for you.

Sun Buzzed

A billion degrees, the thermometer said today. And the day before. And the day before. So when I'm at the beach watching sweat-slicked teenagers pull damp t-shirts from their skin like wrappers off a fruit roll-up, and they're drinking Pepsi and tying their hair up and painfully smiling through We're-all-gonna-die-on-this-sand expressions, I'm thinking "Oh my God, these people are crazy. Who would go out in this heat?" Until I realize I'm here too, so that makes us all a little sun buzzed.

A thick stew of heat and humidity, the air has been uncomfortably stagnant. Running in this heat actually sounds like relief because at least the motion would provide some kind of air current. Instead, we join kids with red cheeks and sticky foreheads and settle for tanktops and shorts.

We join forces with nature for an afternoon heat compromise of ice cream and cooling storms.

The day did not get a rolling start this morning. Rather it sort of stumbled and then stopped.

But I won't go down without a fight. I refuse to condemn a perfectly good Monday as "one of those days" before noon 5.

I don't think being happy and the number of good days we have is so much governed by genetic disposition as it is creativity--developing new possibilities and alternatives to deal with real problems. And really, creativity in its artistic form--painting, decorating, writing, singing, sculpting--it's all the same. We create something good when there's a need. When there's a blank canvas or maybe just an ugly one that needs repainting.

I repainted my ugly canvas today, rifling through nearby resources kind of like digging through a junk drawer for spare paint brushes. You use what you have, and I had a sister and a beautiful, albeit hot, day. We walked, slowly reversing the day's tone with each step. We stopped by Wendy's and the person who took our order gave us a free frosty. And a solicitor told us "Hey girls, remember: Hakuna Matata."

Hakuna Matata indeed.

I don't push creativity on the people I know because I want them to be interesting or because I want them to have something great to tell people at a party someday. When I praise my friends after they tell me something that they did or came up with, it isn't because I think it makes them stand out as unique and awesome (even though it does).

I celebrate creativity and applaud imagination in people I care about mostly because the ability to create something new--to dream up a different way of doing something--means they are more guaranteed to find happiness in life.

The more they create and practice building something from nothing or changing not-so-great into amazing, the more likely they are to use creative strategies to develop solutions to challenges in their lives. They will find joy, and they'll do it with words and colors and paintbrushes and voices and journals and music.

If what you seek doesn't exist, create it. In art. In life.

This week, in art:

Abby (dressed in lace)

 

She's pretty, pretty, pretty.

 

 

This week, in life:

 

 

Raegen

 

My sister Stephanie is pregnant. This is her second kid, and apparently being pregnant prompts trips across the country to live with us again, starting in September. Yay. (I know that yay doesn't depict much excitement, but I am so excited that I'm always in danger of fainting)

 



Hello Raegen.

Sunny Monday to you.

Brooke

Sometimes I have great intentions. And my intentions were to post this 2 weeks ago, but alas, I hardly ever manage to get on a computer. Like, a computer. Not a mobile device.

So two and a half weeks ago, I decided to freak the freak out all to meet someone I've never met before. And, as passionate as I was to get this all happening--capslocking Brooke for not telling me she'd be in my city, demanding that we meet--about half an hour before our meeting time, I went white-knuckled. It dawned on me that I was going to be spending a few hours with someone I've never really physically connected with. What if, in the first 10 minutes, it was a total bust and I wanted to go home? What if we bored each other and I dragged her down to our beach for nothing? What if this was a blind friend date gone wrong? What if she was... crazy? You never know.

Half an hour later, my fears diminished as Savanna and I walked toward the pier and saw her standing there waiting for us. Her hair was down straight and she had sunglasses and a cardigan and her family, distinguishing her as the girl I had come to love through words and tweets.

And we walked down the pier and connected over bagels and hot chocolate and most likely annoyed every person in that restaurant with the amount of selfies we took. And then we went to walmart and searched for cute worker (mission failed, but still fun). And I provoked a girl and was threatened, but that's whatever.

It's amazing how much didn't surprise me about her. She is simply a beautiful person with a beautiful soul.

So thanks, Brooke, for eating breakfast with us over the ocean and for this purposeful adventure. I love you very much.

Summer (so far)

We're 3 weeks into summer vacation now, and I'm realizing I need to pace myself a little here. The gun went off, the race started, and I gave it all I had this month. All days filled with "yes, let's do it". I can't help it. I kind of feel like an overenthusiastic puppy. Jumping, panting, chasing my tail, looking for someone to play with. Hey, want to go to the park? Hey, want to go to the beach? Who wants to have a water balloon fight? Let's go! Let's see! Let's do!

The earth must be shifting. Or Saturn is crossing over Jupiter or whatever it means in the planet world when things are miraculously out of the ordinary. I know this because I've kept up academically, socially, and personally all at once for... wait for it... two. weeks. straight.

And now that I've got this groove going, I'm obsessed with not losing it. Like, if a teacher at the summer institute at my high school shows us yet another video on graduation requirements--the same thing I've been seeing and consequently memorizing for the last 3 months--I compulsively write down everything I hear, like how the UC college system requires 4 years of math while the CSU college system only requires 3. And if I see that I have a single message or tweet, I jump to reply even if it's completely irrelevant. And if I'm bored and I have a perfectly good reason to just watch TV or do nothing important, I instead spend that time pursuing writing or taking pictures. Or asking everyone I meet if they want to go to the beach or the park or have a water balloon fight, respectively.


I've signed up for different courses, started learning 2 languages, found tickets to another country, researched countless things, and read 4 books. Oh, and I graduated middle school. That was cool.

But I already know all of that is going to catch up with me very soon and I'll have a mental, emotional, and physical break down all at once. It'll all blow up in my face, and I know this because it's happened enough times that I can expect it. BUT, for now I'm accomplishing a lot. I await the impending doom.

I need to simmer down a little. There's a long race left to go.

Have a good week :-)

rafaella's birthday post think of a better name later

Some worlds are meant to collide. You may not know how important they are until the stars align in such a way that they leave a constellation in the sky. The more stars that join the constellation, the further it stretches across the celestial sphere, incapable of being ignored from those who look up. Last summer, a few stars aligned.

I am not sure what I believe about how God crosses the paths of people.

But with her, I am certain that my soul needed her soul in this life.

I wish I could really find the words to describe the kind of person she is. How tender her heart is towards the blessed souls that call themselves her friends. What it's like to be witness to this magical love.

And just typing the beginning of this post has me all sentimental and switching to the Twitter tab to tell her that I adore her more than anything. Because speaking of Rafa as a friend is a language of its own. It is magic. It is beauty. It is as if every cell in her body has been blessed with best friend genes--the kind that know instinctively how to cheer someone up or make them feel recognized or loved or cared about... and the list goes on.

And while I can't seem to recall exactly how we discovered each other, before we skyped, before we messaged, before I cried tears in front of her over a webcam and she initiated the healing process of a broken part of me--before all that, I watched her begin her twitter account. And I saw something then. I saw the way she put herself out there to talk to people that many considered intimidating, how she was vulnerable and honest. I remember thinking about how happy I was that she didn't care in the slightest about how I had thousands of followers, and she still introduced herself and talked to me. And recounting all of this now, I am so happy I think my heart might burst. I'm thankful for that every day.

I was lucky to have known Rafa when she first began her account, but when we became close, I discovered a new kind of magic. The kind of internal beauty you can see. The kind of magic you know when she confides in you with her stories of betrayal, sadness, regret, love, happiness, life, and all the while, she shows you what love looks like. The kind of love that rips you apart every time she insults herself or criticizes herself. For the record, those times scare me to the point that I can hardly breathe but they are few and far between and I find comfort in that. Everyone has bad days. And everyone needs to be reassured that those days will soon be long gone memories and the happy, vibrant, wonderful days will take their place and outweigh them many times over.

***

And, while tempted to start shooting off a rote list of what I love about her, it doesn't seem right for the place I'm at tonight. Yes, it seems an actual place, with it's own longitude and latitude, a place where I have taken residence. A place that cannot bear some cliche title like "thankful" or "gratitude". It is a real place with, yes, some dark corners and fixer-upper fields (the price that comes with caring about someone). I have walked its paths and met its people. And overall, there is just so much beauty here. The longer I stay, the more I see.

We are so different in countless ways. She's twenty one and I'm fourteen and she'll never stop making fun of me for being so young (and vice versa), but in all honesty, I would miss her teasing if she stopped. She lives in Brazil and I live in California. I look forward to visiting Brazil next summer and hopefully meeting her. But that's a year from now and if she'd like to show up at my door anytime soon for an unexpected visit, I'd die a million deaths and be forever grateful. Just sayin'.

The point is, we're different. Very different. But we love each other. And we're curious about each other. And we both love Taylor Swift and books and finding new ways to connect. Tomatoes tomahtoes, we're really pretty much the same people.

How awesome it is that in a world of so many differences, when you really get to know people and open yourself up in an honest way to learn something...you'll discover how very much the same we really are. I find such comfort in that sameness.

***

(the ***'s basically translate to "hey, this post has no theme! prepare for jolting subject change!)

***

For the last year, she has emitted love and joy into the lives of people she's never met face-to-face. She has reaped invaluable happiness to us. And sometimes I use the word "us" to make that sentence collective and to water down the fact that it's personal. That she has reaped invaluable happiness to me.

She never fails to make me happy. Ever. Even when I'm crying my eyes out and literally shaking with emotional pain right in front of her eyes on skype, she can make me happy. That day was important, you know. I was overwhelmed with love. I'll never forget what it felt like to be changed so instantly by her response to my breakdown. She can make me happy just with her smile that brightens my mood, if not my soul.

So I guess that's all for the prerequisite. If you're friends with Rafa, you know all of this already. It's kind of a choppy transition, and I don't know that I can write a letter that is worthy of the love behind her. I do know that I can not describe to you all of who she is because she is complex and unpredictable and too entirely her own self to be confined to sentences and adjectives and my fingers on a keyboard. But I will try to depict to you the crazy way my soul has grown into hers and how absolutely beautiful she is between her vibrancy and kindness and inquisitivity and gentleness. And that may not be easy to do, but I swear if you speak to her, even anonymously on ask.fm, you will come into contact with the single most resplendent and taking human being I've ever known. No kidding.

Without further ado,

***

Rafa,

It hurts to write this. The good hurt. And not just because you're like my sister and that whole messy line of "how have we been friends for a year how fast time flies." True indeed. But it's so much more than that.

It's the celebration of your life and everything you mean to the people who know you.

But any attempt to attach words to something so far from simple seems lowly. Cliche. I could use "magic", but then again, magic is tricks. Magic is hype and smoke and illusions. Your magic is anything but. And when I try to attach words to something so far from simple, I sometimes fear that I cheapen what really is unspeakable.

At 21, you are a perfectly open emotional soul. I like 21. It's beauty in all of its honesty.

I love this friendship we have, and I love it because I get to spend it with you. I will always be applauding you and the way you love. I've never seen anything like it. And it doesn't go unnoticed by anyone who happens to be blessed enough to watch you in action. I can't wait until the day we meet in person, and I can show you how much you really mean to me. How much this legacy of love and caring you are giving me will truly shape me into the person I know I will be. I know I will be vibrant and I know I will love, because you show me how.

You are an amazing musician, a creative force, an alluring combination of talent and story and singing and books. The first time I heard you sing, I was equally captivated by your voice and intimidated because of my total lack in vocal chords and harmony.

I can compare our differences immediately. Your hair is dyed a deep brown. You have blue eyes. So do I. Mine are mixed in with a muted gray, and yours are bright and beautiful. You speak like a poem. You tell stories that make me laugh and you deliver them as soulfully as you sing your songs. You act them out, own every word, every flaw, every amazing thing, every awful thing. You hide nothing, submit to nothing. There’s a sort of freedom that you breathe as if the gates between your true creative self and what you express are not just open--they're non-existent, and I envy it.

I see kind and vulnerable and confident. You tell your story through your love of books and people and the world and the songs you sing about your city from your kitchen.

I'm so fortunate to call you one of my best friends. And writing about you has made me so much more entirely grateful for the magic we have and the magic you are. I am continually astounded at the way your heart, your mind, your core... are taking in as much of this world as they can and yet, you are still giving back. 

You radiate joy and life and spirit, and what a marvelous journey it is to be a part of that. I'm learning more about what that means every day. I'll sometimes forget how blessed I am to know you. I might get frustrated or tired or a little impatient when I'm trying to explain something to you or when I'm waiting for you to skype with me (I am STILL waiting).

Let me tell you something though. This feeling I'm feeling right now on your birthday? It's going to come again and again and again. In between boring days or days we don't agree or even days where one of us doesn't even go online or interact, through exhaustion and sadness and anger. My heart will always be overjoyed with knowing you and loving you.

We have quite a different relationship than pairs of friends who meet in "real life"; face-to-face. And with that comes a different appreciation for friendship. Not a better one, persay--but a different one. Being that we live in different parts of the world, it's sometimes hard. I can tell you're a little nervous about the future sometimes. I am too. I have replayed in my mind so many times what the future will look like. I want you to be happy. I want you to run out into the world and feel the opportunity that exists between those oceans, in those books, through those people. You might not feel it right away, and that's the hard part for me. Because I won't be there to hug you or hold your hand or whatever it is you would need in that situation. I can't be there when you're feeling a little bit insecure, reminding you of your strengths and the happiness that exists around you.

But I'm here in a different way (Girl, I am always here...you can't get rid of me). Thinking of you. Looking forward to your tweets and stories. And knowing that we are both always growing and learning.

And before I start spinning off into a rabbit hole of metaphors and quoting singers, let me cut to the chase.

Dude, you have a light that can not be extinguished. I will always admire that light. From the day I met you, and beyond, and forevermore, I will be in awe of you. And I love your light. And I love you. With a love that is deeper and purer and is so infinite that it can not be shaken. 

Thinking about you, loving you, knowing you is heaven. And I can say now that my world would be a less of a place without you.

My dream for you, on your 21st birthday, is to have a big, beautiful life. It doesn't matter where you do it or how you do it. Just make it beautiful. Fill it with laughter and love and people who make you happy. Give something of yourself every day...and you will be given in return.

And I, along with so many others, will love you all the while.

You are everything I've ever wanted in a friend.

Happy birthday, Rafa.

Love you forever.
Naomi

***

So there. She's 21 (even older). I am so proud to be her friend.

And honored. And thankful. Beyond measure.

Happy birthday. I love you.