Photo by David Costa

Last night was my first mixed-league scrimmage. I’ve scrimmaged with my leaguemates, but it’s different to get together with 50 girls from leagues all over the region. As it stands, only one other girl from my league came to this one, which was about an hour away from our town.

I try to make a habit of doing things on a regular basis that make me nervous–the good kind of nervous. And frankly, until I got in the car and started driving to the scrimmage, I was seriously considering staying home because I was definitely fighting some nerves. None of my girls were riding with me, so I was going solo. I’m no stranger to solo, but solo make it a lot easier to call things off. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, and I’ve only been skating a few months.

Thankfully, none of my excuses to myself panned out, and I found myself at a skating rink at 10pm on a Saturday night, lining up with a whole host of new friends, chatting about how we were looking forward to the first couple of jams to get our jitters out.

And get our jitters out we did. I even put on the jammer panty (the helmet cover that identifies the jammer) during my second jam of the night so I could get my jamming nerves to calm down. I figured this would be a really great venue for practicing jamming as much as possible, because we’ve got a lot of hotshot jammers on my home league so I don’t get to just practice super often.

(If you need a basic rundown of derby, check out the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_derby)

My first sprawling fall of the night nearly knocked the wind out of me, but lucky for me I like to fall (think: gymnast, climber, skydiver…you get the picture) and all it really serves to do is fire me up. The whole night we just rotated through lineups, skating when we wanted to, rearranging teams when girls had to leave to go home. The beauty of a black and white scrimmage is that all you have to do to switch teams is put on a different color shirt.

I also love that in a scrimmage, every jam pretty much stands alone. No one is keeping score, so each new group starts fresh. The one thing about derby that I haven’t learned to love is the drama, and while I love skating with my own team and building those relationships, skating in a group of relative strangers totally minimizes interpersonal drama. Yeah, that girl I knee’d out of my way totally sent me sprawling out of retaliation, but it was still fun, and then forgotten.

The refs called things off when the skaters started to get sloppy because we were so tired. Three hours of late-night skating can take it out of you, that’s for sure. And when girls skate sloppy, people get hurt, so it was a good call on the part of the refs to call it a night.

After a short night of sleep and a church service, today has been a day of ibuprofen, adding new friends on facebook, and checking out pictures from the scrimmage. I’m still new enough to this sport that I’m not agonizing over every mistake I made (not that that’s really my modus operandi anyways) so the whole thing was just fun. I’m glad I didn’t stay home.

Tomorrow’s the cross-town burrito-eating race with my leaguemates, so there is more derby fun to be had before tryouts in a few weeks. I’m so glad to be back on skates with some regularity. Off-season was good for my joints, but pre-season is great for my spirit.

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I’m a chronic rearranger. Even as a kid, I moved my furniture around on a regular basis. I probably inherited the tendency from my mom, who moves the garbage can around the kitchen to a new place every time I visit…and sometimes halfway through my visit. My childhood was full of elaborate furniture swaps between the women in our family, and endless redecorating projects. I learned to wallpaper before I learned to shave my legs, and I can tape off a room for painting with the best of ‘em.

Suffice it to say, I come by my compulsive rearranging rightly.

I’ve lived in a lot of small spaces over these last eight years, which puts a bit of a damper on the extent to which changes can be made, but I still manage to freshen the feng shui of my environment a couple times a year. Sometimes I get roommates in on the project and the day turns into an apartment rearranging party, much like today did. On those days, I should be banned from access to craigslist, where I will most certainly be looking for bookcases I don’t need…except I feel like if there’s one thing I need more of, it’s bookshelves because no matter how many boxes of books I put in storage every time I move I still manage to have way too many.

The last three days have been a lot of organizing and re-homing. The instance of returning home from visiting my parents for Christmas and having gifts to put away and laundry to do converged with needing to prepare for houseguests and an altogether occupying need to adjust some furniture…it all kind of happened at once, with a lot of 80s and 90s British punk in the background. And when I mean it all happened at once, that’s how it happens. I let very few friends and family members be privy to my organizational tactics because they are completely bonkers. Utterly, exhaustingly incoherent. Seven tasks all at once, me muttering to myself, with plenty of coffee to tie it all together. Unfortunately, I also seem to have my best hair days when I’m playing the crazy hermit lady, and this week was no different. Ah well.

I love the freshness of new organization. I love when for at least a minute (because that’s about how long I can maintain a clean bedroom) my space feels totally “me”. My bed is made and my books are in neat stacks and my nutella has a new stashing spot and most of my clothes are folded and put away. My world is in order and my overactive mind can rest in my little sanctuary that is decorated with far too much green.

So that’s what I’ve been up to since graduating a few weeks ago. Rearranging. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not.

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525,600 minutes – how do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife

You know the song. Well, I know the song…and every other line and note in the entire musical. (Rock opera, if we’re being technical about things. But I digress.) Seven years ago, when I was introduced to RENT for the first time, it appealed to my freshman-in-college, whole-world-is-expanding sensibilities, and nourished my musical theatre obsession at the same time. You see, I come from a long history of total dorkiness. Don’t let the climbing harness and quad skates fool you…long before all of that was part of my life, I spent the better part of my energy teaching myself to like coffee–which was a wildly successful endeavor–and listening to my favorite musicals on repeat. Like, we’re talking overdose repeat. At least I can say that I don’t do much halfway.

But that was seven years ago. And here I am. I still love coffee. Even more now, considering I’m two weeks away from a Master’s degree. You don’t get through grad school without developing such affections. And I still love musicals, especially RENT. I try to watch it once a year or so, and it’s one of those things that has a depth that is different every time. Because I’m really NOT just the same as I was seven years ago. At eighteen I wanted nothing more than to move to New York City and be a writer. To put my finger on the pulse of a city with which I was entirely enamored and get lost in its gritty charm.

In the interim between that season and this one, I’ve been lucky enough to build a life that was nothing like I expected. Obviously, I don’t live in New York (though I’ve visited twice), and no one pays me to write, which I’ve learned is kind of how I prefer it since I’m not the most disciplined wordsmith. When I graduate in a few weeks, I’ll have a degree in counseling and a few more grey hairs than I started with. (No kidding about the grey hairs. First one came in a week before I turned 21.)

I guess I’m writing to process the transition. My seasons have been dictated by the academic schedule for my entire working memory, and soon that won’t be the case. That panics me a little, though I know it shouldn’t. During this last season I have been so happy that I’ve hardly noticed it pass by. I was kind of blindsided by reality last week when my calendar suddenly announced the arrival of December.

I love this right-now life. I’m not ready for it to change. But, no matter what changes or doesn’t, I am glad I was blindsided. This season, I have been happy. No-trouble-sleeping happy (which is a cause for celebration when your bouts of insomnia started in elementary school). Dance-like-you-don’t-care happy. I didn’t even notice the season’s end creeping up on me.

And I think that’s all I can ask for. To be a little distracted by the joys of my day-to-day. If I can reflect on a season or a series of seasons and see that, it really doesn’t get much better, and no matter what happens after this, I had a really rockin’ autumn. I plan to hold onto that.

May your December be full of joy and meaning and reflection. If you do find it lacking in joy, however, I recommend throwing (literally) tinsel at your tree (especially a Christmas tree, if you have one, but any tree will do), or a quiet cup of your favorite coffee, if that suits you better. I tried both. Either way, take some time to enjoy my favorite time of the whole year, okay? And let me know how it goes.

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Over Thanksgiving, I spent 8 days with the smartest, funniest, prettiest, most determined pre-teen girl I’ve ever met. My baby sister turned 11 a few weeks ago, and she amazes me every day. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of months and I swear she grew up way too much in those months. Even her face seems different. Older, less kid-like and more teenage.

She handles life with an innate sense of ambition and balance that is both impressive and intimidating. And does it all while managing to be sweet and likable and resilient. In all of her burgeoning independence, that kid is beginning one of the most volatile stages of growing up and becoming who she’ll be. What she discovers about the world and how she decides to process it in the next few years will have a huge impact on her identity.

And so I have this really unique relationship with an especially unique little sister and that sometimes scares the snot out of me. I love that she is my biggest fan and loves me with a sincerity that only siblings know. I also know that every word I say and every promise I make and every attitude I cop are being watched by this perceptive young woman…and often emulated.

I hope that I can be as real as possible when she’s watching, because I feel that will give her the best opportunity to become who she wants to be. I have this cool opportunity to be part of her family in a way that is not quite parental and not quite the usual sibling setup. Knowing she’s watching has influenced my decisions since the day she was born, whether I’ve been aware of it or not.

She’ll start junior high next year, and I’ll blink and she’ll be graduating from high school. I hope she grows up to be a little subversive, but not too much. I hope that high school and college teach her the balance of working hard and playing harder. I hope she has her first kiss with a boy she really likes, but only when she’s ready and I hope she gets butterflies and fireworks and sweaty palms. I hope she learns just enough lessons the hard way to be gracious and humble always. I hope so many things for this amazing young lady.

More than anything else, though, I hope that our relationship continues to grow and deepen as her perception of her world grows. I want to be the kind of big sister that asks tough questions that make her think and evaluate what matters to her. I want her to call when something big happens, and more often I want her to call for no reason at all.

I love you, little sister, neverending-infinity-plus-sister-plus-God.

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