Oh Coffee, why have I forsaken thee?

There's nothing like a good cup of coffee.  It's one of my favorite things in life, and yesterday I attempted to give it up due to stress, heart rate, etc.  My attempt lasted all of 90 minutes, then Mike woke up and put on a pot and I just couldn't resist.  It was one of the most wonderful cups of coffee I've ever had.  Oh coffee, I might not ever leave you, and I don't know if I'd ever want to.  Oh coffee, please forgive me.  

I remember trying my mother's coffee when I was little, and thought it was good only when dipping a cookie into it.  A few years passed before I tried it again, and I started drinking it regularly when I was 17 and moving to New York.  My sister used to joke with me about how I would become some beatnik the second I moved to the city, wearing all black, drinking black coffee, being snooty, and talking about Baudrillard and Hobbes and Margaret Mead.   To be perfectly honest, she wasn't very far off.  When I moved to the city, I lived an amazing life, the life I thought I should be living, but it was missing something.

I thought what I was missing was life experience, travel, and romance, but I still fell short.  When I moved out of the city, I thought I was just missing the city.  After spending a lot of time in NYC recently, and even visiting my old stomping ground at NYU, I realized what I was missing the whole time: myself.  I wrote a blog two years ago about the cookies in the Dr. Seuss cookie jar, and how I just tossed it aside and proclaimed it too juvenile.  I think about those cookies often and how I acted, and I always cringe.  I realize now my mother was trying to give me a part of myself, and at the time it was something I was desperate to toss aside.  

All of this clarity did not come all at once.  After all, there is a two year gap in this blog.  I started this blog as a quest to find myself, to return to the person I wasn't sure I knew anymore.  I decided then to concentrate on figuring out my favorite cookie; once you find your cookie, you find yourself and the richness in life.  

The thing is, I knew my favorite cookie all along.  I knew who I was, I was just plain terrified.  It's been a long two years, but really my favorite cookie was the kind in the Dr. Seuss cookie jar, those extra-extra chocolate morsels with a confectioner's sugar coating, the ones I didn't even finish.  It feels so good knowing this about myself, knowing I am only a recipe (and a cup of coffee for dipping) away from who I really am.

I am truly thankful for this clarity, and know I wouldn't have gotten here without Cheri's visit.  I hadn't seen her in three years, and it was wonderful to have her around as a reminder of our NYU days, but also as just a good friend who isn't at all enamored with the culture or excitement of New York.  I'm not going to lie, I still love New York.  I still love people watching, the crazies, and the unexpected.  But life is different and much more difficult there as an adult, and I didn't truly realize it until this week.  I don't just want to live or work in the city just to do so, I want a good quality of life.  It's really good to know this about myself.  I may still drink my coffee and talk about Margaret Mead, but at least now I will do it because I love it, not because I'm trying to be someone I'm not.  

In pursuit of my favorite cookie, the truth must be told.

Five years ago, I was living in New York. I had a birthday a month and change after September 11th. It was then that I got calls from relatives who otherwise don't know my phone number, cards, and emails. It was because I was having a "tough time" and needed encouragement. And I received this INSANE cookie jar filled with (mind you really good) chocolate cookies. In pursuit of my favorite cookie, this story needs telling.

The package came a couple of days before my birthday. It was gigantic and cumbersome and I felt oh-so-cool having to sign for it at the dorm (the dorm lovingly labeled the G-spot. I have the stickers to prove it.). Naturally, I had a small crowd opening the package due to its size and not much else going on at the time. It's amazing how my popularity is based on the boredom of others. I unwrapped enough to see the 1-800 Flowers brochure. This was it. This was my dozen roses from a secret admirer, I just knew it. I unwrapped more and I saw red and white stripes, and my heart sank. I knew then that not only was it not from a secret crush, it was from my mother. And my mother forgot that I wasn't six.

Standing in the crowd, I realized that I wasn't alone: none of us understood it. We knew it was a cookie jar, but anyone in the world knew that a nineteen year old college student doesn't want Cat in the Hat paraphenalia. It proved to be the most embarrasing gift on the eastern seabord that fall. It stood about 2 feet tall, and it just did not have a place in my dorm. I tried on my desk, but there were too many books. Then I tried the dresser, but it got in the way of the tv. It was either the windowsill or in the closet. It was eat or be eaten by guilt.

I was torn between two worlds that year. One world was a conceptual one inside that Cat in the Hat cookie jar, containing the love of a mother, the knowledge that she was just trying to make my world better, and the concept of those delicious chewy chocolate cookies covered in powdered sugar. The other was real. It was outside that cookie jar. It was loveless and heartless and filled with guilt. It was a collective New York shopping for size 0. It was family members who claim they love me enough to call on my birthday, but not any other day. It was a sister who swore she believed in me but didn't take the time to find out in what she was believing. It was a building that was still burning and a horizon changed forever.

Those cookies may very well have been the best cookies I ever had in my life, but they went for the most part uneaten. I spent years feeling guilty about not finishing those cookies. Because in not finishing those cookies, I was also not loving my mother enough; my blessings just weren't being counted. In not eating those cookies, I was acknoweding the change in horizon that had happened inside of me. No longer could someone fix my problems with sweets and a smile and a simple gesture. This was real and it hurt.

I threw out those cookies one short day before Thanksgiving. I felt sick. So sick and so guilty that I ended putting that cookie jar on the windowsill, and hoping that the plants would hide it just enough. When I looked at the window that year, if I squinted my eyes enough, the horizon still looked the same.

Something Inrcredibly Impersonal/Uncomfortably Personal

I don't know about any of you readers out there, but I'm so sick of not telling the truth. Sick of being fake and sick of having to put on a smile just because I feel I should (or some stranger actually tells me to "SMILE" which in my opinion is the worst interaction ever. You can't be polite and say to them, 'look there is a reason why I'm not smiling and right now you're it.'). I've had so many incredibly impersonal "friendships" in my life and I'm just tired. In the event that someone from the past contacts me, I wrote out an uncomfortably personal script, which should save me some time. I'll just send them this link and call it a day.

Hey there. How are things going?

I'm doing well. Yeah, the job's going great, thanks for asking. Yeah it's a great place to work, I'm really lucky.

Oh, I love my new town, it's not difficult at all knowing two people here, one of which is away a lot, and the other I didn't see for three months.

The band? We're on a break what with my moving and needing a new job et. al. Now that things are settled, I'm ready to get back out there! I'm not at all scared of the one thing I want most in this world.

My family? Oh they're super! Yeah it's great that I was so happy about what they did for me on my birthday, I cried literally all day! And I really don't think any of them noticed, which really warms my heart!

A reason to start blogging.

My cousin Anna http://onetoughvoncookie.blogspot.com made a post on her blog about blogging, and below is my comment. It got me so inspired, I decided to make my own.

Ugh! I just wrote a really long comment on the theory of blogging. It was beautiful, and unfortunately lost to cyberspace. It was all about how blogging is another way to connect with people. It is a hope that you will truly be understood without having to deal with potentially loaded personal relationships. It opens you to an entire world of people. It is a way to say things that actually mean something to you in a profound way in which you may be heard by people you never knew existed. It is a way to take control of your being and to create a new sense of self. There is a line in the movie "You've Got Mail" where he's talking about Starbucks, and how for $3.50 you get a new sense of self in those 6 decisions you make just to get that cup of coffee. When you say grande americano (wink wink), it means something about your personality to the person from whom you're ordering (and if you don't believe me look up the Starbucks Oracle). Basically, by blogging you're saying 'grande americano' only to a lot more people, and a lot more eloquently. You just don't get a cup of coffee at the end of it.