Miss New York Has Everything

Lori Jakiela's memoir Miss New York Has Everything was an entertaining book about growing up just outside of Pittsburgh and the lessons learned from flying all around the world as a flight attendant. I wondered for probably the first half of the book what the (for lack of a better word) thesis of the book was. I came to the conclusion that it's a memoir about dreams, and how they don't all come true, or at least not in the way you expect. I think this is a universal lesson that everyone learns at one point or another, and the trick is to avoid becoming disillusioned and to still find meaning and purpose in life. I think Jakiela did both of those things in her book.

I thoroughly enjoyed her stories about growing up. Throughout her accounts about the talent show, Shaun Cassidy crush, pet poodles, family vacations, and boyfriend angst, she painted an accurate and humorous picture of what it was like to grow up in her family in her city at that time. It felt real and true, like I was chatting with a new friend and swapping stories. Her engaging style and humor made me care about her and what happened in her life. I also enjoyed reading about the details of her life as a flight attendant. I'll probably never be able to fly on an airplane without thinking about the poor flight attendants and how long they've been flying and how little they are getting paid to smile and ask if I'd like peanuts or cookies. I think those details and stories were my favorite parts, and I wanted to know more. That kind of behind-the-scenes information is especially fascinating when it's something that we all see the outside of.

On the one hand, I could see her writing a memoir just about being a flight attendant, full of funny stories and sad stories and stories about different places and about coming home. More of a travel writing memoir, I guess. But I like that she looked beyond just that one experience find a deeper, more over-arching meaning and theme for her book. I like that it wasn't just about being a flight attendant, although that was definitely very central.

I am very interested in talking to Lori Jakiela about her process of writing and publishing this book. She said that she left New York in 2000, so it hasn't been very many years since she was actually living this book. I want to know how she chose to write about these experiences when they were still relatively fresh, how she was able to gain any perspective on them. I would also like to know why she stopped when she did. I would have liked to know more about how she did end up becoming a writer, because it seemed like a lost dream for quite a bit of the book. I guess I want to know why we didn't get more details about the happy ending and the dreams that did come true in the end.

Overall, a fun, light book that made me think more about the dreams I have and the ones I've already discarded and what it all amounts to.

Tell me about someone who was a true teacher for you.

Syd was my high school theater teacher, and she played favorites. Oh boy, did she play favorites. It was a good introduction into the theater world---it's all about who you know---and it was a lesson I learned quickly. I also learned that if I went to class, kept auditioning, and tried to apply what she was teaching us, sooner or later it would pay off and she would cast me in a play. It didn't work for everyone, though. Syd still had her favorites.

Syd taught me everything I know about auditioning and performing and theater: Don't audition with a song from the show, but sing something in the same style; don't come dressed in costume; always have a resume; always be prepared to sing a second song if requested (and I was, once); always, always, ALWAYS come on time to rehearsals; as soon as something is blocked, it should be memorized; rehearsal lasts until you're done; the second night of a show is always the hardest; never touch the props unless they are yours; your call time is five minutes before your call time; it's okay to have fun while working really hard; and the director is always right, but can be open to suggestion.

Syd also taught me about stories. She told us, "There are no small parts, only small actors. Every character has a story to tell." We were there to tell a story, every one of us. It didn't matter if you were Onlooker #3 or Jean Valjean, you were still important because you were part of the story. Every show I did with her meant something more than just the choreography or costumes or music. She taught us that the power of stories is in how they can change your life.

Syd died a year after I graduated from high school. It was a blood clot after some surgery, and just like that she was gone. She was brilliant; she knew theater; she loved her students; she was tyrannical; she was lazy; she played favorites; she played jokes on us; she was our mother, our director, our boss, our friend, our teacher.

A (Potential) Character Flaw

I have been thinking tonight about a (potential) character flaw, and this seemed like the proper forum to do some thinking out loud. I guess I need to think about it because when you discover a character flaw in yourself (whether it's a self discovery or kindly pointed out to you), you can either change or learn to accept it. There are some things about myself that I accept, but there are some things I've tried to change.

This train of thought actually started yesterday during class. I tend to get embarrassed easily, and though I have certainly gotten better at not getting embarrassed, this still becomes an issue for me on occasion. For example, when I forgot we were waiting for Emily to read and started in on the discussion. My initial reaction was to curl up and die in a ball of shame and never speak again, but I was able to see the humor in the situation and laugh it off (though I did have to give myself a little pep talk before saying anything again). This represents progress for me.

I had a similar situation in my travel writing class tonight. I broke away from the main topic of discussion to ask if the essay in question was really travel writing. I thought it was a valid question, but after a minute I realized that it wasn't really pertinent, that we'd already discussed what the genre is, and that I had totally derailed the conversation. I felt foolish. It wasn't that the teacher or any of the other students said anything to make me feel that way, I just read too much into the situation. But I felt enough chagrin to keep me mostly silent for the rest of the class.

I am one of those sad people who do things or rather, don't do things, out of a fear of looking foolish. I think a lot of people fall into this category, but I don't like it about myself. I have accepted it to a degree: I recognize that I am motivated by this silly desire to avoid looking silly in front of other people or even just myself. But I don't like living in fear of anything. It's not a quality I admire, and it's definitely not something I admire in myself. In the movie Strictly Ballroom, the theme of the movie becomes, "A life lived in fear is a life half-lived." This has become a motto for my life. I have worked hard over the last few years to not stop living my life because of fear. I went skydiving, I went skinnydipping, I traveled to England, I fell in love with someone who didn't love me back, I said no to someone who did love me and wanted to marry me. I took some risks. But have I really changed? I can't even speak out of turn in a class where no one really cares if I make a little mistake without wanting to retreat into myself.

My friends were telling me about a discussion they had about whether or not, as forward-minded women, they would have survived the Salem witch trials. It became a kind of game/classification system, with one opinionated friend immediately classified as "the first to go" and another who is decidedly more passive as "the last one left." I laughed at their game, but I didn't ask how they would classify me, and I realize now that I didn't want to know. Because I know what the answer would have been: I would have survived because I would never have let on that I had any opinions or thoughts or was different in any way. I would have been too afraid. And realizing that has made me realize that I have never really been brave enough to be different. I don't stick my neck out there. I have accepted this part of myself, but as I thought about it in this context, I was not pleased. I can't think of a single time I have stood up for something I believe in a way that made a difference. If I have a different opinion, I usually keep it to myself. I value keeping the peace over being honest about how I feel. And I don't think I like that about myself.

This brings me back to the beginning of the post and this potential character flaw: what do I do with it? Learn to accept it as part of who I am? Or can I change? I know I've made progress in the past, but I don't know if I can really be a different person.

Unhealthy Obsession #1

I don't know who invented bubblewrap, but I would like to publicly thank that person, whoever he or she is, for the hours of entertainment I have gotten out of his (or her) fine invention.

I don't know why bubblewrap is such an immense pleasure to me, but I truly consider a sheet of new, unpopped bubblewrap to be the cherry on the frosting on my cake of life. I get a terrific sense of satisfaction out of those explosive POP!s and out of discovering every new little bubble of air that I can gleefully destroy. I can sit for hours, literally hours, making sure that I don't miss a single delicious circle. The popping noise doesn't bother me at all (provided I am the one making the noise) and I find it almost soothing to sit with a book in one hand and bubblewrap in another. Strangely, other people do not find my simple pleasure quite as soothing, so I have found it necessary to not only hide myself when the bubblewrap-popping mood overtakes me but also to hide my stash of bubblewrap.

I suppose bubblewrap also has a practical purpose in cushioning and protecting fragile items from becoming damaged when being packaged. And I'm sure it does its job admirably. I can't complain of any derelict bubblewrap failing to keep something in one piece. Perhaps my unhealthy love of bubblewrap developed with my love of getting mail now that I live so far from home. Or perhaps it's the other way around. Perhaps I enjoy getting mail because I never know what the packages will contain. One sheet of bubblewrap? Two? The anticipated hours of joy fill me with unbounded excitement. If I had known moving away would have resulted in a steady supply of plastic filled with compressed air bubbles, I would have left a lot sooner.

"Where is home for you?" Part 2

My home is with my fiancé Tim. If home is where the heart is, a part of my heart is definitely in Pittsburgh, a part in England, a part in California, and a large part in Utah where my family and friends are. But no matter where I am, if I'm with Tim, I'm home.

It's so strange and so wonderful how incredibly comfortable we are, and have always been, when we're with each other. Most of our relationship has been long-distance, so we've had a lot of time to really talk and get to know each other. And somehow that has translated into being comfortable with each other when we get to be in the same place. I visited Tim in California last Thanksgiving, and I was a little nervous about seeing him. I had been in Pittsburgh (and away from him) for fourteen weeks, and in that time we'd decided we wanted to get married and talked very seriously about making that happen. Our relationship had gone through some fairly drastic changes in the time apart, and I didn't know how it would affect our time together.

But we never missed a step. From the moment he found me at the airport and kissed me good right in front of the LAX crowds, it was completely natural, completely normal, completely right to be there with him. Whether we were making Thanksgiving pies or taking a walk or getting lost in Long Beach or going to see a movie or cuddling as we watched a movie on the couch, there was a strong and at times almost submerging sense of belonging. I sometimes didn't even notice it was there because it was so constantly present. When I am with Tim, I feel the most like myself, and that should be the way we feel when we're home. Home should be the place where we feel the most safe, the most loved, the most sure of ourselves, the most free to think and act and be who we are without fear. A place where our true selves---good, bad, ugly, beautiful---are allowed to shine forth. And Tim makes me feel all of that, more than I've ever felt it.

My other half, my best friend, my one true love, my soul mate....I know it sounds naïve and I know that in many ways I am, but I also know that Tim is my home.

Swamp Songs

One of the things that so interests me about stories is how they all connect. All the stories we tell connect to ourselves, to who we are, to where we are, to how we define ourselves, and often, all our stories connect to each other. So often as we tell one story, maybe about a family member or an experience at school, we are also telling a story about ourselves. I find this fascinating!

Swamp Songs really exemplified that kind of connection. The river and lake and swamp waters that connect so many places in Louisiana become a metaphor for the way these places and people connect Sheryl to herself and to her family and home. Like the swamps, like gumbo, there isn't a way to separate out all the pieces that combine to make the whole. Sheryl is shaped out of these places and experiences. These essays really are "the making of an unruly woman." I loved the connection between everything, the way the essays overlapped. I think in some ways, this kind of overlapping stories is the only way to tell about who you are.

Another thing that I really enjoyed was all the information that was brand new to me. I feel like I know so much more about swamps and cypress trees and fishing and rivers and flooding and eating crawfish and Mardi Gras and gumbo and hurricanes and spicy food. I was never bored, just fascinated by all the new information. It really is like another world, and I really admire Sheryl's skill in opening up that world to her readers. I sometimes wondered if she had to do any research or if she knew it all already.

I also admired her honesty. There was a lot of hard stuff in there, stories that I don't think I could share so openly with the world. But it was incredibly refreshing and many times very moving too. I felt so included and trusted to be given this information. I don't know how you learn to write about the hard stuff, but it's a skill I really admire. And it's another way that as readers, we come to know an author. The stories that we tell about our lives and our selves have to be this honest in order for anyone to really come to know who we are.

"Where is home for you?" Part 1

My favorite part of my hometown is not actually part of the city itself, but is rather part of the geography, the part that shapes the weather, the seasons, the horizon. My favorite part of my hometown of Orem, Utah are the mountains. As part of the Rockies, the Cascade mountains border us on the east, effectively creating an easy reference point for directions. As long as I can see the mountains, I know where I am and how to get home. Rocky and uneven, they are pretty sparse when it comes to vegetation. The green haze that eventually appears is our sure sign of spring, and the disappearance of the last bits of snow means that summer is fully underway. When the mountains turn red and orange, we know it's officially autumn, and when the clouds roll in and leave a light dusting of snow on the peaks, winter is on its way. Our compass, seasonal indicator, and constant presence is my favorite part of my hometown.

It's a little bit strange to me that I still think of Orem as my hometown. My family moved thirty minutes north to the city of Draper almost four years ago, but as much as I love our new mountaintop home that overlooks both the Salt Lake and Utah valley, I still tell people I am from Orem. I sometimes say Provo because it is the bigger city (with the bigger university) that more people have heard of, but as anyone who grew up in Orem will tell you, they are two very separate places.

Orem is fairly unremarkable, I suppose. The populations is somewhere around 100,000 and we have a university (recently upgraded from being a state college), three high schools, four junior highs, and about a dozen elementary schools. There are two hospitals, two live theaters,two movie theaters, one public library, and one shopping mall. Not a metropolitan center by any means, but respectable. We mock the Spanish Fork (pronounced "fark") accent just south of us and go forty-five minutes north to Salt Lake for a nice night out. Everyone lives and dies by the BYU football season and almost everything is closed on Sundays. The streets get exponentially more crowded when the high schools let out around 2:30 in the afternoons and our biggest celebration every year is the Summerfest parade and festivities in June. There is a bus system, sort of, but most everyone drives or maybe bikes. Orem was ranked the second best place to raise a family in the United States a few years back, and it's true.

I guess the thing that really sets Orem apart is that at least 80% of its inhabitants belong to the Mormon church, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This means that all of my friends were members of the Church, that we got release time to attend Church seminary as part of our junior high and high school education, that none of us smoked or drank, and that we didn't even start dating until we were 16. We had Church youth activities during week and church on Sundays, and when they turned 19 every one of my guy friends left to serve two-year missions for the Church. And this was the way life was, well, is. When I was growing up, it never would have occurred to me to describe my life in these terms because they were such a part of life in Orem, Utah. I only think to mention them now because I am living far away from that environment and culture, and only now can I see it as being unusual.

I think I reached the point where I'm not sure where else to go with this idea. The question is, "Where is home for you?" and I thought of my hometown. But Orem isn't really "home" for me anymore. It was home---for about fifteen years it was the only home for me. But now it is nostalgic, reminiscent, dear to my heart, and only the place where I grew up.

An explanation as introduction

As one of a group of theater nerds in high school, my friends and I loved the musical You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, which is all about the characters and situations from Charles Schultz's Peanuts comic strip. When my friends and I found out it was playing in Cedar City (a three hour drive away) over Labor Day, we decided it was a good time for a road trip. During one of the scenes, Lucy intrudes on Linus as he is watching TV and announces to him that she's decided that when she grows up, she's going to be a queen:

LUCY:
Linus, do you know what I intend. I intend to be a queen. When I grow up I'm going to be the biggest queen there ever was. And I'll live in a big palace with a big front lawn and have lots of beautiful dresses to wear. And, when I go out in my coach all the people...

LINUS:
Lucy!

LUCY:
All the people will wave, and I will shout at them. And...

LINUS:
Lucy, I believe queen is an inherited title. Yes, I am quite sure a person can only be queen by being born into a royal family of the correct lineage so that she can assume the throne after the death of the reining monarch. I can't think of any possible way that you could ever become a queen. I'm sorry Lucy, but it's true.

LUCY:
And in the summer time, I will go to my summer palace and I will wear my crown in swimming and everything. And all the people will cheer and I will shout at them...WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T BE QUEEN?!?!

And for reasons unknown, my kind friends decided that was a perfect summary of me and it stuck. Really, I don't think I'm quite so overdramatic or power-hungry or aggressive as Lucy, but I have to admit, "queen" does have a nice ring to it....