July, The Month of Firsts

First Organic Peach from A Farmer’s Market
The peach was sweet and juicy, prompting me to declare that organic does taste so much better. It also cost me $3.50 a pound, which is about three times more than I really want to be paying for fruit. However, I might just have to save my pennies so that I can start shopping at the Farmer’s Market. Oh, sweet, delicate fruit.

First Rock Climbing Success
Tick Rock, Malibu. I looked at the Sliding Rock signs and thought: what have I done? I think what made this rock so terrifying was that it appeared to be a smooth rock face with few crevices but very sharp edges. It looked like if I fell, I would bounce off a couple of those sharp edges like a human pin-ball. While it wasn’t as physically challenging as other rocks I’d been on, I still cried all the way up, I was that scared. When I got to the top, I touched the anchor and whooped for joy. Then, I cried all the way down. Call me crazy, but leaning back and letting someone basically lower me while I walk down a rock with my legs above my hips is frightening. Fear and tears aside, it was the first time I completed a route and it felt good.

First Blind Date
Suffice to say there are reasons why there are first date rules such as: keep it short, talk on the phone first, have an escape plan. Hey, at least The Blind Date didn’t stab me in a dark alley and leave me for dead. For that, I’m grateful. There could be worse things about a person than a bitter sense of humor and an unfortunate speech impediment.

First Time At The Gym
Turns out, the gym wasn’t as intimidating as I’d always imagined it’d be. The gym wasn’t filled with too-muscular meat heads or peroxide blondes. In fact, it was filled with people of all ages, shapes and sizes. I nearly fell off the treadmill, but other than that, I had a really great workout and left feeling victorious. I’m finding I actually like the gym. There’s something very soothing about getting your heart rate up, sweating it out and physically pushing yourself until you can no longer think.

First Earthquake
I didn’t even know what it was. I was leaning up against a wall in the conference room at the office when I felt it tremble. I remember thinking, wow, the guys at the gym downstairs are really slamming those free weights down. It wasn’t until someone in the room said, “Earthquake,” that I looked out and saw that the windows were actually shaking. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it’d be, but then again, I was with a group of people. I’m sure it’d be a lot more frightening if I were by myself. I know what words like “epicenter” and “foreshock” mean now. Welcome to Los Angeles. I should find out what goes into an earthquake kit.

The Kirk Cameron People

You know how sometimes you're allowed to make fun of something by the sheer virtue that you are part of it? For example, if a white person made fun of Asian Mothers, there would be horrified gasps all around. But if an Asian person made fun of Asian Mothers it'd be self-deprecatingly funny.

I live by that rule.

When I lived in Chicago and had room mates, one of our favorite lazy day activities was scouring the channels for bad Christian television and then making fun of the programs we would find. It was a guilty pleasure of ours. Guilty because we believed as God-loving and God-fearing Christians it probably wasn't very Jesus-like to mercilessly make fun of our fellow Christians and their efforts at using the medium of television to win souls to Christ.

Pleasurable because...have you seen Christian television programming? Production value is inevitably low, content is cheesy and every one looks like they are stuck in the eighties. The early eighties. Christian television is usually bad. Embarrassingly bad. Hilariously bad.

One such lazy day, the Roomie and I were channel surfing when we stumbled on Kirk Cameron standing in front of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge asking if you believed you were good enough to get into heaven. Fascinated, we stopped to watch.

For those of you who don't know who Kirk Cameron is, he was Mike Seaver on Growing Pains, teen heart throb to millions of tween and teen girls in the mid and late eighties. Even in Singapore, miles away from America, we got episodes of Growing Pains. Don't ask me what else Kirk Cameron has been in since. Odds are, nothing much.

Why in the world was Mike Seaver asking us if we were good enough to get into heaven, we wondered.

Turns out, we were watching a program called The Way Of The Master. On the Web site, The Way of The Master is billed as a thirty-minute "new look at reality TV." In these thirty minutes, Kirk Cameron and a man named Ray Comfort teach viewers how to share their faith "effectively and inoffensively."

However, what the show contains is thirty minutes of the most ineffective and offensive material imaginable. The program features several man on the street interviews. Kirk Cameron wanders city streets with a camera crew ambushing passers-by and asking them incendiary questions such as, "Are you a good person?" or "Are you a liar?" When the shell-shocked interviewee answers, "Yes, I think I am a good person," Kirk Cameron then proceeds to prove that they are not a good person at all through a series of circular and rhetorical questions. And then he basically implies that they are going to hell if they don't come to God.

That day, when the Roomie and I started watching the program, we were giggling. But after about ten minutes neither of us were laughing anymore. We were horrified. This was not, we believed, the way of our Master. Our Master, Jesus, would never force an unsuspecting person into a corner and insist that they were a terrible person. Our Master approached what society considered as the lowest and most sinful with great care and utmost respect. Look at how he approached to The Woman At The Well. He placed himself first in a position of humility, asking her for water, even before He ever brought up her current situation or her past.

Over a year later, I'm wandering on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica with a girl friend on a Saturday night. Two young men -- good looking, stylishly dressed, start walking alongside us. One of the young men starts speaking to me and I turn to look at him. That's when I hear it. He says, "If you lie, aren't you a liar? If you're a liar, aren't you going to hell?"

His buddy, I notice, is carrying a hand-held video camera. I realize that at any moment, I could be one of those shell-shocked, ambushed, passers-by in The Way of the Master.

I roll eyes and sigh. I keep walking and say to him, "Don't. I know exactly what this is. Don't be a Kirk Cameron."

He keeps a calm, smug expression but splits off from us and disappears into a crowd of people gathered around a man with a microphone and a powerpoint presentation projected on a screen. The man is engaging the audience in some sort of biblical discussion. I don't hear the words, but I can tell, by his tone, he's just spoiling for a fight.

I wanted to laugh. I knew that when I moved to Los Angeles, the odds of having brushes with fame would increase exponentially. And true enough, I was almost on a bad Christian television program.

But as I thought of how many people in that crowd would come away even further from God because of their experience with this bizarre, twisted form of faith-sharing, it just wasn't that funny anymore.

Open

I am open. Open in mind, body and spirit. Open to new ideas, new experiences, new adventures, new absurdities.

I walk to the Coffee Bean on the corner, strains of Chris Issak singing Return To Me floating through my head. The tune is poignant and sweet, but mostly, I am thinking about how so very open I am. Open to possibilities. Open to making eye contact. Open to smiling at anyone and everyone.

I have been told that if I am open, others will be open to me. They will be drawn to me. They will be bowled over by how so very open I am. They too will want to make eye contact and smile. They will come to me.

I enter the Coffee Bean, my head held high. I scan the room. On the other side of the café a man wearing headphones is working on his laptop. I point my openness towards him. Surely he will sense my how open I am and look up. Surely the way I order my Sugar Free Non-Fat Mocha will reflect how willing of a person I am to try new things.

The man continues to work on his laptop. His eyes never leave the screen. Hm.

But because I am open I do not dismiss this one event as a sign. Perhaps he is merely distracted. Perhaps the computer screen holds life-changing truths that are infinitely more important and fascinating than me.

I wander back on the street, Sugar Free beverage in hand, humming and relishing in my openness. I look at the faces of the people that pass me. I try to make eye contact. They look ahead and continue to walk. Hmm.

At the grocery store, I wander up and down the aisles looking for milk, yogurt and candles. I pass a man pushing a grocery cart. I meet his eye and smile. He looks vaguely uncomfortable and looks away. I try this again with someone else – he simply has no expression at all.

At that moment, I realize that while I may be open, no one else really seems to be embracing this concept. And if you look someone in the eye and they do not look back at you, you are no longer an open person. You are that creepy girl that is starring at everyone. Keep smiling and you become that crazy woman with the too-wide grin. People stay away from crazy women with too-wide grins.

Maybe, I think, I should be a little less open. Perhaps I shouldn’t think of myself as a wide open door, but as one of those automatic sliding doors that only open when someone approaches it.

I get in line and pay for my groceries. I smile and thank the cashier. He hands me my change, but he is obviously looking over my head. James Blunt’s You’re Beautiful comes over the store speakers. This was the song that played the first time The No Longer and I went to Happy Hour.

My smile disappears. I lower my eyes and gather my groceries. I hurry towards the exit, meeting no one’s gaze. As I approach, the sliding doors open.

I step outside and breathe.

Summer

I love summer. It is my favorite season of the year. At heart, I am a warm weather kind of girl. My body is made for the tropics and I do best when there is sunshine, heat and yes, even humidity.

Life gets a little less hectic in the summer. It stays light out longer so that when I get off work I can still look at blue skies and sunshine. Groups that meet throughout the year take a Summer break so that my evenings are free for long walks, Happy Hour and poker games. I get to wear cotton sun dresses and flip-flops. I get to develop a tan.

Summer always feels like a happy time. In Chicago, Summer is the reward for having lived through nine months of Winter. At the first hint of Summer, no matter how fleeting, the shorts and tank-tops come out. It’s as if by dressing like it’s Summer, Summer will suddenly decide to show up, for good.

Last Summer was my final Summer living in Chicago. I spent those months packing my apartment and selling my furniture. I had the impossible task of selecting items from ten years of a life and squeezing them into seven boxes that I would ship to my new apartment in Los Angeles.

I also spent the Summer going to places in the city I loved and knew I would miss. I said goodbye to friends. My Someone and I held hands and explored the city. We took long walks, sat by the lake, went to dinners in the city. We talked, we laughed, we shared our lives as best as we knew how.

To the world, it looked like I was handling everything with calm and precision. What only my closest and dearest friends knew was that I was really just in functioning mode. Underlying all the packing, the partying and the goodbyes were questions I didn’t dare articulate. What would happen to my life when I got to Los Angeles? Would people like me? Would I find friends? What would happen to my Someone and I? How would we continue to grow our relationship when we were 2,000 miles and a time-zone apart? Would he decide that this was too hard and end things? Would I? What if he met someone else while I was gone? What if I did?

Early that Summer, I had what I termed as a The Great Meltdown. The realization that I was moving to a new city, far from everything that was safe, far from everyone that I loved, far from the man I was trying to build a relationship with, suddenly hit me one afternoon. The questions came flooding in, one after another. The fear was staggering; the grief overwhelming. I wept, loudly and uncontrollably for hours. And in that time I was unable to utter a single one of those fears.

The Great Meltdown was the first time I’d shown my Someone a side that was vulnerable, fragile and breakable. That in itself was also frightening. It’s one thing to recognize your own vulnerability, it’s a completely different thing to let someone come along side you in it.

That afternoon, my Someone held me as I cried, he said all the right things, encouraged me and reassured me. He showed strength. And, for that moment, I let myself lean into his strength.

My Someone asked me how I was the next day. Truth was, I was more than a little embarrassed. I knew that if I looked him in the eye, I would start bawling again. I didn’t want to start bawling again. There was nothing he could actually do that he hadn’t done already. In my head, there was nothing that would change my fear and my sadness. I’d already had one great cry, the second cry would do nothing to take away the fear. And so, I chose to shrug off the meltdown as something that happened. It would be fine, I assured him, I’ll be fine.

There was a part of me that half-expected him to not believe me, see that I was still struggling and push in. I’m not sure why I expected that, since I was so adamant that everything would turn out fine. He didn’t push in. And so we never quite spoke of The Great Meltdown again.

There are times in life where just sucking it up, gritting your teeth and doing what you don’t want to do is the only solution in getting to the other side. I did that, and as with everything that Summer, I did it well. Along with my earthly possessions, I put away the fear and grief into a box that I would unpack when I got to Los Angeles.

I didn't know it then, but from that point on, everything began to change.

I think the hardest part of that Summer was that there were so many things I was so afraid to say, too many questions I was afraid to ask. I thought I had time to say and to ask. I wanted to bottle that feeling of summer -- unhurried and leisurely. I wanted to linger slowly and deliciously in the moment.

This Summer, the Someone is now my No Longer. I live in Los Angeles, where Summer is less of a gift as it is a given. I battle both vivid and fading memories of The Last Summer in Chicago.

Vivid, because each marker of Summer --Memorial Day or Fourth of July, reminds me of what I was doing at the same time last Summer.

Fading, because each new memory I make in a new city, with new friends, with potential Next Ones, makes Chicago seem just that little bit further away.

I am half-way through the Summer already. Fourth of July looms this weekend and I am back in Chicago for a week-long visit. The city feels familiar but no longer like home. Meanwhile, I am getting e-mails from my community in Los Angeles letting me know of plans for the long holiday weekend. I have to admit, I feel a small sense of loss that I am not there with them.

I suppose this is what is known as Moving On.