remember

iowa summer

lee dee

our house in iowa was right next to the unity church, and on sunday mornings, the organist, lee duell, used to arrive early. lee was a young guy when we were kids, and i guess we probably drove him crazy. we used to have a little chant we'd say whenever lee arrived at church to practice the organ in the morning before the service. it went like this: "lee dee, let him be, he is always early."

second placer

stephanie is four years older than me. we used to race across the lawn, and she would always win. she would say "first placer" as she crossed the finish line, and i would folow with "second placer."

playing mary

instead of playing house, stephanie and i used to play "little house on the prarie." i was blonde and she was older and made the rules, so i was always mary. i was always jealous of stephanie because i wanted to be laura.

we must not have been very old, because i remember once we had to stop playing so mom could put a diaper on me before bed.

building a city

when i was a child my mom saved the cardboard from toilet paper rolls, egg cartons and other plastic inserts, and when she had enough, i got to use them all to build a city. we glued them all together and i painted them. my city was futuristic and cool.

ah, same o' same

i bought a bagel and coffee every day from a portable stand on the way to work. the man who ran the stand waved when i approached and knew my order. it was a comforting feeling to have a friend in the heart of the city. each day, i asked him how he was doing and he responded, "ah, same o' same."

stranger

one sunny saturday i was supposed to meet some friends from my internship program in central park for a concert, and was running late. when i got to the meeting place, my friends were gone. i went on to the concert and met a guy who i ended up being friends with the rest of the summer. i wonder what happened to him. i wonder what his name was.

21 in the big apple

i lived for a summer in new york city, where i was an intern at travel & leisure magazine. since Stephanie was living there, and i was earning very little money, i lived with her, and sometimes david, in her small studio apartment on the upper east side, at 88th and york. i ran a lot that summer, three miles along the east river, starting near gracie mansion and running south. i celebrated my 21st birthday in new york that summer. i told jan castro, a friend i had met in russia earlier that year, that there was nothing i would change about my life to that point.

i meant it.

grey arrival

i remember arriving in the st petersburg airport, and waiting in the baggage area for my luggage. my bags were huge and heavy and had no wheels. i could barely drag them myself. the floor of this area was covered in puddles from melted snow and mud.

russian winter

i lived in st petersburg for the winter months of 2002, just after the walls of communism came crumbling down, bringing down the infrastructure and morale of this wonderful city with it. life was hard, it was cold. food and staples were in shortage. i learned more in these four months about myself and the world than any other period of my life so far.