Dear everyone,
As you may be able to tell by the pathetic lack of new posts on this blog, and by the long periods of time between the existing posts, I have been really busy lately!
The new job is going well, though there is certainly a lot for me to learn here. I don't really need a lot of help with the music side of things, but there is much more to liturgy and planning than I have ever learned. So, I am learning a lot of things on the fly, and have been for a month. Between the learning new things, the tidal wave of new information that I'm trying to drink each day, and driving for an hour each day to get to and from work, I've just been overwhelmed with the abrupt, new changes in my life!
Things are going well. I'm doing all the things you normally do when you settle down in an area and get a new job: get some new clothes for work (I wore the same two pairs of pants and three or four tops daily for a year; it was time), looking at places to live, and doing something on the spectrum between planning and daydreaming about getting a car, trying to find a gym, etc.
I still haven't spent as much time with my friends as I would like, but that is a simply a function of geography and schedules. I will see people soon! There is something about getting out of college or a volunteer commitment and settling down for "real life," and you come to understand the disappointing reality check that is adulthood.
For instance, for the past several years, I lived in very close proximity to my close friends. Whenever my homework was done became "playtime," for lack of a better word. We worked hard and became stressed out about many things, certainly. But I also had comparatively few worries. My budget included rent, food, and utilities, which I shared with a house full of people.
But there were no thoughts in my head about car payments, car insurance, or leases that only I am responsible for. It never used to be difficult for me to find time to grocery shop because I spent four hours at day, at most, in class, then maybe three or four in the library.
But now that I devote 40 hours-plus per week to work, and so do most of my friends (not to mention that I work on Saturday and Sunday), I'm seeing how hard it is to maintain relationships the way I did in college and JVC. In fact, I don't even know if I can-- at least, not with as many people as Iused to be able to. It's kind of a hard pill to swallow. But I also look forward to spending time with my loved ones that much more, which makes lunch dates and visits that much more exciting and fun. I appreciate an evening with a buddy so much more now! (Although I'm a little scared that if/when I start dating, it'll be a lot harder to put in the time that that person and that relationship deserve.)
So, this is adulthood. Huh.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
The Hike to Dis-O
Just as I had to dedicate a little piece to my leaving Bellingham for Camden, so I have to dedicate a little piece to my exit from JVC and the journey home. Here is a short series about the past couple of weeks and the events that came to pass.
After we left Camden, we drove to Pine Grove Furnace State Park, about 30 miles north of the Maryland border. After celebrating Mass (fittingly enough, this was July 31st- the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola), we drove to the campsite and pitched our tents.
The Camden hikers (myself and three of my housemates) had made sure that we could all lie down to sleep in the tiny tent that we brought along with us, but we made one fatal error: when we checked, we just lay down on the floor of the tent. We didn’t use our sleeping bags. So, of course, there was not enough room for all of us. Worse, the humidity at that time made sleeping inside a nylon tent unbearably hot. (Being the resident Pacific Northwestern girl on the trail, I liked to think I was a pretty tough camper. Pacific Northwestern camper and hiker friends, ye be warned: we were neither born nor bred to camp and hike on the east coast. The heat alone could kill us, but the humidity could do it faster.) After the first night in a tent (I bunked with a lovely, obliging JV who had a two-person tent to herself), I just slept outdoors on picnic tables. (I don’t mean for that to sound whiney, because in fact I really liked it. The fresh, warm night air made for a much more comfortable night, and a solid wood table was a better sleeping surface than the lumpy ground.)
The morning that the hike began, all the hikers we out of bed, dressed, and had taken down all of the tents by 7am, when the JVC staff had said they would arrive and feed us. We waited. And wait. And then, we waited some more. Turns out, the JVC staff usually tells the hikers that breakfast begins at 7am, and purposefully shows up at 7:30, when most JVs are just beginning to stumble out of their tents. Evidently, we were the exception to the behavioral patterns of past JVs. (Now, I understand why they might do something like that, but I think I can speak for most of the other hikers when I say that we were a little offended. After we’ve put in a year of service and proven ourselves, we’d prefer to be treated like adults.)
The other thing that set our group of hikers apart from past years was this: Every year, we are given the option of tacking an extra ten miles onto the first leg of the hike. In past years, about five or six JVs have done this. This year, all but thirteen of us opted for the extra ten miles! (I was among the elite group of hikers who had more realistic expectations and stubbornly stuck to the original plan of hiking 13 miles. I realized at the end of the day that I would have been able to hike 23, but I didn’t know that in the beginning. Like I said—realistic expectations.)
We ate breakfast, packed lunches, stretched, prayed, and headed out through the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The Appalachian Trail is considered hallowed ground, even by the most secular of hikers. There is trail etiquette that we always respect the land, hike in relatively small groups, and pack in and pack out all of our things (read: no littering). The single, solitary navigational instruction we received was “Hike south. Follow the white blazes.” (I couldn’t resist the temptation to whisper to hikers, in my best Gollum voice, “Follow the white blazes. Don’t follow the lights!”)
The white blazes turned out to be simply white streaks of paint on the occasional tree, and thankfully it was all the instruction we needed. My favorite incident of having no idea of where to go is this: On the second day of the journey, after a fairly easy first half hour of hiking, my group reached what looked like a rock wall. It was probably at an 80-85 degree incline from the flat ground on which we stood. We walked right up to the wall, whereupon we turned right, looking for a white blaze on a tree. Nothing. We looked left. No white blaze. Confused, we stood around like the lost fools that we were, and then finally looked up at the wall again. Near the top, perhaps twenty feet overhead was a crooked little tree protruding from the rock face. And, wouldn’t you know it, there was a white blaze painted on it. Although the rocks were spaced out enough to use as stairs (in a sense), it was still quite an awakening to what lay in store for the rest of the day!
We didn’t know it then, but the first day was the easiest in terms of the type of terrain we crossed. I took quite a fall that day, as well; unused to how clumsy hiking boots can be, I stumbled over a tree root and didn’t regain my balance fast enough. (It would have looked like a cartoon character running in place, but in slow motion). I landed on a large, flat rock and slid along it, taking most of the impact in the forearm and elbow of my right arm. I initially fell to my left, but since I was falling so fast that I feared I would hit my head, I twisted midair and clenched my right arm to my body, hoping it would bear the full force of the fall. Better my arm than my head. Other than my arm, the water bottles strapped to my backpack bore the brunt of the impact. (The brand new aluminum one nearly bent in half!)
My trail buddies were very concerned—they heard the landing and got nervous. I lay for a second on the rock, momentarily concerned that I might have broken my arm. After wiggling my fingers, shimmying out of my backpack, and inspecting both the swelling and the wound, I stood back up, put on my backpack, and said, “Let’s keep going.” The swelling was pretty bad, so popped a lot of aspirin at lunch. I lost a layer of skin to the rock on which I landed, but it barely bled. (But, man, putting hydrogen peroxide on that puppy hurt like a son of a b*tch!) Later, in the campsite, I realized I couldn’t carry anything heavy with my right arm—that went away in a few days. To be honest, I’m happy that it became an interesting anecdote and not a medical emergency. Can you imagine breaking your arm in the middle of the woods and needing to go to the emergency room?
The best part of the hike, hands down, was the final day. We split into our normal groups (sans a few people who were too injured to finish the hike) and took off for the last six miles. Where Buena Vista Road intersects with the Appalachian Trail, each group stopped and waited for the rest of the hikers. After we all met up at that trailhead, we finished the journey together, as one group. We marched down Buena Vista Road toward the Blue Ridge retreat center, singing whatever we could think of. The JVC staff met us on the road (by then we were crooning “God Bless America” because it was the only thing we could think of that everyone knew all the words to!) and we all converged on Oregano Field, FINALLY having finished the journey back to whence we came!
After showering, first aid, and tending to our sore feet, the hikers hit the happening* town of Waynesboro, PA. (Any place that had burgers and beer looked good to us, though. I had a great time there!) Dis-Orientation itself began a few hours later with dinner and a prayer service. Thus, our last three days as Jesuit Volunteers began.
* Denotes sarcasm.
After we left Camden, we drove to Pine Grove Furnace State Park, about 30 miles north of the Maryland border. After celebrating Mass (fittingly enough, this was July 31st- the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola), we drove to the campsite and pitched our tents.
The Camden hikers (myself and three of my housemates) had made sure that we could all lie down to sleep in the tiny tent that we brought along with us, but we made one fatal error: when we checked, we just lay down on the floor of the tent. We didn’t use our sleeping bags. So, of course, there was not enough room for all of us. Worse, the humidity at that time made sleeping inside a nylon tent unbearably hot. (Being the resident Pacific Northwestern girl on the trail, I liked to think I was a pretty tough camper. Pacific Northwestern camper and hiker friends, ye be warned: we were neither born nor bred to camp and hike on the east coast. The heat alone could kill us, but the humidity could do it faster.) After the first night in a tent (I bunked with a lovely, obliging JV who had a two-person tent to herself), I just slept outdoors on picnic tables. (I don’t mean for that to sound whiney, because in fact I really liked it. The fresh, warm night air made for a much more comfortable night, and a solid wood table was a better sleeping surface than the lumpy ground.)
The morning that the hike began, all the hikers we out of bed, dressed, and had taken down all of the tents by 7am, when the JVC staff had said they would arrive and feed us. We waited. And wait. And then, we waited some more. Turns out, the JVC staff usually tells the hikers that breakfast begins at 7am, and purposefully shows up at 7:30, when most JVs are just beginning to stumble out of their tents. Evidently, we were the exception to the behavioral patterns of past JVs. (Now, I understand why they might do something like that, but I think I can speak for most of the other hikers when I say that we were a little offended. After we’ve put in a year of service and proven ourselves, we’d prefer to be treated like adults.)
The other thing that set our group of hikers apart from past years was this: Every year, we are given the option of tacking an extra ten miles onto the first leg of the hike. In past years, about five or six JVs have done this. This year, all but thirteen of us opted for the extra ten miles! (I was among the elite group of hikers who had more realistic expectations and stubbornly stuck to the original plan of hiking 13 miles. I realized at the end of the day that I would have been able to hike 23, but I didn’t know that in the beginning. Like I said—realistic expectations.)
We ate breakfast, packed lunches, stretched, prayed, and headed out through the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The Appalachian Trail is considered hallowed ground, even by the most secular of hikers. There is trail etiquette that we always respect the land, hike in relatively small groups, and pack in and pack out all of our things (read: no littering). The single, solitary navigational instruction we received was “Hike south. Follow the white blazes.” (I couldn’t resist the temptation to whisper to hikers, in my best Gollum voice, “Follow the white blazes. Don’t follow the lights!”)
The white blazes turned out to be simply white streaks of paint on the occasional tree, and thankfully it was all the instruction we needed. My favorite incident of having no idea of where to go is this: On the second day of the journey, after a fairly easy first half hour of hiking, my group reached what looked like a rock wall. It was probably at an 80-85 degree incline from the flat ground on which we stood. We walked right up to the wall, whereupon we turned right, looking for a white blaze on a tree. Nothing. We looked left. No white blaze. Confused, we stood around like the lost fools that we were, and then finally looked up at the wall again. Near the top, perhaps twenty feet overhead was a crooked little tree protruding from the rock face. And, wouldn’t you know it, there was a white blaze painted on it. Although the rocks were spaced out enough to use as stairs (in a sense), it was still quite an awakening to what lay in store for the rest of the day!
We didn’t know it then, but the first day was the easiest in terms of the type of terrain we crossed. I took quite a fall that day, as well; unused to how clumsy hiking boots can be, I stumbled over a tree root and didn’t regain my balance fast enough. (It would have looked like a cartoon character running in place, but in slow motion). I landed on a large, flat rock and slid along it, taking most of the impact in the forearm and elbow of my right arm. I initially fell to my left, but since I was falling so fast that I feared I would hit my head, I twisted midair and clenched my right arm to my body, hoping it would bear the full force of the fall. Better my arm than my head. Other than my arm, the water bottles strapped to my backpack bore the brunt of the impact. (The brand new aluminum one nearly bent in half!)
My trail buddies were very concerned—they heard the landing and got nervous. I lay for a second on the rock, momentarily concerned that I might have broken my arm. After wiggling my fingers, shimmying out of my backpack, and inspecting both the swelling and the wound, I stood back up, put on my backpack, and said, “Let’s keep going.” The swelling was pretty bad, so popped a lot of aspirin at lunch. I lost a layer of skin to the rock on which I landed, but it barely bled. (But, man, putting hydrogen peroxide on that puppy hurt like a son of a b*tch!) Later, in the campsite, I realized I couldn’t carry anything heavy with my right arm—that went away in a few days. To be honest, I’m happy that it became an interesting anecdote and not a medical emergency. Can you imagine breaking your arm in the middle of the woods and needing to go to the emergency room?
The best part of the hike, hands down, was the final day. We split into our normal groups (sans a few people who were too injured to finish the hike) and took off for the last six miles. Where Buena Vista Road intersects with the Appalachian Trail, each group stopped and waited for the rest of the hikers. After we all met up at that trailhead, we finished the journey together, as one group. We marched down Buena Vista Road toward the Blue Ridge retreat center, singing whatever we could think of. The JVC staff met us on the road (by then we were crooning “God Bless America” because it was the only thing we could think of that everyone knew all the words to!) and we all converged on Oregano Field, FINALLY having finished the journey back to whence we came!
After showering, first aid, and tending to our sore feet, the hikers hit the happening* town of Waynesboro, PA. (Any place that had burgers and beer looked good to us, though. I had a great time there!) Dis-Orientation itself began a few hours later with dinner and a prayer service. Thus, our last three days as Jesuit Volunteers began.
* Denotes sarcasm.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Leaving Camden
Just as I had to dedicate a little piece to my leaving Bellingham for Camden, so I have to dedicate a little piece to my exit from JVC and the journey home. Here is a short series about the past couple of weeks and the events that came to pass.
My exit from Camden felt like a long fall from a cliff into deep water; that is, once my time there began to wind down (roughly around the time I packed up most of my belongings and shipped them home), it felt like I was slowly moving toward an end that took forever to come.
The goodbying began over two weeks before we were to actually leave town. This is because because there are so many people involved with the JVs who wanted to take us to dinner or something for a proper goodbye. To allow myself a moment of perfect honesty, by the end of those two weeks it was getting kind of hard to access any real emotion about leaving. In the first place, very many of the people who wanted to tell us goodbye were people that I didn’t know very well; I felt like I was getting to know them for the first time at my own goodbye party. Being fully present at those sorts of events was exhausting for me—I felt like I was trying to feign a lot of enthusiasm that I just didn’t have in me. This was hard for me to come to accept, because when I left a year ago I felt as though I was bleeding love and sadness, longing for a place I could return to and a time that I couldn’t return to. While intense, it was also great. I felt alive and in love with my family and friends.
Don’t take this to mean I wasn’t sad to leave; I certainly had to sort through a lot of emotional laundry about it all. But, while I can be quite sociable and enthusiastic at times, the fact is that I needed a lot of private, quiet time to process things that I just wasn’t getting. The end result was my feeling more or less numb about many things, when I should have felt some deeper feeling of warm sadness or bittersweetness. All the feeling within me for the bigger moments dried up as I tried to be present at events that didn’t mean as much to me. One can only have so many emotional evenings in a row before she shuts down. It was self-preservation.
There are two notable exceptions to feeling this way: my last day at Northgate, and the last time I saw my cousin, Nick.
On my final day at Northgate, I spent the bulk of the morning preparing cards and notes for my coworkers and some of the tenants (there are over four hundred tenants, total, so don’t think too lowly of me that I only wrote to a few!). Irma, the entire social services office, the management office, and the maintenance workers all threw me a little goodbye party. In a cute nod to my habitual grammar policing, they intentionally misspelled the writing on my cake. (Back story: every single cake we ever ordered for a social services or staff event has had a misspelled word—not because the baker messed up, but because whoever had ordered the cake had misspelled it on the form. I only ever pointed it out one time, but since then everyone derived a perverse joy from watching me read the misspelled cake and bite my tongue.) The cake read, “Fairwell, Molly!” Smart-asses…
It was very sweet of everyone to stop everything to see me off. I will be the first one to tell you that in that building, nothing ever stops moving. There is always an emergency to take care of, whether it’s a maintenance problem or a tenant’s physical or emotional health gives out, and the few of us on staff are constantly on the move, putting out fires as fast as we can. So a little cake, a little song, and a little prayer meant the world to me on my last day in the most intense environment I have ever worked in.
After I’d gone door-to-door in the apartment building to tell a few of my favorite tenants goodbye (word got around—it took me a good hour and plenty of running up and down stairs to get out of there. So many people wanted me to stop by, and because I have fewer mobility issues than most of the tenants, it was easier to just pass the word along that I should stop by!), turned in my keys, and hugged the social services ladies goodbye, I walked out of the building for the last time. I headed straight for the subway to Philadelphia to meet up with Nick.
For those of you who don’t know, Nick is my cousin. He served in JVC from 2000 to 2002, first in Camden, then in Brooklyn. (He lived in Brooklyn on September 11th, 2001. He was unharmed, but my whole family was terrified until we got a phone call from him.) Nick is also the reason I became a JV. He planted that seed in my heart when I was fourteen. Yes, many people and experiences watered that seed between then and the day I applied to the program, but he was the initial reason I wanted to serve with the Jesuits. It was great to live so close to him this year, especially because he has lived on the East Coast since his JVC service began.
Nick and I hung out in a bar for a few hours that Friday and just talked about my volunteer year. We talked about the best and worst moments, what I will miss, what I couldn’t wait to leave behind, how our volunteer service shaped us. Just before I left, Nick gave me a little post-JV-year pep talk. I swear, I would have given a whole year of service all over again, bearing every single burden I had to bear, just to hear that pep talk. It meant the world to me.
Because the truth is, (allowing myself another moment of honesty and vulnerability) this past year was unimaginably hard for me. I faced incredible difficulties in all facets of my life there—my work, my community, my city—and I confess, I have never felt so uncomfortable with myself or my surroundings in my life. Worse, as my entire life in Camden was defined in terms of either my community or my work, I had no outlet for my feelings. I missed home far more than I anticipated I would—even in late July, I would tear up from homesickness. I was fairly traumatized and hugely saddened by my work, and I never really felt as though I could discuss those feelings at home. In terms of close friendships and relationships, in the worst moments I felt that I had lost far more than I gained. Often I felt there was no one to talk to who made me feel understood, appreciated or loved. Although these feelings prove that I need to spend much more time on the Litany of Humility, the fact is that it is very hard to function emotionally and spiritually without feeling understood or appreciated. (In fairness to everyone in Camden, I always knew, even if I didn’t feel, that I was loved.)
So to hear such a sweet compliment from a family member, one that I have looked up to for as long as I can remember, and the only person in our family who can truly appreciate what I’ve been through (because we both went through it!), it validated and healed so much of what I was struggling with. It was the most understood I’ve felt in a long time.
The following day, I left Camden for the last time. All of my community members were returning to the house after Dis-Orientation except for myself, so I was the only one leaving for good. (On the way out of the city, I happily narrated a la Good Night, Moon: “Goodnight, row house!” “Good night, corner store!” “Good night, crackheads on the corner!” “Good night, Ben Franklin Bridge!”)
We drove south to Pine Grove Furnace State Park in Pennsylvania (where the hike was to begin), about 30 miles north of the Maryland border (where the hike was to end). We attended Mass as a group, drove to the campsite, pitched our tents, and crawled in for the night. The Hike to Dis-O would begin in the morning.
My exit from Camden felt like a long fall from a cliff into deep water; that is, once my time there began to wind down (roughly around the time I packed up most of my belongings and shipped them home), it felt like I was slowly moving toward an end that took forever to come.
The goodbying began over two weeks before we were to actually leave town. This is because because there are so many people involved with the JVs who wanted to take us to dinner or something for a proper goodbye. To allow myself a moment of perfect honesty, by the end of those two weeks it was getting kind of hard to access any real emotion about leaving. In the first place, very many of the people who wanted to tell us goodbye were people that I didn’t know very well; I felt like I was getting to know them for the first time at my own goodbye party. Being fully present at those sorts of events was exhausting for me—I felt like I was trying to feign a lot of enthusiasm that I just didn’t have in me. This was hard for me to come to accept, because when I left a year ago I felt as though I was bleeding love and sadness, longing for a place I could return to and a time that I couldn’t return to. While intense, it was also great. I felt alive and in love with my family and friends.
Don’t take this to mean I wasn’t sad to leave; I certainly had to sort through a lot of emotional laundry about it all. But, while I can be quite sociable and enthusiastic at times, the fact is that I needed a lot of private, quiet time to process things that I just wasn’t getting. The end result was my feeling more or less numb about many things, when I should have felt some deeper feeling of warm sadness or bittersweetness. All the feeling within me for the bigger moments dried up as I tried to be present at events that didn’t mean as much to me. One can only have so many emotional evenings in a row before she shuts down. It was self-preservation.
There are two notable exceptions to feeling this way: my last day at Northgate, and the last time I saw my cousin, Nick.
On my final day at Northgate, I spent the bulk of the morning preparing cards and notes for my coworkers and some of the tenants (there are over four hundred tenants, total, so don’t think too lowly of me that I only wrote to a few!). Irma, the entire social services office, the management office, and the maintenance workers all threw me a little goodbye party. In a cute nod to my habitual grammar policing, they intentionally misspelled the writing on my cake. (Back story: every single cake we ever ordered for a social services or staff event has had a misspelled word—not because the baker messed up, but because whoever had ordered the cake had misspelled it on the form. I only ever pointed it out one time, but since then everyone derived a perverse joy from watching me read the misspelled cake and bite my tongue.) The cake read, “Fairwell, Molly!” Smart-asses…
It was very sweet of everyone to stop everything to see me off. I will be the first one to tell you that in that building, nothing ever stops moving. There is always an emergency to take care of, whether it’s a maintenance problem or a tenant’s physical or emotional health gives out, and the few of us on staff are constantly on the move, putting out fires as fast as we can. So a little cake, a little song, and a little prayer meant the world to me on my last day in the most intense environment I have ever worked in.
After I’d gone door-to-door in the apartment building to tell a few of my favorite tenants goodbye (word got around—it took me a good hour and plenty of running up and down stairs to get out of there. So many people wanted me to stop by, and because I have fewer mobility issues than most of the tenants, it was easier to just pass the word along that I should stop by!), turned in my keys, and hugged the social services ladies goodbye, I walked out of the building for the last time. I headed straight for the subway to Philadelphia to meet up with Nick.
For those of you who don’t know, Nick is my cousin. He served in JVC from 2000 to 2002, first in Camden, then in Brooklyn. (He lived in Brooklyn on September 11th, 2001. He was unharmed, but my whole family was terrified until we got a phone call from him.) Nick is also the reason I became a JV. He planted that seed in my heart when I was fourteen. Yes, many people and experiences watered that seed between then and the day I applied to the program, but he was the initial reason I wanted to serve with the Jesuits. It was great to live so close to him this year, especially because he has lived on the East Coast since his JVC service began.
Nick and I hung out in a bar for a few hours that Friday and just talked about my volunteer year. We talked about the best and worst moments, what I will miss, what I couldn’t wait to leave behind, how our volunteer service shaped us. Just before I left, Nick gave me a little post-JV-year pep talk. I swear, I would have given a whole year of service all over again, bearing every single burden I had to bear, just to hear that pep talk. It meant the world to me.
Because the truth is, (allowing myself another moment of honesty and vulnerability) this past year was unimaginably hard for me. I faced incredible difficulties in all facets of my life there—my work, my community, my city—and I confess, I have never felt so uncomfortable with myself or my surroundings in my life. Worse, as my entire life in Camden was defined in terms of either my community or my work, I had no outlet for my feelings. I missed home far more than I anticipated I would—even in late July, I would tear up from homesickness. I was fairly traumatized and hugely saddened by my work, and I never really felt as though I could discuss those feelings at home. In terms of close friendships and relationships, in the worst moments I felt that I had lost far more than I gained. Often I felt there was no one to talk to who made me feel understood, appreciated or loved. Although these feelings prove that I need to spend much more time on the Litany of Humility, the fact is that it is very hard to function emotionally and spiritually without feeling understood or appreciated. (In fairness to everyone in Camden, I always knew, even if I didn’t feel, that I was loved.)
So to hear such a sweet compliment from a family member, one that I have looked up to for as long as I can remember, and the only person in our family who can truly appreciate what I’ve been through (because we both went through it!), it validated and healed so much of what I was struggling with. It was the most understood I’ve felt in a long time.
The following day, I left Camden for the last time. All of my community members were returning to the house after Dis-Orientation except for myself, so I was the only one leaving for good. (On the way out of the city, I happily narrated a la Good Night, Moon: “Goodnight, row house!” “Good night, corner store!” “Good night, crackheads on the corner!” “Good night, Ben Franklin Bridge!”)
We drove south to Pine Grove Furnace State Park in Pennsylvania (where the hike was to begin), about 30 miles north of the Maryland border (where the hike was to end). We attended Mass as a group, drove to the campsite, pitched our tents, and crawled in for the night. The Hike to Dis-O would begin in the morning.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
I am the worst blogger in the world. I haven't posted anything yet about: leaving Camden, the hike along the Appalachian Trail through the Blue Ridge Mountains, Dis-Orientation, coming home, or my new position at St. Brendan’s!
I think that each of these rather significant events (at least, significant within the context of my life for the past year) deserves its own reflection and entry, so I want to take my time (and re-read my journal) before posting anything of any real substance. But (given my writing process), that may take a while. So I’m just writing to let you all know that I’m home, I'm safe, and I'm hard at work on pieces for the past week-and-of-half, the final leg of my journey as a JV!
I think that each of these rather significant events (at least, significant within the context of my life for the past year) deserves its own reflection and entry, so I want to take my time (and re-read my journal) before posting anything of any real substance. But (given my writing process), that may take a while. So I’m just writing to let you all know that I’m home, I'm safe, and I'm hard at work on pieces for the past week-and-of-half, the final leg of my journey as a JV!
Monday, July 19, 2010
Poll question!
I'd like to know, purely for artistic purposes (I'm not in a bad place or anything, just a curious musician): What, in your opinion, is the saddest song ever? You can give more than one response, if you can't just pick one.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Rest in peace, Rocky
During my latest visit home, I came to the sad realization that it would probably be the last time that I would see Rocky, my pet dog. He appeared so ill and broken down that I told my mom that I would have no objections to putting him to sleep. Sure enough, less than a week after I came home from vacation, Mom called to tell me that the vet put him down on Saturday morning.
We adopted Rocky the summer before fifth grade. I remember driving to the breeder’s house, a detour from our family’s annual drive to Cannon Beach. The breeder had two miniature schnauzer puppies—a male and a female. At the time, I was rooting for the girl puppy (I wanted to call her Fiona), but my brother seemed particularly attached to the boy dog. It was not the first or only time that I would acquiesce that Joe was right. :) We spent the whole vacation deliberating which puppy we should get, and finally settled on the male puppy. Joe also thought of his name—he had picked up a stuffed dog at the Big Dog outlet (a favorite haunt of the Downes children when we were in Oregon) and named it Apollo. Joe thought of Apollo Creed from the Rocky movies, and the name “Rocky” for our little pup followed logically. We took him home for good a couple of weeks after our first meeting, just before we started school that year.
His first night at home, Rocky cried in his kennel. As it was just outside my bedroom door, I dragged a pillow and a blanket into the hallway that night and slept on the floor next to him. When he cried, I tried to pet him through the grate door of his crate. I slept there the first three nights—by the third night, he didn’t cry anymore.
I remember, not long into fifth grade, Rocky got sick. Some sort of doggy dysentery was afflicting him, and once again he was crying in his cage. I got out of bed and found him scratching at the door of his kennel, desperate to go outside. I spent that whole night with him, carrying him up and down the back steps (he was too small to run up and down at the time). Eventually I put my father’s coat on over my pajamas and sat outside with him until 6am, when my father woke up and found me tending to the dog. Dad took over and put me back in bed—I didn’t go to school until 11am that day. This must be what new parents go through.
Like most schnauzers, Rocky liked to routinely patrol his surroundings—so much so that he wore a path into the perimeter of our backyard. The first time he figured out how to prop himself up on the back of our den couch and look out into the backyard, it was dark outside. So all he could see was his own reflection—or, in his mind, another dog staring straight back at him. Rocky barked and howled for a good hour, trying to scare the intruder away.
Rocky had quite a few sleeping places in our house—he began with a kennel, and ended with a dog bed large enough for a black Labrador in the middle of our hallway. He also staked out a spot on our old living room couch (we had to put a blanket down to designate it as his spot), but for a couple of years, perhaps sixth through eighth grade, Rocky slept at the foot of my bed every night. He would hop onto my bed right before my sister shut our door each night, turn in circles (like a cat) a few times, and plop down on top of my feet. In the mornings, he would often army-crawl on top of my torso, lay his head on my sternum, and growl playfully until I opened my eyes. As stealth as he tried to be in waking me up, once my eyes were open he’d get so excited that he’d wag his tail until his whole body wriggled, which roused me from my bed a lot faster! He knew it worked, too, the sneaky little guy…
Other than barking at the mailman, cats, opossums, and meter readers, Rocky’s favorite thing seemed to be patrolling the seawall at our hotel in Cannon Beach. The first time he ever explored it, he tried to chase away a seagull—until he leapt off of the wall onto the sand about ten feet below. Other than being confused that he couldn’t fly after his prey, he seemed no worse for the wear. A few more trips outside to the wall were all he needed before he finally learned to keep his balance.
There are a dozen other cute dog stories I could tell about Rocky, but you get the idea. I was close with my pet dog. Like many girls who are as shy and awkward as I was (and often am) for a number of years, he was often my comfort and solace from the less joyful parts of my life. I’ll miss his playful growls, psychotic barking, and the way he could manipulate anyone into petting him or give him clandestine food from the table or kitchen counter.
You were a good dog, Rocky. Chase all of the opossums, kitties and mailmen off of the Elysian fields. Love to the memory of the best dog in the whole world.
We adopted Rocky the summer before fifth grade. I remember driving to the breeder’s house, a detour from our family’s annual drive to Cannon Beach. The breeder had two miniature schnauzer puppies—a male and a female. At the time, I was rooting for the girl puppy (I wanted to call her Fiona), but my brother seemed particularly attached to the boy dog. It was not the first or only time that I would acquiesce that Joe was right. :) We spent the whole vacation deliberating which puppy we should get, and finally settled on the male puppy. Joe also thought of his name—he had picked up a stuffed dog at the Big Dog outlet (a favorite haunt of the Downes children when we were in Oregon) and named it Apollo. Joe thought of Apollo Creed from the Rocky movies, and the name “Rocky” for our little pup followed logically. We took him home for good a couple of weeks after our first meeting, just before we started school that year.
His first night at home, Rocky cried in his kennel. As it was just outside my bedroom door, I dragged a pillow and a blanket into the hallway that night and slept on the floor next to him. When he cried, I tried to pet him through the grate door of his crate. I slept there the first three nights—by the third night, he didn’t cry anymore.
I remember, not long into fifth grade, Rocky got sick. Some sort of doggy dysentery was afflicting him, and once again he was crying in his cage. I got out of bed and found him scratching at the door of his kennel, desperate to go outside. I spent that whole night with him, carrying him up and down the back steps (he was too small to run up and down at the time). Eventually I put my father’s coat on over my pajamas and sat outside with him until 6am, when my father woke up and found me tending to the dog. Dad took over and put me back in bed—I didn’t go to school until 11am that day. This must be what new parents go through.
Like most schnauzers, Rocky liked to routinely patrol his surroundings—so much so that he wore a path into the perimeter of our backyard. The first time he figured out how to prop himself up on the back of our den couch and look out into the backyard, it was dark outside. So all he could see was his own reflection—or, in his mind, another dog staring straight back at him. Rocky barked and howled for a good hour, trying to scare the intruder away.
Rocky had quite a few sleeping places in our house—he began with a kennel, and ended with a dog bed large enough for a black Labrador in the middle of our hallway. He also staked out a spot on our old living room couch (we had to put a blanket down to designate it as his spot), but for a couple of years, perhaps sixth through eighth grade, Rocky slept at the foot of my bed every night. He would hop onto my bed right before my sister shut our door each night, turn in circles (like a cat) a few times, and plop down on top of my feet. In the mornings, he would often army-crawl on top of my torso, lay his head on my sternum, and growl playfully until I opened my eyes. As stealth as he tried to be in waking me up, once my eyes were open he’d get so excited that he’d wag his tail until his whole body wriggled, which roused me from my bed a lot faster! He knew it worked, too, the sneaky little guy…
Other than barking at the mailman, cats, opossums, and meter readers, Rocky’s favorite thing seemed to be patrolling the seawall at our hotel in Cannon Beach. The first time he ever explored it, he tried to chase away a seagull—until he leapt off of the wall onto the sand about ten feet below. Other than being confused that he couldn’t fly after his prey, he seemed no worse for the wear. A few more trips outside to the wall were all he needed before he finally learned to keep his balance.
There are a dozen other cute dog stories I could tell about Rocky, but you get the idea. I was close with my pet dog. Like many girls who are as shy and awkward as I was (and often am) for a number of years, he was often my comfort and solace from the less joyful parts of my life. I’ll miss his playful growls, psychotic barking, and the way he could manipulate anyone into petting him or give him clandestine food from the table or kitchen counter.
You were a good dog, Rocky. Chase all of the opossums, kitties and mailmen off of the Elysian fields. Love to the memory of the best dog in the whole world.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Back in Camden... for three more weeks
Hey, folks!
So, now that I’ve finally taken my time off from work and then returned to my JVC home, I’m finally realizing that my time in JVC is beginning to wind down. I only have seventeen workdays left at Northgate II, (On a related note, if you get a few drinks into me after I move home for good, I’m sure that I’ll spill a lot of what appears to have happened while I was on vacation. Until then, I’ll keep my mouth closed.), twenty-two days left in Camden, and twenty-nine days left until I go home for good. It feels pretty surreal.
Then again, having seen how much all the babies back home have grown, how many lives have changed (especially the lives of my friends who have gotten or are getting married this summer!), and just the reality of the fact that my friends and I are now more than year removed from college graduation is hitting me.
So all this means that I have a pretty limited amount of time left to do things around here! I need to head up to NYC once more to visit my good friend, Jon Medina. I might hit DC one more time to visit my brother. But the thing is, I’m running out of weekends! As a community, we have a lot of things planned for our last three (!) weekends here. So if I don’t head north this weekend, I might not make it, period! It is so strange to realize that I really only have SIX free days left on this coast before I pack up and schlep back to Seattle!
Love to you all, talk to you soon!
So, now that I’ve finally taken my time off from work and then returned to my JVC home, I’m finally realizing that my time in JVC is beginning to wind down. I only have seventeen workdays left at Northgate II, (On a related note, if you get a few drinks into me after I move home for good, I’m sure that I’ll spill a lot of what appears to have happened while I was on vacation. Until then, I’ll keep my mouth closed.), twenty-two days left in Camden, and twenty-nine days left until I go home for good. It feels pretty surreal.
Then again, having seen how much all the babies back home have grown, how many lives have changed (especially the lives of my friends who have gotten or are getting married this summer!), and just the reality of the fact that my friends and I are now more than year removed from college graduation is hitting me.
So all this means that I have a pretty limited amount of time left to do things around here! I need to head up to NYC once more to visit my good friend, Jon Medina. I might hit DC one more time to visit my brother. But the thing is, I’m running out of weekends! As a community, we have a lot of things planned for our last three (!) weekends here. So if I don’t head north this weekend, I might not make it, period! It is so strange to realize that I really only have SIX free days left on this coast before I pack up and schlep back to Seattle!
Love to you all, talk to you soon!
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Quick Takes, June 2010
Right! So, I haven’t posted in a while. I think when you’re alternately really busy or horrendously bored, you either don’t have time to post or you can’t think of anything to write about. But here are some Quick Takes to catch you up!
My Father’s Day blog: …is on the way! I started writing a piece for all the dads in my life, including and especially my own. But the idea I had didn’t really flesh out the way I wanted, so I scrapped the whole piece on Friday and haven’t finished my new one yet. I promise to send you some Father’s Day love as soon as I finish, Dad! Sorry for the delay!
My left foot: About a week and a half ago I went for a run. (I had not been running for two weeks prior because of the heat. Bad Molly.) I was so happy to be out and at it again, but a few blocks into a three-mile route, I twisted my left ankle. I think it was a pretty mild sprain (I ran another mile on it before it got really painful, which was sort of stupid. I also didn’t even go to the doctor), but it hurt pretty badly. I’m trying to get it back up to full strength, but if last night’s yoga session was any indication the whole foot and leg have been affected. I don’t expect it to slow me down much longer, but it was still a bummer.
Personal space: The same day that I hurt my foot, I went to mass at a parish in downtown Philadelphia. I’d been to the church a few times for Adoration before, but never for mass. There was a young adult service scheduled in the evening, and I decided to check it out. At the end of the service, I was approached by a man, probably in his forties or fifties, who was very inappropriate with me. I won’t get into too many details, but I was definitely touched in a way that no man should ever touch a strange woman. I felt awful about it, and I didn’t even do anything wrong. I did tell one of the priests about it, though, because this guy was clearly hanging out at the young adult mass to get near the young women. I don’t plan to go back to mass there (there are plenty of other churches between my house and that one) because I don’t want to see him again.
Hail, hail, the gang’s all here: Last night was the first time in over two weeks that the entire JVC Camden community ate dinner together! I couldn’t believe how much I had missed Mark and Jenna’s presence in our house and around our table. Just hearing Mark’s voice made me giddy, and seeing Jenna sitting in front of me felt like home. It's sort of like missing your siblings until you all come back home for Christmas break. Dinner lasted two hours because we just hung around and talked. Which means the next two weeks are going to be odd for my housemates, because…
I’m going home in two days!: I fly out for my long-awaited vacation this Thursday night. I will arrive home just in time for Corina and Ed’s wedding, and stay through Tuan and Sara’s wedding, celebrate the Fourth with my loved ones, and then come back home for the final month of my volunteer commitment. If you can believe this, I will arrive in Camden again on July 6th, and then fly home for good exactly one month late on August 6th. That. Is. Crazy. I can’t believe it’s almost over.
Writing: I don’t know if it’s that it's summer, or that I have more free time, or if it's just a creative itch that needs to be scratched, but I’ve been writing a lot more recently. Nothing share-worthy yet, but I’ve been able to scratch out a poem or two and the beginnings of a couple of stories. I’ll need time (and more inspiration) to finish them, but I was really frustrated with myself for a while because of an insane period of writer’s block. Glad that’s sort of over.
Employment: It occurred to me that I haven’t made this information truly public yet, but I got the job at St. Brendan’s! I kept most of the interview process very quiet because I didn’t know if I would get the job, or when I would start if I got it. But now I can freely share that I did get the position, and that I will start on August 9th. It will be sort of a quick turnaround, but I am excited to start a new chapter of my life, get my feet under me, and my life back home going! Who knows what this will bring…
This past weekend: The four out of six of us that were in town last weekend had a really fun time-- we went to the Jersey Shore (I avoided all guidos and anything related to the spoiled brats on the show) on Saturday, where I played in the water for over an hour. Then on Sunday Stephanie, Amber and I checked something off of my Bucket List-- we visited Walt Whitman's grave and read from Leaves of Grass while we were there. Photos to come soon!
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Evidence of my strange life
In looking over my Facebook status updates from the past week, I realize what a strange life I lead. Here are some highlights to illustrate that point:
Molly Downes is stupifyingly bored. (*updated an hour and ten minutes later*) Just as soon as you complain you're bored, somebody gets arrested in your lobby.
Molly Downes started singing gospel music as loud as she could on the walk to work this morning. It was the only way to freak out the crack dealers that wouldn't leave her alone.
Molly Downes was walking back to work after a lunch appointment ran late, and couldn't enter the building for fifteen minutes. There was a huge brawl raging in in front of the door. Worst one I've seen since I've been here, and certainly the most violent.
Molly Downes just got an earful of marital advice from a creepy old Hispanic man. Shudder...
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