Crossing Bridges

I began my college search early, after much persuasion from my mother. She insisted that I needed to visit universities beginning in eighth grade after I had shown her a list of twenty-five schools from Boston to DC. I suppose she worried that my college search would mirror my search for a Communion dress in the second grade. She took me to six stores, where I constantly complained that no store sold the perfect non-gaudy, non-flowery completely white dress I had envisioned. Maybe she also feared that I would only like schools that would not accept me. To this, my father, ever the optimist, always responded: “Beth, stop worrying. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” So, a few years ago, my mother and I traveled to New England, where we visited Yale. We dragged our suitcases from the parking lot to the front door of the hotel, a Marriot across from a Mr. Chicken where we observed several drug deals—all just a block from Yale’s campus. As we approached the door, I warily reported to my mother, “Look. You need a pass-code to enter the hotel. Nothing good happens at a hotel where you need to enter with a pass-code.” Once she assured me that no one would murder us in our sleep, we left the hotel and walked toward Yale’s bookstore, a grey building set against the grey Spring New England sky. We walked at a brisk pace as a homeless man appeared behind me, his run-down bike rolling beside him. Suddenly, he screamed at me in his psychotic voice, “Going to Yale, you super white b****?” My mother grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the Barnes and Noble, muttering to herself that she would never send me there, that much-too-liberal school. I sighed, for I, already a sophomore, had yet to cross the bridge my dad had assured me existed. In fact, I deeply worried that I would not find a school I even liked. However, I need not have fretted, as I encountered a bridge on my last college visit to Penn. My cousins, aunt, and uncle joined us on the campus at nightfall and we walked around admiring the dark sky, the brick buildings, and the trees which hung over our heads. Few people joined us as we walked down the winding paths which disappeared from sight onto the other side of the bridge that separated the two ends of the campus. When we reached the bridge, my seven-year-old cousin James ran towards it, grabbed my hand, and looked up at me with his blue eyes. “Do you think we should cross?” He asked me, his eyes searching my face. I turned around and looked back at the rest of the group, who walked a bit behind us. In that moment, I smiled, for I had found the bridge I needed to cross.  I imagined that on the other side, beyond the cement, a tiny figure would appear and gradually would enlarge until I could make out its features and recognize my face. I could see that person walking with friends on a quiet night, never worrying whether she would cross the bridge when she reached it. She never attached too much personal meaning to that bridge, never realized it could connect her past and future. She never trembled in its presence like Gatsby as he reaches out to the unattainable green light. She merely saw a bridge, a concrete structure, which connected two ends of campus.  Nevertheless, I looked back down at my cousin and squeezed his hand, realizing that fantasy could never exist. Even if the school accepts me, I will always stand at the top of the bridge and wonder whether I should take a risk, ignore the shouts of hoodlums and the worry that the pass-code will not protect me while I  attempt to attain the unattainable. “Yes, James,” I told him, “Let’s cross.” 

The Drowning, MVP Donkey with Horns

Today, like Gatsby, I put on my bathing suit, jumped into the pool of the AP English discussion and, to make a long story short, drowned. I did not completely realize the irony of the moment until Ms. Serensky began begging Elliot, my writing partner, to jump in and save me. Of course I failed miserably when discussing Gatsby’s participation in a sport/athletic pastime. We all have heard the story of my swim team failure. But, I fail in much more than that. For example: everyone remembers the seventh grade football unit. Some students triumphed and others struggled, but few failed as miserably as I. I struggled so severely that while playing football, students upheld one basic rule: Do not, under any circumstances, pass the ball to Meghan Judge. Despite that rule, I somehow found myself with the ball toward the end of the period during a tied game of football.  In a state of utter panic, I threw the ball randomly, hoping my teammates would somehow cross the gym from where I stood alone and catch it. Unfortunately, I threw the ball to a member of the other team, who proceeded to run and score the winning touchdown. The other team voted me their MVP. I often look back on that gym class. I remember how I laughed and thanked her and went home and jokingly shared my great achievement with others; I even shared the experience years later with my interviewer for Johns Hopkins. I suppose, for some strange reason, I value these failures. I constantly repeat my memories as the other team’s MVP, as the last place swimmer, as the girl who also shared in discussion last year that McCourt compared a priest to a donkey with horns. Maybe I value these moments because they taught me the humor in imperfection and the need to keep moving forward, to save myself from drowning. So, we all must score the other team’s winning touchdown and drown in discussion. We must teach ourselves to not depend on our writing partners to jump in and save us, even though Elliot did so quite well. So, join Gatsby and me in the pool. Make sure to bring your flotation device.    

Pygmies in the Mist: Part Deux

I come from a family of amateur writers. From my great-uncle Bud to my aunt Francine, a poet 20 years in the making, my family has striven for generations to join the ranks of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. I clearly recall one of my first experiences with the unappreciated writing of my relatives. My family and I dug through boxes in my Grandmother’s house which held the belongings of the deceased Uncle Bud, a World War II veteran who enjoyed embellishing the truth. As I dug through the medals and photographs and pages of old manuscripts, I came upon a bound story with an intriguing title: “ Pygmies in the Mist.” Apparently, he had unsuccessfully attempted to publish the story, a tale of an African tribe of pygmies attempting to escape a cloud of mist. My grandmother swears publishers had not selected it as they simply could not recognize creativity and genius. She, too, likes to embellish. My grandmother, however, trumps “ Pygmies” with her own novel which has yet to grace the shelves. She and her reverend joined creative forces to produce the precursor to Fifty Shades of Grey (a la science fiction). Critics (my mother) found the novel “offensive, yet exploratory.” On the other end of the spectrum, my Aunt Francine writes an annual Christmas poem which serves as her crowning achievement of the year. Surprisingly, the public has celebrated my Aunt Francine’s work the most; she published her work in a Christian children’s magazine and received $25--four years ago. As each generation of my family has seen its own amateur writer, I suppose my family, particularly my grandmother, has prepared me to realize that role. When I visited my grandmother as a four-year-old, I would sit at the kitchen table with her as she drank her "splash" of wine and we would talk. As we chatted, she would make up tales of a little girl who lived in New York City. She gushed over the little girl's life and how she wrote, painted, and sold hats in Central Park. She shook her head when she shared that the little girl walked on the grates in the sidewalk and would fall down them. Her face lit up magically when she told of how the little girl turned into a swan one afternoon. After she told me each tale, I would smile up at her and tell her, “Someday, Grandma, I will write the stories and you will illustrate them. Everyone in the world should hear our stories.” In response, she would always gaze down at me sweetly and tell me that she truly believed me. We shall see.  Maybe, someday, my family will finally produce a Hemingway or a Fitzgerald. Until then, we must navigate the literary world like my Uncle Bud’s pygmies, constantly searching for the place in the forest where the sun shines and the mist lifts and we can finally see.