Went | Brooklyn Birthdays Part II

Have I reached the statute of limitations on talking about mine and Cyndi's birthday weekend in Brooklyn? No? Good. I established that the weekend was beautiful. It was mid-September so there was a distinct tug between cool Autumn air and warm end-of-summer heat. We got a slow start on Saturday due to a late night on Friday (bars in Boston close at 2 AM, so we were not accustomed to pacing ourselves for a 4 AM last call...). Zander, the oldest of the bunch, and Matt and Ryan managed to pull themselves together and start their day while Cyndi, Mike, and I took a midmorning nap to allow the bagels to do their magic. Around 2 PM, they had worked wonders and we headed to the Brooklyn Flea for a sample of its food offerings, some overpriced vintage items, and great people-watching. Nabila met up with us and we headed to the Williamsburg Momofuku Milk bar for cereal ice cream, pistachio sticky buns, pork buns, and a stack of cookies to take home. Cyndi and I had been talking about visiting the Milk Bar since our last meet up in New York, and I'm glad we finally made it happen. We headed back to the airbnb to get fancied up for our dinner at a neighborhood restaurant, Marietta, where we ate fried chicken, the best summer corn I've ever had (may or may not have something to do with the cotija cheese in it...), rice pilaf, and fried green tomatoes. It was a sweet nod to our home state, but let's be honest, nobody does southern food like the south. And nobody charges for southern food like the north.

Still a little wiped from Friday, we had a quiet night in on Saturday, drinking wine and listening to the rainstorm outside. Sunday morning was beautiful: sunny and cool and breezy. It was perfect weather for our decision to ride the train into Manhattan so we could walk back across the Brooklyn Bridge to DUMBO to try out Smorgasburg. We sampled too many booths to pick a favorite, but I loved the range of types of foods I saw, including the Lumpia Shack, which featured one of my mom's staple foods growing up (and now!). They were true to the Filipino style of the dish (my mom's is the Chamorro take on it—a little thicker and with more vegetables), and they were delicious. We sprung for the sampler, and my favorite was the pork, although really, they were all amazing. I had two types of ice cream (sandwich and shake) and we called it a day. I'm now deeper in the later half of my twenties, but birthdays like these have kept the anxiety of getting older at bay. Twenty-one was fun and all, but I couldn't afford to head off for a friends weekend in New York back then. Everything in its place and all that.

Went | Mount Auburn Cemetery

On Monday, Mike picked me up from work and suggested that we stop at Mount Auburn Cemetery for a walk before heading home. I had a lot of things I wanted to do, so I begrudgingly said, "Sure, that's fine," but I'm glad he persisted. He's been wanting to walk around here for a while. Founded in 1831, it's known as America's first garden cemetery. Its private grounds have paved roads to drive through, but there are also smaller dirt paths that wind through. It might seem a little strange to spend so much time at a cemetery where no one I know is buried, but there's something amazing about this place. It's beautiful, yes—there are all different kinds of trees and plants that are labeled, and they provide a flora and fauna guidebook at the front entrance. There are famous people buried there—from artists and architects to activists. But mostly it's a quiet, well-kept place that seems to celebrate life while honoring those who came before us.

We plan to go back when it snows; I'm sure this place wears every season well.

The season of tea

We are officially in the season of tea. The funny thing is that I used to hate hot tea. I had grown up on the syrupy sweet iced versions of the south, and it wasn't until I moved to New England that I realized there were other versions besides Lipton. It took me a couple years to start drinking it because like my love affair with beer, I had to find a gateway tea—a starter tea, if you will. At first it was Irish Breakfast with milk and sugar, which Jenna introduced me to the winter we started living together. Then it was Earl Grey and English Breakfast. Soon I was asking for recommendations at 1369, and I tried hearty rooibos and delicate white teas. (It helped that they celebrate a tea month, where they highlight a new tea each day and sell it for $1.) In the warm months, I started drinking iced green and herbal teas, unsweetened, maybe with a splash of lemonade.

But there is nothing like the beginning of hot tea season—not to be confused with pumpkin spiced latte season, which happens at the mall or in the morning right before I get on the bus to work. The beginning of hot tea season means sweat pants and socks, the revival of my yarn stash, evenings spent watching movies or reading long past our bedtime.

In the south we have to simulate the winters of New England. We wish for white Christmases, for chilly mornings and reasons to wear the scarves we got for Christmas. So actually living here, actually having to shelter ourselves from the harsh of winter, the beginnings of which is heralded in by tea season, feels like a gift each year.

Went | Brooklyn Birthdays Part I

Yesterday was my birthday. Every year, my birthday turns me into a kid again. The cards in the mail, the cake and ice cream, the giddy expectation of gathering everyone I love into one room for a meal. I grew up with four siblings, each spaced four years apart and then seven between me and my youngest sister. When we were young, my mom used to dress me and my sister Bea—the next oldest from me—like we were twins. Our birthdays are 17 days apart, so we always had joint birthday parties, wearing the same dress in different sizes, our bangs poofed to perfection.

Something about that experience year after year has conditioned me to gravitate towards friends with birthdays near to mine so we can celebrate together. Cyndi and I have managed to get together for our birthdays two years now (we're a year and ten days apart)—last year in Boston and this year in Brooklyn. We rented an airbnb, stayed out until 4 AM, and ate bagels and cereal milk ice cream until we almost burst. It was the first time that we've had Mike and Zander together (spoiler alert: they got along swimmingly, probably talking trash about us), and the first time I'd seen our friend Matt in years. We reverted to our high school selves, teasing Cyndi about her outbursts in public places and her baffling inability to navigate the world around her. In short, it was a perfect start to my birthday week.

Those who came before | Part I

I remember you as one of the first things I really really wanted and ended up getting, if only for a week. You were my first lesson in how moments in our lives can be so fleeting, how cherishing them is the best way to honor them, to honor ourselves, and letting them go is the second best way.

I fell in love with writing sophomore year of high school, the same year we watched the news of 9/11 on TV in our creative writing class. Our teacher said we'd always remember where we were on that day, and I felt comforted knowing you would always remember me. She encouraged us to write about it. I wrote about you.

There aren't many ways our story was different from any other high school friendship-turned-romance-turned-friendship, other than my memory of it. It was what excited me about growing up. It wasn't love, but it was my first taste of that willingness to do anything to just sit next to one other person, that guttural need to breathe the same air. I'm supposed to look back now, say it was just teenage hormones, but I won't dismiss you as such. You were my first glimpse of what would come, of feelings that lay just below my skin.

I saw you a few years back. I had moved to the city you went after you graduated, and we sat on your living room floor outside Harvard Square. I pass that building on my way to work in the mornings now, on my way home in the afternoons. Back then I felt as though I were miles outside the city, but now I know how close we were to everything that backdrops my daily life. We were giddy with reunion, but I remember realizing how nothing would ever be the same. We were four years beyond the people we were when we'd last seen each other, trying to remember what that friendship felt like. We didn't see each other much after that, you moved on to a bigger city, but I still think of you some mornings, groggy with sleep, and I remember those cold mornings driving to school in my 1986 Mitsubishi pickup. I used to wake up a full half hour early, drive in the opposite direction of the school so I could pick you up and sit next to you for that much longer.

Those who came before was inspired by Brittany erin's beautiful series, My 7 Broken Hearts. 

On new beginnings.

On our drive back from New York tonight, I was telling Mike about how fall always makes me excited. I don't know whether it's because it's my birthday month and something wakes up inside me, or if it's residual giddiness from my love for school, but something about the ending of August fills me with anticipation that explodes in September. My house fills with empty notebooks and new pens, and as I get older I start to accumulate other things, like freshly picked apples, jars of preserves from roadside stands, jugs of cider.

I've been quiet here because this summer has been a time of reflection for me. My friend Crysty and I call it staying in our rooms, where we take time to ourselves to work things out and articulate our own feelings on a situation before seeking and welcoming advice. That's where I've been these past few months, working out what I want from this blogging thing, where I want to go with writing and all of my side interests.

I'm taking my cue from the throngs of students in Harvard Square each morning on my way to work and recommitting to the Skillshare classes I've signed up for in graphic design and Illustrator. I downloaded Illustrator on my new computer on Friday, and I have 30 days to prove to myself I'm serious. After that, we'll see. For now, today marks the beginning of my favorite season and my own, homemade sort of graduate school. I hope your new beginnings are as exciting as mine feel right now.

September Saturday.

We are just back from Western Mass, where we went for 24 hours to visit friends in Connecticut, eat too much at the Big E, and make some money off our junk at Mike's parents' friend's annual yard sale. We came home to the last of the tomatoes promising to be done this week with fresh beer in tow. I am so grateful that the weekend is hardly halfway through; Mike's going to a pick up Tchoukball game (don't ask me what that is), so the day is stretching out before me with possibilities. I'm thinking macadamia waffles, brunch with Meg, a walk to Whole Foods for my favorite chocolate milk, then sewing up my very first Scout tee. I finished the muslin on Thursday night semi-successfully and it's been blue balls all weekend waiting to get back and make the real deal.

Something about September every year feels like coming home, and this year is no different.