All Stirred Up

One legacy of my peripatetic upbringing is that I never stopped moving. And so my life really has been lived in distinct chapters. When one ends, I move on. There are few links, and little overlap. A hardy few have followed me on my journey. Natalia was one. Now she is gone. As a result, though, I often feel like earlier chapters are like a life that belonged to another person. They are in me, all those places, flavors, sights and scenes, but deep deep in my cells. Not being called upon every day.

Until facebook came along.

All of a sudden voices from all different parts of my past are exploding into the present. They are closed chapters, forgotten closets, sealed brain clusters. And these voices are bringing back all these different times, and my memories, and their memories.

There is Alex Okun, my very very best friend from second grade in Naples, who I loved so much I spent 15 years looking for her, eventually tracking her down when I was 25 after I saw her father's name in a front page Washington Post newspaper story because by then he was a diplomat in Israel. The state dept wouldn't give me her address so I mailed a letter to them, and eventually, after months and months her father called my parents and I found her. So I saw her once in Seattle. But I found her again. She told me what she remembered about my second grade self. Funny.

And then there is Brian Key from High School, a dear dear friend, a constant presence, a fellow Navy kid (only his dad was a POW in Vietnam, something we were not supposed to bring up). He was a neighbor, a playmate, a quiet force for good, always, in a way that most people in high school just are not. There is my very best friend from High School, Kelly Wilkinson, who sketched horses madly through her high school days, covering her bedroom with perfect sketches of horses, then joined the Navy, flew airplanes, joined the Navy reserve, seriously studied painting, and now, truly, paints like the best of the French Impressionists. She has her very own studio in Charlottesville, VA, and I swear, she paints like Mary Cassatt. I am awed by her work, and love her for finally doing the thing she always, always wanted to do. How many people really come back and do that? She really knew herself at 15. And she was true to herself.

Then there is Ian Hoorneman, a wacky and delightful friend from High School, (a Latin scholar and a powder puff cheerleader, both!) who knew me at Wakefield, but also watched the strident, man-hating feminism (it was a phase! I swear! I only hated men, all men, until I was about 25) of Wellesley take root in my soul--and after 20 some years, when I told him I was married to a "screenwriter" had to ask me if the screenwriter was a man or a woman...

And finally, on Thursday night I stopped by the home of Lani Asato, one of Natalia's dearest friends, whose life I have followed and watched over the years. She, like me, (and Natalia) spent years studying Japanese, living in Japan, working for the Japanese. She is, actually, third generation Japanese. But seeing her made all the memories of Japan, JET, Natalia and the flight to Tokyo right after graduation, working for NHK (she worked for TBS) come rushing back. We ate noodles flavored with uniquely Japanese flavored dressings, sat at a table like a kotatsu, and stared up at a gorgeous photo of bamboo, surrounded by other kanji art. I felt safe there. Like I had known her for a long, long time. She knew the places I knew, the people I knew, and this country, that left such a huge mark on me, that I never really talk about any more.

So now here I sit, on a Saturday morning in May 2009, and the doors to all my chapters have been flung open. My head is whirling with memories of homecoming in High School, of my weird days at Wellesley, of my first trip to Japan, of track and calculus and why my high school did leave such an impression on me, even though I don't love it in the way that prep school people love and admire their alma maters.

I have such a set narrative in my head of how it all went, and what it all meant, and where it has all led. So how strange it is to have people emerge and remind me of different things, events I had forgotten, important phases that I have chosen to ignore in the script of my life.

Very very strange.

I don't know what it all means yet.

Except to say that my chapters are very, very, very disjointed.