When I looked in her eyes, they were blue but nobody home

This is a little story about connection.

I'm an introvert, which sometimes surprises people. Sometimes people tell me I'm wrong. 

But really, all that means is that I need alone time to recharge. When I get over-peopled, I get really crabby and stop functioning.

It doesn't mean I'm shy (although I was for decades). 

It also isn't the reason I go off on a million tangents and inappropriate things sometimes fall out of my mouth. I think those can be attributed to ADHD or some other undiagnosed neurodivergence.  

Anyway, the point I'm making is that I love community, and long before I understood that it was my nature, I've worked to build community.

People are everything to me. I honestly feel there is nothing more important than the people I love who love me.

(Yes, OK, water, food, shelter, healthcare. But for my emotional and physical well-being, I need my people.) 

The reason I'm writing this is that I'm going to leave a really broad community I've been part of for what I realize is about 17 years. 

Time is weird.

I've been blogging longer, but I've been less and less consistent with the blog. Plus FB can be so passive. Writing takes creative thought and energy.

So I've been thinking about it for a while, and it's been hard, because I don't want to lose connection.

When I started blogging—and I'm not quitting—I was single, heartbroken, and in absolute crisis.

Emotional crisis like all of the lies my family kept secret for decades about my dad's suicide attempts, all the lies we told ourselves about being fine, those were absolutely choking me. The family dysfunction, which we didn't recognize as such, had molded me into someone who couldn't sustain a healthy romantic relationship.

And all I wanted was someone to love me. I hated myself. I was convinced that I was unlovable. That nobody would ever love me.

I started blogging, and the only people who knew about it were my closest friends and some family. Back then DC had this wonderful blogger community. We read and commented on each other's blogs.

We were online weirdos with varying degrees of concealed identities who shared our weirdness with the public and we liked each other for it.

Complete strangers started reading my blog. And the ones who liked my weirdness stuck with me.

And some of my invisible friends became in-person friends. Some I've never met, but we've still been friends since before Nick and I even met.

Such is the power of online community.

Late in 2006, when one of my besties moved in with her boyfriend, who it was very clear would become her husband, and another of my besties moved away for an amazing job, I was suddenly all alone.

I wasn't actually alone, because of course we were still friends, and I had other friends. But these were my see-all-the-time-call-in-crisis besties.

This was before I'd gotten very far in therapy. I was still crying all the time. I was still wondering why the boyfriend I'd broken up with didn't love me. I was hoping he'd change his mind and we'd get back together.

But I was frantically doing all this internet dating in case. Because I was terrified of being alone.

Basically, I was fucking insane. 

So at some point that fall, edge of winter, I realized that suicide was an option. For me, I mean.

Even though I was 11 when my dad first attempted suicide, and 18 for his second attempt, I'd never considered it as a personal option. Not through crying every single day and gaining 40 pounds my freshman year of college. Not through my worst breakups. 

But one day I realized: when my parents were gone, because I wouldn't do to them what my dad had done to us, I could leave.

And this idea was such a relief.

The option was there for some future time. I could put it on the shelf, and take it out when I needed it.

I didn't ever have to be completely alone and miserable.

That was incredibly calming. 

Then here's what happened. I progressed in therapy. And I got very into the blogging community.

This combination saved me.

I mean this literally.

The following spring, my dad attempted suicide and very nearly died. 

He wasn't breathing when EMS found him. We had to sign a paper at the ER allowing them to re-intubate him, to change from the emergency intubation to one that could be long-term in the hospital. We had to acknowledge that he might die during this procedure.

And then they told us, should he survive it, he might not ever wake up. If he did, he could be brain dead. We'd just have to wait and see if he woke up.

It took hours and hours to get him into the ICU.

One of my forever besties was with us, and we left at maybe 3:00 am? I can't remember. My mom wanted to stay. We drove to my parents' house to sleep.

I couldn't sleep.

So I got online, and I shared my biggest, worst secret on my blog. I said that it defined me, but was not about me.

I think about that now, and how sad that is. 

It really did define me. My life, and my mom's, were focused on keeping my dad alive. And he kept trying to leave.

I didn't know how people would react. Suicide was even more stigmatized then. 

I just knew I wanted to let it out. To scream it from the rooftop. To find some relief from holding it.

What I got was a tremendous amount of support.

One of my dearest friends became one of my dearest friends precisely because of that post.

I didn't know I needed all that support. But my gosh, I did.

And so, between working with my therapist and pouring my heart out on my blog, I started to heal.

I firmly believe I could not have done this without my online community.

I had and still have amazing in-person friends. But it was different.

And the reason all this is bubbling up is because for the longest time, I loved FB. I reconnected with so many long-lost high school friends, Peace Corps friends, and family friends in far-flung locations. 

Out of nowhere, this site eventually became integral to our lives.

In moments of anger I say I hate people, and India gives me a look and is all, "You love SO MANY people!" She's right.

I love so many people.

But I also, in the current regime, have very high anxiety. And I have never been any good at moderation. I am all or nothing.

It's part of my charm. It's extremely frustrating. I contain multitudes.

It would be one thing if, like a friend of mine, I could log on to post things on my great community Buy Nothing group. And then log off.

Or check in on a few friends, and then be done.

But no. This is not me. If I'm in at all, I'm all in. 

And right now, I'm posting and reading about one political horror after another. And I see very few posts from friends. I mostly see ads and random posts from all kinds of groups I'm not part of.

Recently one of my friends said, "You don't have to do everything. You can do little things that still matter. And removing yourself from apps takes money away from them. And money is all that matters to them."

I thought about this. I thought about the person who paid a lot of money to be at the inauguration. The  person who removed fact-checking from this online community. Who owns so many of the apps I use.

So I'm doing this one small thing, slowly extricating myself.

And in case you're reading this and thinking I'm suggesting you do the same, I'm not. And I'm not judging.

I don't judge people I like. 

I really don't. I have lived through some of the craziest shit. I've done plenty of crazy.

Who am I to judge?

Unless I'm married to you, in which case I want you to eat more vegetables and work out. 

(I do, however, judge the shit out of people I dislike. Let me not pretend I don't.)

But friends? Absolutely no judgment. Make your own choices. I'm here for you. I'm an enabler, not an enforcer.

If you're a bestie and you tell me you're in a Goodbye Earl situation, I will not ask why. I will tell you I have an SUV and I can be there with an old blanket.

This is who I am.

Am I scared of feeling isolated? Of course I am. I love finding commonalities. I love connection.

I guess I'll see how it goes.

And that's where I am with that.

And the waves tell the firm coast: 'Everything will be fulfilled.'

When 2024 began, I said that I didn't want to tempt fate by saying that it had to be better than 2023. It could hardly be worse, right?

I think I'm not superstitious, but I kinda am.

And though I don't always succeed, my inclination is to hope for good, hope for better.

So I was hoping for a good year. 

Hope hope and more hope.

On December 30, 2023, we visited the family of a dear friend of Nick's, who lives just outside of Oxford. In Oxfordshire. (The shire of Oxford!)

I was excited to meet him. I'd heard about him for years.

His family lives in a charming, centuries-old stone house in an ancient, quaint, no-streetlights English village that used to be one massive wealthy family's estate.

Leaving his house in rainy pitch dark, I slipped on one of the large uneven paving stones and landed flat on my shin, splitting the skin in a long line.

Since Nick and I have watched so many British murder shows, the bulk of which seem to be set in and around Oxford, we joked that I was lucky to have escaped with my life.

In retrospect, I maybe should've sought medical attention, or at least gotten butterfly tape. I don't think stitches would've worked as it was directly over bone.

But instead, we got on a flight the next day and came home. Slowly, over months and months (and months), it healed.

First it swelled and turned colors and scabbed massively. It was gruesome. I sent photos to friends who were up for the gore.

I have a big scar. I don't mind scars. I've got a lot of them.

So I began 2024 on the heels of a joyful trip, but felled by some international non-Covid crud, still deep in grief, still healing from a double mastectomy and also suddenly this random murdery British village wound. 

A year ago I was emotionally and physically struggling, with low expectations, but hope.

Last night, as I was reviewing my year, I tiptoed through my memories in the form of photos, and doing so reminded me of how blessed I am. What a lucky year I had.

Genuinely.

Despite grief, despite the leg wound, which hurt to touch for about six months, despite pneumonia in the fall, which took about five weeks to recover from, and despite some months of undiagnosed depression.

It sounds rather terrible when I list all of them. I do realize this.

But so many wonderful things happened. 

And my approach to life, after having such dramatic reminders of the vicissitudes of fate, is now to take the opportunities I can.

There are things I hope to do in this life, places I hope to see, and sooner is closer to guaranteed than later.

I'm not saying we're no longer saving for college or retirement. I'm just saying, if something is accessible, I'm going to do it.

In February, Nicole, my beloved Nicole came to hang out with our kids so Nick and I could go to a fancy dinner at Lincoln College, Oxford, where we took the above photo. Attending the event was both a pleasure and an honor.

I wanted to take a whole lot of photos, but people just ate their multiple course dinner with wine pairings like this was all normal. I didn't want to be a gauche tourist.

And then Maude came to visit. Although actually, she arrived at our house a day before we did because Virgin Atlantic switched our flights to a day earlier but didn't tell us. 

Surprise! You're leaving yesterday!

I was going to include a photo of our faces, so happy to be together. But I think the photo that depicts our friendship more accurately is this one of Maude doing plow pose and me laughing and taking a photo while Wanda takes the opportunity to sniff her butt.

In the spring, the kids and I went to Puerto Rico, which was warm and tropical and so, so beautiful. And I got to reconnect with my high school friend Maria, who I hadn't seen in over 20 years.

And then summer, my favorite season! Summer was filled with truly extraordinary experiences.

Nick joined me for the 30-year reunion of my Peace Corps omnibus. I got to see people I hadn't seen since I left Ecuador. The weekend of reconnection and reminiscence filled my entire heart.

I went to Portugal for the first time, visiting dear old friends who live there. And then Kathy joined me and we headed heading north to Vigo, Spain, to walk 101 kilometers of the Camino de Santiago.

We walked for five days, and some of it was very hard, and I have many thoughts, and our Camino experience merits at least a whole post of its own.

But from that week, strongest in my memory and heart is how much we laughed. Except for using the bathroom, we spent 24/7 together. We had a lot of time and kilometers to talk. And oh my gosh, did we laugh.

Maybe not everyone would find a glass-walled in-bedroom bathroom in a beautiful historic hotel hilarious. But we sure did.

Did I used to laugh more in my day-to-day? I don't know.

Now I realize that belly laughs are treasures. When you have someone with whom you laugh that hard repeatedly, I firmly believe you never let them go.

I don't intend to, anyway.

In August Nick and I headed up to get the kids from camp in Maine, and took the opportunity of being so relatively close to Montreal to visit for a few days.

Oh my gosh, Montreal. What a beautiful city. India was sick, and my family was not in the mood to tourist a whole lot, but we really enjoyed strolling around the city, and we had great food.

We went to a John Fluevog store. What absolute pleasure.

On my birthday, I took a Pilates class taught by Annie, one of my lovely Bali friends.

And added to this was the joy of seeing my high school friend Monique, and getting to meet her lovely daughter.

Also! I learned that all of the Great Lakes connect to each other, and flow to the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence River.

I spent time on Lake Superior every childhood summer, and this blew my mind. Although I recently told this to some friends and they were like, yes, we learned this in school.

Was I taught that? Maybe I was busy seeing if I could hold my breath for a whole minute rather than paying attention. 

That was how I spent much of 7th grade history with a teacher I disliked. Never disruptive. Just quietly timing how long I could hold my breath, over and over.

But was American geography 5th grade? My geography is terrible. I only learned that Virginia borders Tennessee when we got Wanda, and Nick saw the town she was from and said, "That's almost Tennessee."

I actually said, "Virginia borders Tennessee?" This is the kind of thing that makes Nick tut in disappointment. 

Kind of like how I know nothing about our government and so I always ask Nick and he is all, "Didn't you major in Poli Sci at UNC?"

And then I have to remind him that yes, but only because I was a French major and my dad insisted that I add another "more useful" major, so I crammed a whole bunch of Poli Sci classes into my senior year but really didn't care and don't remember anything.

So just tell me again about Congress and the Supreme Court already for Pete's sake.

Anyway.

I learned so much US geography when Maude and I drove cross-country to move from DC to San Diego. We used paper maps, it was so long ago.

I seriously kept being like, wait, this state is next to this state? What's next?

We drove through West Virginia to Kentucky, and as such, I know they're next to each other and I've still never been to Tennessee. Although apparently some of it is right up against Virginia.

Anyway, now I've kind of derailed this with how little I know about where things are in the world.

My main point, I think, is that for me, just about every joy comes down to the people I'm spending time with.

I've left people out. And here is why.

At some point I just started listing names of friends and then I was like, oh my gosh, is this super neurodivergent that I'm about to make you a list of every single friend I spent time with last year? 

And next I'll tell you my top ten favorite birds!

I definitely don't want to be tedious.

So if you're reading this and I saw you and your name is not here, it's not because I don't love you. It's because it started to feel weird.

All this to say:

You know I love travel. Oh my gosh I do. And because of how I grew up, I often feel better out of the country than in. I leave and wish I could stay wherever it is I am.

(Except dinner is too late for me in Spain. But otherwise, absolutely.)

But for me, the most important thing in life is the people you love and who love you.

And lucky, lucky me, in 2024 I got to spend time with so many of them.

Here's hoping for a wonderful 2025 for all of us. 

I said this to myself in January last year, and I'm saying it again: Exercise, bathe. Eat a fucking vegetable. Feel lucky to be alive.

Hope for health, hope for peace, hope for love and joy. For each and every one of you.

Vuela, vuela/No te hace falta equipaje

I've been wondering: where in our bodies does long-stored joy live? 

Do scientists even know?

The memory of connection, of happiness, of safety, those feelings that make you delightedly embrace a friend from 30 years ago in your past—where do they live?

Over the years, I've read a lot of research about how trauma is storied on our bodies, reshaping them, and rewiring our minds.

Perhaps you've read "The Body Keeps the Score," or watched a video of Gabor Mate speaking about how trauma is stored in your body. How trauma isolates you, how it keeps your body in fight or flight mode, triggers you. How trauma leads to mental and physical illness. 

So much of my effort, over the years, has been focused on trauma.

And this post is about the opposite.

It's about connections forged decades ago. It's about laughter, love, and joy.

I've come to believe that just as trauma lives in our bodies, so does joy. So do feelings of friendship, safety, support, and connection. All of which have their roots in love.

I hadn't, until last week, thought about how our bodies might store past joy and deep connections and love for others.

We have happiness triggers, too. We just have to be in a space to activate them.

The weekend before last, a big group of Peace Corps friends converged for a reunion, hosted by our friends Cathy and Tim, who live on a beautiful lake in Michigan.

Cathy and Tim are the most gracious, generous, kind, and fun hosts. They opened their house, their yard, their boat, their hearts to all of us.

In the group photo at the top, it's the Saturday of the reunion weekend, and everyone who could attend is there.

Some of us have just been swimming in the lake. Tim has just returned from hosting a themed car parade in Fort Wayne, IN, which he organized with the sole purpose of putting more happiness into the world. I'm not kidding. He's still in the Ferris Bueller vest from the parade. 

On Friday, Cathy took those of us who were already in town on a tour of Ann Arbor. I didn't know that JFK announced the creation of the Peace Corps at the University of Michigan in 1960!

Carissa, who was organized the reunion, proffered out a "high-level agenda," with bingo and a Yankee swap, and a yoga class Saturday morning.

This isn't the best photo, but here we are, wearing our hard-won shigras (which we used in Ecuador market bags) as hats, laughing, laughing as always.

But the yoga: I said yes, of course, but was initially nervous when Carissa asked me, as I wasn't sure what kind of class my friends would want. And as it turned out, it was such a delight, yoga with friends lakeside on a perfect Michigan summer day.

Summer in the Midwest is spectacular, particularly if you have access to a lake. It's magical, with warm but not hot sunny days lasting till late late.

Cathy took us on so many gorgeous boat rides.

Our group first met in Miami in 1993, now 31 years ago. Multiple lifetimes. Many of us have grown children. Some have grandchildren.

We've lost friends since our Peace Corps days. Alfonso, Blanche. Maggie. And since the last reunion, Alto Ron, nicknamed such because he was so tall. Lovely Bonnie, so young and so beautiful. 

There were friends who couldn't join, and I bet their ears were burning all weekend, as we spoke of them so fondly.

In 2015, I joined a number of people in Austin for Rhonda's 50th birthday. This was my first time reconnecting with a group. And then in 2017, friends hosted a reunion on Whidbey Island, off the coast of Seattle.

The reunion in Michigan was the largest gathering I've been to. Some of us brought spouses and kids.

For this gathering, Janet, our artist, made coasters. Lovely recuerdos of our time together.

Our friend Neal, who hadn't seen anyone from Peace Corps years since 1995, wrote ahead of time, "I have been describing to my now college age kids the nuances of evolution of relationships and significance of mutual connections, even if transitional and seemingly fleeting in the scale of a lifetime." 

We were in different groups—engineering and health—with sites far apart. We hadn't spent much time together ever.

And still, we'd had a shared and very intense experience, now so long ago. I was excited to see him, to meet his wife, to hear about his life.

This time, Nick accompanied me, and I was so happy for him to meet everyone. 

Health volunteers:

Water engineering volunteers:

Special education volunteers:

Business volunteers:

I hadn't seen Jaime or Eric, both of whom lived near me, since 1995. They, along with Ralph and Juan Carlos, were my closest friends, my constant source of friendship, laughter, adventure.

Back then, you'd bring a sleeping bags, and crash at each other's sites. This was back when I could sleep anywhere. I envy my past self for that.

Eric lived an hour by bus up the mountain (not far in miles, but the road wasn't great), in a convent with Padre Antonio, a young, handsome, charming priest. Not much older than us, and so full of life.

Padre Antonio had a truck, and he'd take us on picnics, hikes to hot springs, exploring the area. His parents lived in San Blas, just a short walk from my village. They were lovely. We visited them regularly.

And then, sometime after I left, I heard there'd been a scandal. A woman was pregnant. Padre Antonio had left the priesthood.

But I never knew what happened.

And so, 30 years later, Eric told me the story. They'd kept in touch after Eric left, and thankfully, it worked out well. Antonio, Padre no more (but eventually a padre of five) left the priesthood. He had a family. He started an ecotourism company. He's since passed away.

I'd wondered about him, all these decades. He was kind, positive, generous. The type of person you'd want representing your organization, particularly if your organization was truly dedicated to serving those in need.

The priest in my village was always asking me to translate letters requesting things from American and European organizations. A car. Funding for personal projects.

The Catholic church had so much power in these villages. Our village priest shamed women during Mass for not having children. 

We weren't gallivanting about the countryside with him.

Volunteers in our area rented mailboxes at the post office in Ibarra, 30 minutes by local bus from my site. You'd ride with farmers toting grain bags, holding live chickens, everything.

I visited Ibarra and the post office regularly, to send and check for mail. I lived far from one of my besties, Neeta, and we wrote to each other several times a week.

Our sites varied so much. I had water and electricity. Neeta had to have water delivered by a truck. She used it for food, then washing, then plants. There was a hierarchy of need when you have a limited water supply.

Eric would come down the mountain and we would make a trip into the city. There was a bakery we found in Ibarra that had amazing bread and alfajores. We'd chat and write letters and just spend time.

It's weird to think about, that trips to the post office were an event around which we would plan our day. Now when we all have instant communication at our fingertips, and complain about not wanting to receive phone calls, or the burden of texting back.

But our lives were like that. We worked hard to maintain connection.

We circulated books. Peace Corps is where I read "Seeking John Galt," "The Fountainhead," and a massive book on Frida Kahlo, the title of which escapes me. We all read them. 

We shared tapes. I listened to Liz Phair's "Exile In Guyville," "Rites of Passage" by the Indigo Girls, and Maná's "¿Dónde jugarán los niños?" approximately a million times. 

The last time I had seen my friend Jeff, who also lived far from me, was in Quito. We went out for drinks and I poured my heart out about a complicated boyfriend. This past weekend, we talked about our lives now, our spouses and kids.

These were connections dormant for 30 years, and still we have such hope for the happiness of each other.

There are so many things I hadn't talked about, or really even thought about, in 30 years.

Like how one of the communities I worked in was only accessible by hitching a ride on a passing truck. The bus took you to a certain point, and then you had to wait for a truck that was heading into the valley. You had to do the reverse to get home.

Eventually Eric and I started an income-generation project there. 

A woman from his community made these adorable little ornaments, fake flowers and such, out of very simple ingredients. People would use them for decoration for weddings, quinceañera, etc. So we brought her down there to teach a group of women who were interested.

We did things like that. It was so different, after the structure of college and then an office job. 

I was untethered. So insecure, sure that everyone else was doing things right, and I was just faking it.

We regularly rode in the back of pickup trucks, or sometimes in the cab of a big truck driven by a person willing to take us. We paid for these rides. It was just normal, if schedule-wise unreliable, transport.

At the reunion, Eric called me "Lisacita," which nobody has done since Peace Corps. In our part of the sierra, anyway, everything was made diminutive.

Cariñito, amorcito, lindito. Our Spanish, or Castellano, as it was called, was infused with Quichua (or Kichwa) words and phrasing. 

Our villages had Quichua speakers. And how nice it was to say, "Quichua," and not have someone who'd spent time in other parts of South America correct me and say, "Actually, it's Quechua." Because in Ecuador, actually, it's Quichua.

The Castellano we learned was formal, and maybe the coastal volunteers acquired it, but I never learned the informal plural "you" because we were taught Ustedes. The sierra, anyway, was very formal. The Spanish we learned was infused with Quichua words and grammar. Like, "guagua" for baby. "Dame traendo..." for "Bring me..."

I don't know if "siga no más" is particular to Ecuador, but I haven't heard my Spanish friends use it. You'd hold the door open for someone and say, "siga no más." Go ahead.

Eric, Ralph, and I worked with a woman who always prefaced everything with, "No sea malita/o..." It was a softening before asking a favor, but literally translates to, "Don't be a little bad one."

We'd joke about it in English. "Don't be a little bad one. Hand me a pencil."

The names of the villages and towns our sites were in were names I hadn't said in three decades—Pablo Arenas (Eric's site, which he reminded me we liked to call Paul Sands), Atuntaqui, Jaime's site, and where he'd been biking from to my site when he had his terrible accident and had to be Medevaced to the US.

It felt good to talk about Urcuquí, my site, which back then had no street names or streetlights, but is now big and rather urban. This I know now because Jaime's wife is from Pablo Arenas, and she goes home regularly.

We talked about the bus rides we took then, ones we'd never allow our kids to take now. Us women, we would often limit their water intake ahead of time, and eat salty snacks. Because you didn't know if drivers would be willing to take a bathroom stop.

You were at the whim of the driver, always. 

They might stop for you if you had your hand out on the side of the road. They might make a million small stops to pick up passengers, livestock. They might not stop if you were begging, absolutely begging, for them to stop so you could pee.

Everything was arbitrary.

These were buses where you were happy for squealing brakes that were audible over the music, because at least this reminded you the brakes were working.

Buses where the driver and his assistant, because there was always a ticket taker, would be drinking, or the driver would be flirting with his girlfriend.

Andean roads at 7,000, 8,000, 9,000 feet in altitude, roads hugging the mountain with no shoulder on either side. Roads with blind curves, and sometimes you'd encounter a bus coming the other direction, and each driver would have to slowly slowly inch backwards and forwards until you could both pass. 

It always felt best to be the inside bus, in that situation.

Roads where you looked out your window and saw the massive drop you'd take if the bus went over. Roads with crosses on the side, for those who'd died.

I think it was Rich who said he was on a bus near Cuenca when one of the wheels fell of. The entire wheel just fell off and rolled away. They had to wait for trucks to hitch rides on.

Another friend told us that at some point, there were mudslides near their site, so until they were cleared, they'd take a bus to the point of the mudslide, walk around, and then get on another bus on the other side.

Juan Carlos and I talked about visiting Suzy at the coast, hours and hours of bus rides from where we were, high in the sierra.

We had to be back at our sites on Monday, and were lucky to hitch a ride in the back of a pickup from Suzy's site to Guayaquil, because there were no buses. The traffic was bad, and if our truck were in an accident, we'd have been flung out.

I was used to being in little pickups on low-traffic roads. This was a highway.

Someone reminded us this weekend that Juan Carlos had deemed Ecuador a "run with scissors" kind of country, and I don't know what it's like now, but that was a perfect description for what we were doing then.

The beach weekend, it was glorious. We swam, we ran around in the sand, we ate fish and patacones, which my god are so delicious. We laughed, because we always laughed.

We all have these very particular memories, connected to stories, connected to feelings. They live inside us, just waiting for the opportunity to bubble up, to blossom.

Jeff, I think, brought bank slips to the swap. I'd forgotten that we used to have to fill out these slips, and we'd get our monthly salary in sucres, which was then the currency of Ecuador.

I can't even remember how much we got paid each month. Maybe $130? But in sucres, that meant mountains of 1,000 sucre bills.

We'd get massive stacks. While still inside the bank, I'd divide them, putting some in my waist belt, some in my bra, some in each shoe.

Eric and I would also make a day of that, going on the bus to Ibarra, to the bank to get our wads of cash. Surely we also went to the post office, to the bakery, and to visit Ralph, if he wasn't already with us.

It was hard to organize things ahead of time without phones. We'd just drop in on each other, and then hang out waiting if their neighbor said they were out.

You'd be walking in your village and run into someone, and then you'd go to the market or stand in a line for something together. 

I wonder if people still have this time and spend it together.

It was the blessing and the hardship of being in a little village. There was no anonymity. I'd meet someone who was visiting, and they'd immediately tell me that I was the gringa who went running.

I am not an early bird, but in my village, it was dark at 6:00 pm, and I was in bed exhausted by 9:00. I'd get up at 5:45 am to run.

I'd put a massive kettle on my burner to heat water, so I could use it to bathe when I got back. In retrospect, I suppose I could've burned down my place, but luckily I never did.

I went early so there'd be as few people out as possible, as I already stuck out. But I'd run past farmers from my communities. And in Ecuador, you had to greet everyone individually. So I'd be huffing and puffing along at 7,500 feet altitude saying, "Buenos días señora, buenos días señor..."

I've just realized I don't remember the name of the sister of my landlord. Doña...I can't believe I can't remember her name, but recall she got a poodle she named Mercedes, Michi for short. She owned the bodega next to me. I spent a lot of time with her.

People used to laugh, because I referred to my landlord as, "mi dueño," when I should've been saying, "el dueño de mi vivienda"—because he was not, in fact, my owner, but rather the owner of my apartment.

As Yankee swap prizes, Cathy gave away blue soap, the hard blue cakes of soap that we would use to wash our clothing in the courtyard of my building. I had a bedroom and a kitchen, and shared a bathroom and a courtyard.

I'd forgotten about the blue soap, and the cold, cold water from the mountain.

Eventually I bought an electric shower head for our shared bathroom. The shower head had an immersion heater, so as long as you didn't turn the pressure up high, you could have a hot shower.

A group of us spent a Thanksgiving with friends in Azogues with a shower that shocked you whenever you turned it on, which in retrospect is terrifying.

When I think about how we would take buses for hours and hours, all day, buses we were afraid would fall off the side of the mountain, just to be together. We'd line up sleeping bags on the floor and just crash.

I threw a big party for my 25th birthday. So many friends came for the weekend, brought sleeping bags, lined up on the floor to sleep. Maude was visiting, for a whole month, and was there over my birthday.

I love when people I love from different areas of my life connect.

The proprietor of the bodega, my neighbor whose name escapes me, sold us so much beer that weekend. 

Among my neighbors with whom I shared the courtyard and the bathroom, was a married couple. The husband was a bus driver. The lovely wife was my birthday twin. And on our birthday, she was quite pregnant.

We were exactly the same age. On that birthday, I wondered if she was who I'd be, born to different parents in a different place.

There's something about shared experience, shared memories, that's so powerful. I don't believe this is particular to my high school group, or my Peace Corps group. It is not location or time specific. 

For us, in this group, it was Ecuador in the mid '90s.

What's rare, I think, is to be seen, to be heard, to be valued for who you have been, and who you are. 

So when I ask myself where joy lives, I think the answer is: everywhere. I believe it resides in each and every cell of our beings.

We dip the Proustian madeleine into the tisane—or maybe in our case, drink the trago, eat the patacones, listen to Maná—and let affection and connection drive the bus.

I've got to keep on keepin' on/You know the big wheel keeps on spinnin' around

Nick and I flew to Michigan last weekend for my Peace Corps reunion.

I have many loving things to stay about that. Many oh my gosh so many many.

I returned with my heart so full.

But first I'd like to talk about my own self-inflicted travel predicaments.

The thing is that when I fly, particularly if it's a long and difficult distance, I wind up buying something that will make my air travel experience more complicated. Slightly fraught. Physically uncomfortable.

Twenty-ish years ago, I had three flights on three different brands of airplanes when I went to South Africa, because I booked budget and last minute. This was way before I met Nick, and not that many years after 9/11.

Three airlines and three airports meant going through security thrice.

One of my last days in Cape Town, I saw this large and charming basket, with half-cowries decorating the wide rim.

It was big. It was delicate. I would have to carry it, and it would fill up my arms walking through each airport, and I'd worry about it in the overhead bin on every flight.

I still have it.

Then there was a large wooden turtle in Mexico. The turtle part would've been fine, had it not had long legs with feet sticking down and out, and a long neck sticking up in the air, with the carved head of a woman atop it.

This also had to be carried in my arms, and unwrapped for security because there were nails inside and the X-ray didn't like them.

Then last year, in Bali, I fell in love with a carved wooden king dragon mask. It's really cool. The whole shop had incredible carvings.

Fiona and I returned on our last full day, when I'd decided to go ahead and buy it. And then I was like, oh, who knows if I'll ever make it back to Bali, and maybe I should get two masks? Because Jordan will love this one. And I always find tons of stuff for India, and nothing for my boy.

So I bought two. One for him and one for me, for the living room.

They were much larger than they seemed on the shop wall. And solid wood, quite heavy. I realized this when I was trying to return to the hotel on the back of a hired scooter.

The next morning, Fiona helped me completely rearrange my suitcase and carry-on so I could fit them both separately and surrounded by cushioning clothing.

Fortunately, I've turned into my dad for travel, and now bring my own pillow. That helped.

They arrived in DC unscathed.

And then! Jordan did not love king dragon.

But I still do.

So post-reunion, on the Sunday, Nick and I went into Ann Arbor. The rental car place had given us this bright orange Jeep, which was cute, but had no trunk.

And as such, being from DC where we lock the car door before we leave the garage, and do not leave anything visible in the car, lest the windows get smashed, we were nervous to go into Detroit and be tourists, what with our bags just hanging out in the back.

So we went into Ann Arbor, which Nick hadn't been able to see when the group went Friday, because he'd had to stay back and work.

We had lunch and then wandered a bit, and came across a little market.

Where, almost immediately, we spotted a table with crocheted items, including and most spectacularly, this crocheted triceratops! 

We asked the lovely young woman behind the table about it.

She gave us a price and said it was expensive, because it had taken an entire week to make. Plus the cost of the yarn. Plus a local woman had made the eyes.

I gushed over it a big and then we thanked her and kept walking through the market. I kept talking about the triceratops, and how charming it was.

And finally Nick was like, "Do you love it?"

I said I did.

So we walked straight back to her table and said we'd like to purchase the triceratops.

The young woman's cheeks turned pink and her eyes teared up. She said, "Really?"

Really.

I asked if I could take her photo, and then Nick suggested I get in the photo, and then her younger brother, who was helping her with her stall, got dragged into the picture as well.

It was adorable.

So my triceratops, her name is Ann. Her last name is Arbor.

I got caught in an exit door leaving the airport in DC, because one arm was full of her and the other was dragging my suitcase.

Actually, that's not why I got caught.

There's a big sign over the door saying you can only go out. Exit only. No entry. 

I was all, fine, we're leaving. And then the doors clamped down and I was stuck and I was all what the fuck?

But it was my fault, because with these exit doors, there's a door you go through, and then a corridor, and another door. And there was already a woman in there who was at the exit door.

Apparently you're supposed to wait until the person ahead of you is through.

They don't want both doors open at once so that someone could bypass security and dash in through the out door (out door...)

So the woman in front was struggling with that door, because of me. And Ann, my luggage, and I were squashed in the other set of doors that were trying their hardest to close.

Finally the woman in front got through and then my doors opened and we got through.

And then Nick was all judgy at the other end. 

Because he is a man who reads instruction manuals and knows how things work and also is not the kind of person who is scared of revolving doors because he likely in younger years never tried to squeeze in with someone.

Cathy's partner Tim is an engineer, and while we were talking about his work, it came out that he has written numerous user manuals for cars, and he said, "You've probably never read any." 

And I was all, "NICK READS THE MANUALS!"

And then Nick confirmed this. He reads the manuals so he knows how things work. He knows how our appliances function. He knows what the myriad options are on the car.

So he reads the manuals and I don't, and I live my life limited to the bits of technology that I understand.

And then when there is something extraordinary, then I call him and am like, what does the dashboard light mean that looks like a lotus? Or maybe more like an exclamation point with angry lines coming out each side?

He actually got this one very quickly. I think by now he's used to these questions, having at first been very WTF about the yellow submarine light.

Apparently this light means I'm too close to the person in front of me. Which couldn't be helped in fucking Connecticut or on most of 95, for that matter. 

In searching for a flying song for the title, I was reminded of my difficulty with these song lyrics.

And being with Nick is like being with Big Ol' Chedo Lino, in the best possible way. It means that I always feel safe, which is a feeling that's very important to me. But it also means there is often not enough room for him.

We were on a relatively little plane to Detroit—a Bombardier—which I pronounced bombard + ee-ay, but Nick contends is pronounced bomb-a-deer.

Anyway, they're not all that big, so they took our carry-on luggage before we got on the plane. We only had our personal item. I was a little worried about Ann, since she's not small, but they didn't care that I was carrying a stuffed animal. 

I was going to hold her but then I realized I wouldn't be able to have a drink or eat a snack or read without some difficulty. Nick put our items in the overhead.

And then when he was getting it all out, there was this big long narrow thing in a bag, and the couple behind us said, "Oh, be careful with that."

So Nick handed it to them gently, and then asked what it was.

They said, "It's a monopod."

We were all, huh?

So the guy said, "It's for a camera. A tripod had three legs. This has one. It's a monopod."

And then we disembarked and that was that.

Later, when we were getting ready for bed, I was like, "Isn't that just a stick?"

Every rose has its thorn/Just like every night has its dawn

I don't claim to be any kind of flower expert, but I can recognize more than one or two.

My mom was an incredible gardener, and in my childhood she always grew zinnias, marigolds (and mariyellows, as I called the yellow ones), snapdragons, cox comb, sweet peas.

And as I mentioned in a previous post, so much of the foliage in Bali was that of my childhood. I used to pronounce frangipani "frangy-pangy"—and it wasn't that long ago that I realized that frangipani is plumeria, and we have it in the US.

It's one of my favorite flower fragrances. (Ooh, the alliteration!)

And a year ago in Bali, I spent a lot of my free time journaling and drinking tea on my porch, luxuriating in the view.

I mean, really. What a blessing!

As Bali is near the equator, darkness comes early. And every evening on my way in, I'd see the Buddha statue out of the corner of my eye, and I'd always think it was a person, and startle before I remembered.

You'd think this wouldn't happen day after day. However. 

Anyway, Fiona would often join me on my porch, and at some point we noticed these particular white flowers.

How could we not have noticed them before? We'd never seen anything like them.

They were in the middle of a bunch of foliage and some water, so not easily accessible. We didn't see them anywhere else on the extensive grounds of the hotel. None on the way to the yoga shala.

I felt lucky to have such unusual water flowers in my garden. They looked like they grew on very thin stalks. Maybe they were some kind of flowering reed?

In any case, clearly rare and tropical.

Even if we learned what they were, we couldn't take them home, as you cannot bring agricultural products into either of our countries.

But we were dying to know. We kept forgetting to ask the hotel staff about them.

We talked about these flowers so much. 

I'd seen a couple of snakes on paths near my room, so I was cautious about stepping into the foliage. But I was dying to know.

So finally, during the day, I decided I was going to tiptoe over, minding my footing and carefully stepping on rocks, to get a close-up and figure out what these were.

Thankfully, I was able to snap these photos. Because the next day, they were gone! Plucked from the garden!

Yes.

So while Indonesian bottle brushes may somehow be more exotic than American ones, I bet they're all made in China, and you can buy them at Home Depot.

John, I'm only dancing

I don't know if you've ever thought of someone from your past and googled their name to find that they are no longer with us.

This happened yesterday.

I googled my friend Debbie, neighbor of Alyssa who had chicken for dinner, to find that she died in 2007.

Her parents are still alive. And so many years ago, they had to say goodbye to their daughter, who would never turn 40.

Her mom had been an actress in Poland before they came to the US. She had a strong accent. This was the era when we learned about ibuprofen as a pain reliever, and she called it "eeboopreen" and so that's what my mom thought it was called for the longest time. 

"Do you need an eeboopreen?" Now I find it cute, but back then it drove me crazy.

The truth is, I hadn't seen Debbie in decades. Something would remind me of her every once in a while, because for about three years, we had a very intense friendship.

I guess all my friendships have always been intense.

At some point her dad came into money, and bought a huge house in a fancier neighborhood, which was in a different school district, and they moved out of our modest neighborhood.

And she hated it. She hated the new school.

One night, she ran away. She walked miles over to the parkland behind our house. She was going to live down by the creek. 

Since this was the early 80s, the "It's 10:00. Do you know where your children are?" era, we'd spent entire days down by the creek, exploring the parkland. We played kick the can with neighborhood kids in the dark.

Our parents weren't actually looking for us until it was clear we weren't home for dinner or bedtime.

Basically, she was going to live down there and I was going to supply her with food.

The plan was not sophisticated. She just wanted out of the painful situation into which she'd been thrust.

We'd read books like My Side of the Mountain and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Running away for a time and living in nature or the Metropolitan Museum of Art seemed like an actual option.

In books like that, where the kids are very self-sufficient, you don't have the view of the parents freaking the fuck out wondering if their child has been kidnapped or killed.

In any case, I think it was my brother who spotted her down by the creek and told my parents.

I mean, the police were out looking for her. It was a crisis.

And in retrospect, I see us as kids, tweens, living in traumatic situations and not having the words. Not having been told that we could ask for help. Not trusting that someone would help us, except our friends.

We couldn't trust our parents to fix the situations when our parents were the cause of them.

Anyway, then her parents got divorced and her mom and the kids moved back to our neighborhood and her dad became a Zionist.

And then my family moved to India, and all we had was letter communication. Which I only succeeded at in starts and fits.

I'd see her in the summer, and they had cable, which meant we'd spent hours in her living room watching MTV. 

She was funny and smart and artistic. She was a year ahead of me, and at some point she was studying ancient Egyptians, and for a project she decided to make jewelry, like in a museum exhibit. So we rolled out clay into snake necklaces and such.

It was a really cool project. I was jealous.

At her house, we had Kraft macaroni and cheese, which we never had at my house. It was magical.

One summer after we moved to India, we came home and stayed with the neighbor next door to our house, which we rented out to another Foreign Service family. I met the son, who had coincidentally been in high school in Kenya with one of my New Delhi besties.

And he was so cute. We met, and then in the way of the teenager, all we wanted to do was make out to Tears for Fears.

We did a lot of that in a very short span of time. His mom wanted him to get a summer job and we wanted to sneak off and make out.

In a horrible coincidence, he was also the boy Debbie had had a crush on the entire previous year of high school. He had no idea.

I never told him, of course, because she'd have killed me. And I never told her about the making out. Why hurt her feelings? I'd be gone in a week.

Debbie is the one who introduced me to David Bowie. She bought the albums and made me tapes. 

We loved David Bowie. We loved him so much. We even loved his weird songs like "The Laughing Gnome," and "Come and Buy My Toys"—which, I learned as a mom reading Mother Goose, is a nursery rhyme. "Please Mr. Gravedigger," on the other hand, is probably not.

At one point, she gave me a special edition album of Diamond Dogs, and I wish I'd kept it, but it got let go somewhere in one of our many moves.

In any case, I hadn't seen her since the late 1980s.  

And I know that when we grieve, the pain we feel is for ourselves. 

I know that with each loss of someone dear from my past, it's a reminder that I don't have my mom to tell. Because I would definitely tell her about Debbie. 

But probably she already knows.

She wasn't mine to lose, and I think, who am I to be sad, when I hadn't tried to contact her for over 25 years?

But I also think, gosh, now I never can.

We are stardust, we are golden

One year ago today, I went with Fiona and four other new friends to Pura Tirta Empul in Ubud, Bali, to visit the temple and do a water purification ritual.

And I just realized when I was typing that water purification sounds like filtering through a Brita jug, rather than using the water for self-purification.

According to Hindu tradition, the water at this temple is holy. You say a prayer and put your head under each of the water spouts, washing the water over you.

A couple years ago, my mom and I went to the memorial service of a dear friend. She was surprised when I got up to take communion (not Catholic, so we were all invited), and I said I needed all the help I could get.

This is how I felt about the water purification ritual at the temple. As long as we were invited to take part, I wanted to embrace the blessing.

Fiona and I had arrived late the night before, by the temple trip a full 12 hours later we were besties.

Our lovely driver, who Fiona had organized with via WhatsApp, suggested going to the Tirta Empul temple the next day, because it was a full moon, a particularly auspicious time to go.

He had six seats in his car, so Fiona offered the trip to our new friends at breakfast, four of whom wanted to join us.

It was magical.

It's easy to ascribe meaning to events in hindsight, but so I will just say that thankfully, in the wake of losing my mom, the world lined up for me to go to that particular training in Ubud.

While my mom was alive, there was no way I'd consider Bali, even though all but one training for the company I'd chosen took place there. It would've been unthinkable to be 25 hours of travel away from my mom, in case anything happened.

And then, when the worst possible thing happened, the arms of the world opened up wide, and I threw myself into them without hesitation.

It occurred to me, and I asked Nick, and I texted the company to ask if it was possible, and I bought a ticket. All of this happened I think on the same day. And then I drove the kids to Maine and then I left.

I was scared to go so far away alone, though I did so with no hesitation in my 20s. I was extremely anxious about an intense yoga teacher training. 

All I knew was that I had to go. I couldn't stay in an empty house where everything reminded me of my mama.

In retrospect, I couldn't have chosen anything more healing.

Though Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, Bali is Hindu. The temples and gods and rituals, though not mine, were so familiar. The vegetation was that of my childhood. The smell of incense was everywhere.

Because I didn't grow up with home as a fixed address, it was familiar enough that it felt, in some ways, like home.

Now I can say that I arrived an absolutely crazy person, hollowed out by grief. I didn't, at that point, have things that I was affirmatively seeking.

I was just desperately escaping.

But because I'd lived through losing my dad, I didn't feel guilty when, deep in my sorrow, I laughed.

I knew their energetic vibration is so similar, and that experiencing joy wasn't denying my grief. It didn't diminish how much I loved and missed my mom.

And so I threw myself wholeheartedly in.

The teachers told one of my friends that the group before us had been entirely composed of very young women. And they got very competitive about their outfits.

I don't even know what I'd have done if I'd wound up in that group.

So on the one hand, I don't believe that things happen as they're meant to. I don't believe my mom was meant to miss that final step and fall on our landing and break her hip. And then go to the hospital and never come home.

I just don't.

But sometimes life lines up in a way that makes me feel so lucky, and then I do in fact wonder about stars aligning and the universe and such.

And I do firmly believe that we are all connected. And since we have the laws of thermodynamics proving that energy doesn't go away, who is to say that we're not all together somewhere in the same time and space.

Which is all to say, I have no idea. I'm one of those people who picks the pieces of things that I like out of the whole.

Which is part of why I sucked at math. Because I'd pick and chose the parts of the problems I understood to solve, and then I'd combine them.

This doesn't lead to the correct answer, but it does really confuse your teachers.

But I do feel like it was such a blessing that I wound up in that time and place. And I feel lucky that Fiona had had to change her ticket so we wound up on the same flight, and I feel beyond lucky that we connected immediately and intensely.

This morning I realized it was Maude's birthday, which meant it was the second of July, which also meant it was the one-year anniversary of my life-changing adventure in Bali.

I think back to the people who cared about me almost immediately. The kindness and generosity of almost complete strangers.

It's striking to me that our training group included a very young woman who'd lost her mother the year prior. She knew exactly where I was.

When I was in tears because, when we were supposed to be coming up with our own sequences for the final, and I couldn't remember Sun Salutation A, which is foundational, she said it was because I had grief brain.

Nothing stayed. I couldn't remember anything. Anything. I couldn't remember anything, but I felt everything acutely.

Having someone explain it so simply as grief brain was a blessing.

Making a new friend with whom I resonated so deeply at a time when I felt frail and vulnerable felt like the biggest gift. 

When I need to visualize a place of peace and happiness, I conjure up the image of the rice paddy next to our yoga shala. I envision laughing with Fiona leaving the field, or while walking to meals, or squeezed into the same cash vestibule trying to figure out how many zeros to add to make $100 in Indonesian Rupiah.

I'm a terrible visualizer—which always surprises and frankly kind of offends me, because I have such a good imagination—but all of these images are so accessible.

I think now, a year later, I want to tell some of these stories. They bubble up from time to time. I had every intention of telling them after the training but then all this other stuff happened and I finally feel like maybe I'm coming back to me.

Truly I know that I come from a place of immense privilege to escape across the globe at the worst time in my life. I used money my mom had left me, and the freedom of children at camp, and I spent the cash and the opportunity.

Those three weeks of healing, and the yoga teacher certification were Betty's gift to me.

Last week, in Boston on the way to camp, I took a class taught by one of my yoga teacher training friends. She and I had been paired for a meditation exercise. We were supposed to stare into each others eyes and transmit love and compassion.

And we couldn't stop laughing. But tears were also pouring down my face. We were doing the exercise, and I think discharging an excess of profound emotion through laughter.

It's one of the most extraordinary experiences I've ever had.

Also, her class was fantastic. She invited us to set an intention, and if we didn't have one, she offered the suggestion of gratitude. And I will always feel grateful for the friendships and deep connections that began a year ago.

I have long known that time actually helps. Even deep in the midst of my grief, and then my fear of cancer, and the pain of recovering from surgery, I knew that time was my friend. 

But time is also is the longest distance between two places.

So.

Here I am, one year later, healthy, and in such a different and more positive energetic space.

I'm truly, profoundly grateful.

The FP

When I was a little kid in Dhaka, I had a friend named Sharon who lived down the road. 

She was British. She spent a lot of time at our house. 

We visited them in London the summer after they moved back to the UK. Sharon's mom told us Sharon got teased by classmates for using American words.

For example, instead of saying biscuits, she said cookies.

We always had cookies at our house. So many cookies.

We must've visited their family on a Sunday, because everyone was home. It was the first time I'd seen a dumbwaiter. We kids took turns hauling each other up and down in their walls.

British school went later into the summer than our school in Dhaka, and her parents wouldn't let her take the Monday off for us to hang out. I remember sobbing, absolutely sobbing, and it was clear her parents thought my manners were appalling.

Now, as an adult and a mom, looking back at this shameful memory, I think I was seven, maybe eight years old. I imagine we were still jet lagged and us kids were overtired and probably had been eating tons of sugar, and it's hardly surprising I melted down.

This is nice to write out, so I can let go of  that cringey memory.

Anyway, by the time I met Fiona last summer, I knew of some important differences beyond biscuit and cookie in our varieties of English.

So.

One of India's friends gave her a fanny pack for her birthday a couple years ago.

Prior to this, I was unaware of the Return of the Fanny Pack. They've come back with a vengeance.

India's is pale pink, from Lululemon, and honestly, it's kind of perfect. 

I started using it on errands, and last summer India very generously said I could take it on my travels. It was amazing from the start, holding my passport and my boarding pass, phone, lip balm, phone charger, and hydration packets or a little snack.

I'm telling you.

I wore it throughout my time in Bali.

I became a fanny pack enthusiast. Or re-became. Or re-enthusiast, perhaps, since I'd embraced them wholeheartedly in the 90s.

I'd forgotten how incredibly useful they are. I asked for one for my birthday last year, knowing India wanted hers back.

Much like my love of all things neon in the 80s, I had multiple fanny packs in the 90s. I even had a textile one and a leather one that my mom bought me in Ecuador.

Anyway.

So in my mid-20s I spent six months traveling in India and Nepal. I had two backpacks (one parked at the house of friends) and my fanny pack.

What I didn't know then was that "fanny" in British English has a very different meaning than "fanny" in American English.

Growing up, we used the word butt or bottom, but my grandmother used to use the word fanny. 

(She also used the words homely and davenport.)

So I'd been backpacking for months, meeting a variety of fellow travelers, many of whom were from the UK. Sometimes we'd be in the same hostel overnight, or sometimes our agendas coincided and we'd travel together for days or weeks.

My new American friends and I wound up walking most of the Everest trek with two British guys.

We sometimes had private rooms, but were most often sleeping in dormitories, and as such, I kept important stuff in my very convenient fanny pack. I didn't always wear it, but it was always handy.

I imagine I mentioned my fanny pack at least a couple of times over my travels, with nobody saying anything. 

Until one day I think one of the guys asked me to hold something—a document or passport or some such—and I said something along the lines of, "Sure—I'll just stick it in my fanny pack."

Which was met with stunned silence.

Because fanny! Fanny in British English is slang for vulva.

I'm not sure how vulgar it is. Like, I don't think it's tantamount to saying c*nt.

I think it's more like lady bits? But stronger?

So maybe "fanny pack" is more like "beaver bag" or "cooter pouch"?

In any case, surprising, if you're telling someone you're just going to pop their trekking permit into your VAGINAL CONTAINER for safekeeping.

Yes.

Was I mortified?

Yes. 

But not enough to not find it hilarious.

Anyway, when I met Fiona and she complimented my fanny pack—although not by that name—I told her that I was well aware that we called this particular container of convenience by different names in our respective countries.

I knew, I said, that Brits call it a "bum bag" rather than a (and here I whispered, like I might be talking about prison) "fanny pack".

I explained how I learned this.

Since I hadn't thought about the bag or the term in years, I hadn't shifted my nomenclature. Fanny pack it was.

Except that now it sounded kind of naughty.

Even better.

And then Fiona went home and she asked for one for her birthday. Because they are ridiculously convenient.

Much like Sharon and the cookies, but with the awareness that comes with adulthood, Fiona calls hers an FP. So now I call mine an FP.

I got an ad for a fleecy one before Christmas, and I sent her the link. Maybe she needed a furry FP to keep her warm in the cold English winter? 

She's got a regular one. We discovered when we met that we have practically the same bag. Turns out our respective daughters were incredibly excited to buy them for us.

Lululemon, however, avoids the fraught term. They call it an "everywhere belt bag"—which seems a safe approach to me. You don't have the dorky visual baggage of the 90s and you avoid shocking a swath of the English-speaking globe.

Whereas me, I'm not trying to sell anything. And I'm fine with 90s dorkiness and with horrifying the occasional human.

Sometimes, Sharon, that's just the way the biscuit crumbles.