love letters to DC

Dear DC,

Thanks for being such a great city. Thanks for having so many free activities, great food, and so much to do. Thanks, most especially for hinting that spring is around the corner with cherry blossoms and warm days.

yours for now,

M

PS I'll forgive you for snowing tomorrow, but only if you promise to forget that silly business from now on.

Dear girls in my office,

I love that we spend our time discussing if the IT guy is dateable and which one of us could date him. Thanks for making work so much fun.

sincerely,

M

Dear Foggy Bottom,

First off, thanks for having such an amazing name. Each time I here it ringing from the intercom on the metro I smile to myself. That's is my stop. Thanks for being home to work and school and making my life so convenient. I love you and all your quirks like the man who smokes his cigarette in the same all red outfit everyday or the kid who belts songs right outside the metro with no shame.

heart,

M 

Dear ladies of the Mormon Mansion,

I love that you're always up for an adventure and that we get called the pack of gazelles. I love that we cook brownies at midnight and purchased three different kinds of ice cream to go with them. I love that we can laugh and cry together. And mostly I love that anytime someone has an event we are all there, giving our opinions on clothes, curling hair last minute, grabbing purses, lending shoes. The six of us make great team.

xoxo,
M

south by southwest

sometimes those graduate school things and work things and study things wear you out so you jump in your car and you drive.

Along the way you think and sing and laugh and talk to your friend for three hours on speaker phone and then you get to the place where the peaches grow and it's like coming home because there are people here that know you.

***

I work with women who have cancer.

I watch these women spend their lives going to doctors appointments for months on end. I watch them lose their hair. Surgery, radiation and chemo take their strength like thieves in the night. Then I watch them pull their lives back together. Wearing wigs, doing yoga, working in between treatments, meeting with each other, breathing in and out.

***

The busier I get, the more tied down I get, the more I need to be here in the present and focused, the more my feet want to move, the more I want to leave all this stuff (this "stuff" being my current life and responsibilities) behind. Is it all worth it? Somehow backpacking in the Grand Canyon or eating Belgian Waffles in Belgium seem like much better uses of my time. I have so far to go before I'm an actual grown up, but I'm not sure I'm a fan of this grown up stuff. The choices I make have much larger consequences. I am becoming the person I'll be for the rest of my life. It's pretty heavy stuff, you know?

So in order to counteract such serious business I hide a large cardboard cutout of this season's The Bachelor in my roommate's closet. I have pizza parties with my roommates that result in our house full of smoke and all of us laughing (and coughing) so hard we can't breathe. I dance it out in my room to "Tainted Love" or pound my feet on the pavement to "I Love You Like a Love Song." I read late into the night when I should go to bed and eat brownies for breakfast as I rush out the door with wet hair. I hope these things never change.