Beach Bum

Well, well, well. I am back in Brooklyn after a whirlwind few weeks. I returned from Wales, got the flu, speed recovered by consuming copious amounts of Wellness Formula and Emergen-C and flew to Miami for a girls weekend. I got home yesterday. My suitcase is unpacked and is laying neatly next to all of the clothes from my trip to Wales.

I’m a little relieved to be back to some normalcy, though it does feel odd to not have something planned for the months ahead of me. A Miami guide is in the making but for now, it is just about being back in my world. I always imagine traveling to be this very relaxing and grounding time where I’ll have hours to sift through myself and feel peacefully bored. However, traveling is actually totally different. It’s wonderful and exciting, but I am rarely bored. Endless hours of introspection and peace always seem to be replaced by days of adventuring and activity seeking. I want to find the best beach and the greatest meal and the burgeoning art scene and the local hang out. I want to immerse myself in the location and feel like I soaked up as much as I could before the plane door closes. I have the freedom and control to do whatever I want on my vacation and usually, I want to do it all.

I’ve realized that when I imagine vacation what I actually imagine is being 14 years old; laying on beaches on the Greek Islands all day with nothing to do and only my mom and my brother to hang out with. The days were endless and if I finished my book to soon I was stuck with nothing to read, feeling too old for sand castles and too young for cocktails. I spent my time idling away hours at the pool, dangling my feet in the water, only breaking my teenage brooding to ask my mom for an ice cream or a bottle of Fanta. These infinite hours of self absorption and boredom do not really have space in my world as they once did. When I think about being a teenager it is the amaranthine boredom and self consciousness that I recall. The ability to think about nothing for hours without stress or anxiety. No responsibilities or To -Do Lists to sneak into my mind. I hated it and yearned for it to pass but now I am a little jealous of it. Don’t get me wrong, I love how I vacation. I love that I research before I leave and that I feel like I’m getting an authentic experience of a city. But a small part of me misses that melancholic teenager . Perhaps I am realizing that the girl who could spend a day staring at chipped toe nails under water whilst drinking a can of coca-cola through a straw, is getting further and further away. Perhaps I am homesick for family vacations vacant of responsibility and autonomy.

I know I could never go back to that now. That listlessness and wistfulness is long gone. It’s just so strange. The way things change. The way you get everything you want and you still sometimes look back longingly for the insecure girl day dreaming about adventure and freedom. When I was a teenager, I don’t recall longing to be little (though I suppose I did). But in my twenties that longing for my younger years is much more tangible. More than the longing though, it is what the people tell me about how I will grasp for each decade as I outgrow it. I can so easily imagine being thirty and yearning for the freelance, sleeping in, personal -growth-focused girl I am today. So I guess the message is, revel in it. What I didn’t know as I sat under the sun, in my purple bikini, drawing circles in the sand was what I do know now. This moment is fleeting. Permanence is the myth we are told. This wandering twenty-year-old Brooklyn girl will be looked on with so much affection by my older self. So why not love her now?

Back To The Future

From Back to the Future by Irina Werning

Good morning New York and good evening Wales. I am here (in Wales) with my family to celebrate my little brother turning 21.

Birthdays are a weird and wonderful thing. People have such varied reactions to them and their feelings about them are always so strong. Conner – my little brother – is going for the “ugh, I don’t know, I don’t care” response (like many men I know). He of course, does know and does care, but it is like pulling teeth trying to get this kid to celebrate. It’s also extra challenging for me because I am obsessed with my birthday and I can’t imagine not caring (somewhat obsessively) about this day. Family is about learning about different people sometimes and Wales is pretty much all about family for me. The great majority of my mother’s family lives in and around a small town here. It’s a beautiful area tucked between the Irish sea and Snowdonia National Park. My family has been living here for years all the way back to my great, great, great grandparents.

Family teaches me a lot and it continually challenges me. Whilst I’m home I make sure to spend extra time meditating and staying grounded in the things that are important to me. Going “home” pulls on all of your old frameworks and sometimes makes me feel like regressing back to the little 18 year old girl that left for NYC so many years ago. Sometimes I feel like I do the most growing up when I visit here because I grow in directions I never planned on or intended. I never wanted to grow less reliant on my family or grow to have different values than them, but inevitably things like that happen (and rightly so). I never planned on not being intensely homesick every time I leave here but after a while that changed too. I never planned on being someone different than the girl I was when I left for college (more accomplished and older) but not really different. But I am different. I went away and I gathered insights and value systems and knowledge. I took classes and built friendships that challenged my beliefs and the information I grew up with. I’m not a stranger here and this place will always inform me and it will always be the anchor of my personality. I guess the truth is, I don’t grow here so much as realize how much I’ve grown. Sometimes being here is about family and home but sometimes it’s also about seeing who the person I’m becoming is. I love the ways I’ve grown. I love that my value system is both informs and challenges my world here and I love that I am continuing to grow. I am glad I grew up. I am glad I went away and was brave enough to see and confront new ideas and frameworks. This is not to say I have “grown up”, just that I see change, positive change, and instead of feeling guilt or the need for regression, I am trying to accept and be grateful.

P.S. This image is from Irina Wening’s series Back to the Future – she took people’s childhood photos and reenacted them years later, there’s so much accuracy and detail. I felt it was a perfect match for this post and an awesome project.

A Cup of Tea

Image via http://why-dont-you-blush.tumblr.com

There really is nothing like a good cup of tea. I remember my first one vividly – which I’ll grant you is a pretty weird thing to remember, but let me explain…

As a California baby, I was not a fan of hot drinks. Ours was not a coffee household, not even hot cider in the fall. When I moved to the UK at 10 years old, I  was confused by a great number of things : why people would say “a quarter to” when you asked them what time it was  (a quarter to what?), why I had to call lunch “dinner” and dinner “tea”, and then there was tea, the drink, not be confused with the meal. Cups of tea served all through the day and night. You couldn’t take a breath without being offered a cuppa. Family members were always announcing that they were “putting the kettle on”. Every time I was sad, a cup was plopped in front of me with a couple of biscuits. I would always dutifully dunk my biscuits in the paperbag-brown brew and (having used the tea for its only useful purpose)  let it sit and go cold.

When I finally agreed to a cup of the boring grown up’s drink (that didn’t hold any of the allure of alcohol or even coffee), it was quite a memorable occasion. I (a sulky 10 year old with a won’t-quit American accent) was slouching in my great uncle’s home – Laura Ashley wall paper, velvet couches sunken with use, faux-coals burning in the the gas fireplace, a cable-free TV for entertainment – when he offered me a cup of tea. I don’t know why I finally said yes (boredom or a need to be nice to elderly relatives) but I did. Sometimes I think this cup of tea was actually fated for me. If for example, it hadn’t been made by my Uncle Johnny (a War time baby who has a notorious sweet tooth and no patience for “health food”) then this cup of tea probably wouldn’t have included a good glug of full fat milk and no less than three teaspoonfuls of sugar. Three teaspoons I tell you! There’s nary a child in the world who will say no to a dairy laden vehicle of three sugars.

Thus began my love affair with tea. Granted it was “builder’s tea”, PG Tips or Tetley, nothing that would  be accepted by Will and Kate. But, it was possibly the first and only thing I loved (for a while) about living in the UK. Upon my return to the States for college, it would become my security blanket (brought to all conferences with teachers to soothe my nerves), my trademark (made specially for teary-eyed friends in my dorm room) and my replacement for coffee which was much cooler, but something I despised the taste of.

In the end, tea has become ritualistic. The ritual of drinking it every morning, of a sweet cup on a hard day. Ironically, when I am in the UK now, the most comforting thing is the cup of tea I am offered upon entering any home, or the obligatory cup I drink when someone drops by our house. Here in New York, it has become a tradition of it’s very own. I go for tea once a week with my dear friend Christina. The teas with her aren’t the sugar-laden one’s of  my childhood, but fine and delicate varieties like Lapsang Souchong and Matcha Green. Our tea time is different than when we go for a glass of wine, or shopping, or out with our friends. When we plan for tea, everything else falls away. We are able to be open and honest. We are safe in the warmth of the hot cup between our hands.

Recipe for the Perfect Cup of English Tea

1 PG Tips teabag

Full fat milk

Sugar (no sweetener, no agave, just commit to it)

Boiling water

A good cozy mug

It’s really best if you have a kettle, electric or stovetop, but if you don’t make sure your water is at a rolling boil. Black tea should be brewed at 99 degrees Celsius (210 Fahrenheit). Put you tea bag in first! (It is essential to the brewing process). Let your tea bag sit for a couple of seconds and before you take it out give it a good squeeze with your spoon. Add your milk – I go for a classic british paper-bag brown. This mug is the funnest and it’ll help you make your perfect cup. Add one teaspoon of sugar (I’ve mellowed out in my old age). Stir. Drink hot with a couple of chocolate digestive biscuits if you can get your hands on them.