Kitty Cat claims she's drawn a picture that's going to "save the world". The picture is actually her normal fare. Some colorful scribbles that maybe, possibly, resemble actual objects or people. Probably not something that's going to bring troops home from Afghanistan or find homes for people who have none. But I like her spirit.
I've been considering my absolute lack of world-saving spirit lately, and feeling like I need to do something about it. Use my powers for good rather than sloth. Once upon a time I thought helping animals was my calling. But then I had kids and, while I still adore cats and dogs and anything furry with big, pure eyes, my interest in plucking them all off the streets and finding them loving homes has waned. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's because I eat them now (just, you know, the livestock, not the pets). Or because I feel inundated with small creatures who need care.
My interest, for some reason, is veering toward teen girls. The haughtiest of our species. But also, I think, some of the most mired in painful confusion. Because if there's anything I remember about being a teen girl, it's confusion. There was no internet for information back then, in the mid-80s. But even with all the websites and forums they have now, being a teen girl has still gotta be hard. Harder?
There's this squeezing burden and they don't yet understand that someday they'll feel more or less okay. That they don't have to be as skinny as the absurdly retouched Ralph Lauren model or have pristine complexions or be the most creative and brilliant to be loved, to love themselves. Because in that prickly maw that is twelve to twenty-two or so, it all seems hostile and a little scary.
Who knows. Maybe, one day, I'll teach a writing class for girls, where they can express their fears and bewilderment. That's what I think I'd like anyway.
*****
I was still a girl when I went to Michigan State 20+ years ago. My first days there were dizzying. I'd come from a tiny town to this giant Big Ten school and I was beyond excited. But also nauseated. Overwhelmed. My roommate, a brash, popular Chicagoan, and I did not, from the get go, hit it off. Still I muddled through a few weeks, a hanger-on, pretending her friends were mine, though I didn't like them in the least.
Then I met Mel, who lived across the hall from me. She was a petite Korean, my physical opposite. But we were drawn to each other and soon developed the kind of familiarity that I think only happens in college, when you live together, when you come back from class, dump your backpack in the other's room and talk and talk about everything. Everything you were too bashful to talk to your high school girlfriends about. And it opens up new worlds. Worlds in which you realize other girls think about the same things, worry about sex and boys and pregnancy and drugs and grades and body hair in the same way. And this in itself is an excellent, crucial reason to go to college and, if you can afford it, live on campus.
Anyway, Mel and I were inseparable through all four years at MSU. And afterward, we still saw each other often.
Our friendship withstood a lot. An unbloggable lot, but eventually began to fray. In our mid-twenties, in the throes of a horrible breakup from my boyfriend, she and I broke up too.
It's been more than fifteen years since we spoke or communicated in any way. During our time apart, I've thought of her almost daily, thought of those long hours, sitting in our warm dorm rooms while Michigan snow swirled and howled around the ugly brick buildings where we lived, talking or, as we called it, bullshitting, avoiding studying, listening to new music, coveting, criticizing, comparing. Growing closer. Until we weren't anymore.
And now, this week, we've reconnected through Facebook. The grand social experiment that is Facebook. We've been emailing furiously, long, long letters attempting to catch each other up on so much missed time.
I'm surprised, I will admit, by how happy it's made me, by how healing this communication is. I'm reminded, too, how important the girls in my life are. I regularly, in this space, slobber all over Tricia and Stacy, whom I love in the non-judgmental, mature way of grown women who've been around the track a few times. Which is to say, except for some stupid stumblings on my part, we respect and admire each other. But even the women who aren't quite so central right now, I learn a lot from them. They make my life a much more hospitable place. And it causes me to wonder if some of those friendships from the days of Depeche Mode and The Cure could be woven into what I have now.
