Never Too Old

No one really likes to celebrate birthdays in my family. Sometimes we have 'parties' and 'get togethers' around the time of the person's birthday, but, you know, that's just a coincidence. No one likes to acknowledge that they're getting older, that another year has already passed by. It's like we think ignoring the fact will make it go away.

My friend's sixteenth birthday was today. Yesterday two other friends and I walked to Wal-Mart in the rain, talking and laughing and running as fast as we could to get across the street just in case a car popped up out of nowhere. We stood in the cake mix aisle for fifteen minutes debating what kind of cake to make (we decided on Swiss chocolate), what sort of frosting to use and how much of it to buy (again, chocolate all the way), what color of candles and plates and napkins and utensils to use (we bought the cheapest of all four, except the plates. We splurged on Zoo Pals plates.) Then we stood in line and worried if we would have enough money, and which things we would put back if we didn't. We cut through neighbor's yards on the way back, jumping in puddles and balancing on the curb like we were walking the tightrope, debating whether the Coke I was carrying could ever again be opened without it exploding. Three hours later we were still in the kitchen baking cakes and sugar cookies, covered in flour and chocolate and trying to be smarter than the bag of bright green icing. I went home exhausted, but it was the most fun I'd had all summer.

Today we all met in the park, long since having abandoned our plans for a surprise party, and spread blankets out under the shade of a tree. We laughed at our pathetic excuse for a pot luck dinner and skipped straight to the dessert instead, quickly realizing we had forgotten the cheap-and-yet-color-coordinated napkins we'd been so proud of the day before. Not once did we manage to light all sixteen candles at once– the most we could get was four at a time – and so instead we sang a very loud, very off tune version of 'Happy Birthday' four separate times in four different languages, trying to go as quickly as possible before the wind blew out the flames. Then we sat together in the shade, watching the kids on the playground and eating our 'chocolate covered Diabetes' cake. We talked for hours, commiserating about high school and sunburns and boys while arguing whether we would be charged with arson if the bargain-priced candles caught anything on fire.

The thought occurred to me while we were talking that we might not get to be together for much longer. We're all going different places with our lives, we have different plans for college and marriage and the future. Celebrating a birthday really is celebrating getting older, a bench mark to remember the the year that's passed by, and no one knows where the next year is going to bring. Love, maybe, or death, new friends and faces and forks in the road. Maybe by this time next year we won't recognize each other anymore; maybe we won't recognize ourselves.

I hope to always be young enough to celebrate my birthday and strong enough to enjoy what is right now, in this moment, no matter where I am or where I want to be.

Our Identity

Our generation is living in uncharted territory; the ground we are breaking has never been explored before. We’re still far from perfect, but we are learning – slowly – how to accept people different from ourselves. I am finding myself explaining to my younger brother many nuances that our parents never had to know: the difference between being bi and pan, celibate and asexual, drag queen and MTF. Even seemingly synonymous words like sex and gender.

What I love about little kids is that they don’t care about things like that. They love themselves. They love their bodies. They celebrate fingers and toes as well as spit and feces and all the other things that us grown-ups just don’t understand. Children know from a young age if they’re attracted to boys or girls, or if they were born in the wrong body or with the wrong name. Pronouns don’t matter to them. They love themselves anyway.

Since I chopped my hair off last year, I’ve gotten lots of questions. “Didn’t you like your long hair?” “Is there something you want to tell us?” “Are you gay?” It’s amazing how much of our identity lies in superficial, temporary things like hair and clothing. But to date my favorite question comes from my baby cousin Tyler, who pointed one finger at me and demanded, “Hey, you – are you a he, or are you a she? Cuz you look like both.”

Moments like that remind me that we need masculine and feminine traits to balance ourselves out, and that we don’t necessarily have to be a he or a she. It’s okay to just be us. It’s okay to like ourselves – and each other – just the way we are.

Worthy of More Than Hell

I don’t believe in a hell. I never have. I think about it, and I understand why other people might believe in it, but I cannot compromise my idea of an all-loving, all-encompassing god with that of a place of eternal torture. There has never been a part of me that wanted to punish, not even people who could arguably deserve to be punished, and I never honestly understood why. Isn’t it a good thing if all the wicked people in the world go to hell? Shouldn’t I be glad? Shouldn’t I want them to suffer for whatever they’ve done?

But… I don’t. I want them to be happy – with themselves, with their life, with their choices, with their reality. I want them to be free of whatever personal hell they’ve created already, and I want a god who can appreciate that, who can lead them to a homewards towards joy and peace instead of torment.

One large idea behind Wicca, one main thing about it that caught my attention, is that there is no hell. Not just that, but there is no evil. Devils don’t sit on our shoulders and whisper sins, and fallen angels don’t wait down below with red horns and burning pitchforks (obviously not, since the existing concept of Satan comes from a twisted version of the pagan deity Pan). People make bad choices, yes, but we are all only doing the best we know how. It doesn’t make us bad. It doesn’t make us sinful. It makes us human – erroneous sometimes, and hopeful, and beautiful in that hope because it, too, is what makes the world beautiful. Even mass murderers are nothing more than human.

Falling

Everybody’s in such a hurry to fall in love, and some days I don’t know why. I guess no one warned them about all the dangers that go along with loving; the hard parts don’t make it into the story books. Real life never just ends happily ever after.

When you really love someone, it hurts. It aches. It’s wonderful and breathtaking and scary as hell, and it is a feeling that nothing else can give you. It doesn’t end. It doesn’t get easier. True love is tender, easily bruised and easier broken, less like walking on egg shells than it is holding an unborn chick. And if it’s hard to let that in to your life it’s harder to let it out again.

Demons

Demons that haunt the shadows
where no one else can see,
too human to be hated –
too close to the heart they make bleed.
They come out
in sweat and tears and pain,
and the many shades of gray that lie between
the pencil and the paper.

April Showers; May Flowers

Where do all the faeries go
when the world is lost in snow?
What do all the flowers do
when springtime doesn’t follow through?

The earth outside is warm
despite the frozen storm,
and the green keeps growing
even through the snowing.

In the darkness the world sleeps,
and through the stillness lightness creeps.
Life rests now in quiet peace,
waiting for the spring’s release.

Life Lessons in a Pot

I’m terrible at baking, probably because I learned how to cook the same way I learned how to drive: by watching my dad do one thing, and then turn to me and say “Never do that. You’ll get yourself killed.” If nothing else, though, at least it taught me that words without action are meaningless, which to be fair is a hard lesson to instill in a poet. Cooking has a way of doing that to me, teaching me things that I’m not sure I would learn any other way. The kitchen itself comes with a little, small-print warning sign, Perfectionist be ware. There is no perfection in foods. You can only control so much before it’s out of your hands, there are only so many variables you can keep in check… and that’s OK. If it’s a mess, at least you can eat your mistakes.

Humility is another thing. Most of our foods now come pre-packaged, pre-made, just stick it in the microwave and go. Which is great, but it also means that we forget where the things we eat come from and why they matter, what kind of work actually went into what ends up on our table. We forget that we are eating things, plants and animals, that gave up their lives to support ours. Cooking is a good reminder of where we come from, in my opinion. It’s hard to feel invincible when you hold an egg in the palm of your hand and realize how fragile existence is, how small and temporary and beautiful. Cutting meat and breaking eggs is sort of like saying a prayer. Thank you. I understand, I appreciate. Thank you.

And in exchange for being humbled, you get food. You get life. You get the knowledge that you can create just as well as you can devour, and that you really need nothing more than what you have right now.