The letter

From: Naomi Graychase <graychase@gmail.com>

Subject: Happy Anniversary

Date: May 23, 2007 2:00:03 PM EDT

My Dearest Classmates,

[I tried to send this note to you yesterday, but a glitch in the e-mail broadcast system prevented it from making it to you. C'est la vie.]

On this day, thirteen years ago, we stood in the blazing sun in black robes and white dresses (or pants suits) and sweated our knockers off while we waited to receive the hard-won diplomas of people who were not us. Then, when all the speeches were over and all the names had been called, we marched, dazedly, onto the grass in front of King and Scales, formed a spiraling circle, and passed our diplomas until we came up with our own.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The next day remains in the Top Ten All-Time Worst Days Ever for me. I hope it does for you, as well. That would mean that you still love and miss one another, and also that your life hasn't really been that bad since you stopped singing gaudeamus igitur twice a year and eating Fisherperson's Platter.

Spring has been cold and slow to come fully into herself this season in Northampton. Ivy Day was chilly and rainy. But nevertheless, last weekend, the town was swarmed with women in white, with name tags and tote bags, and the wistful, determined expressions of people who have returned to a place that will always be familiar and yet somehow never be the same, people who have journeyed through time (and airports) to invite their past to meet their future...people who are trying to find a way to squeeze in one more trip to Herrell's before they catch their shuttle back to Bradley.

I hope that these thirteen years have treated you well; that what you learned at Smith, whether it was to remain open-minded when encountering the unfamiliar--such as grapes paired with brown sugar and sour cream for dessert--or to speak up and think hard about what you believe in, has stayed with you and helped you through every victory and every loss.

We never read in the pages of the Alumnae Quarterly about the other kinds of successes in our lives, the brave and beautiful ways we get ourselves through the bankruptcies, miscarriages, divorces, lay-offs, betrayals, illnesses, and the other ugly struggles that come to all of us eventually. I think that's sort of a shame. I consider these things to be the true successes in life; the moments when we rise up amidst adversity and make brave choices and fight our way through. That's the stuff I really wish we were sharing--not that promotions and vacations and babies aren't fantastic; I love hearing about them. But I'd also love to know more about the creative, enlightened ways that each of you has managed to navigate what has been difficult in your lives. How you got sober or recovered when your business failed or found the courage to drop out of medical school and disappoint your parents or leave your spouse or care for your sick mother or whatever it is that you've done bravely these last thirteen years.

Since we don't currently have a forum for exchanging those stories and ideas, I want to take a moment here, on the 22nd of May, 2007, to pause and to acknowledge that for every one of us who has earned her PhD or published six books or married a dreamboat or landed her dream job or bought her dream home or given birth to brilliant children, there are a lot more of us who got a little lost along the way; who made difficult choices between career and family; who quietly left marriages that weren't working or jobs that weren't right; who lost children, or couldn't have them, or had children who were sick. Some of us fled our homes when Hurricane Katrina hit, some of us fled for other reasons, and some of us are still searching for something that really feels like home. Some of us are sick and some of us are nursing spouses or children or parents who are fighting illnesses they may not defeat. And the courage, intelligence, compassion, and strength that these things take are worth applauding.

I hope that all of you are thriving and happy and healthy, but for those of you who aren't--don't let the Quarterly (or anything else) fool you. You are not alone. Whether you are plagued by ambivalence or something easier to diagnose, there is someone among us who is struggling like you.

In the diploma circle it took more time for some of us to find what we had earned than it did for others. If you are feeling lost, I hope you will hang in there, stay on your feet and keep passing to the right (as it were), and yours will come eventually. And if you are one of the ones that have already found the metaphorical diploma with your name on it, I hope you are whooping with delight and throwing your cap up in the air tonight.

Happy Anniversary.
xxoo
Naomi

Tales from Rural Maine: Lucky ME

One of the particular quirks of being me--and, consequently, also of being a person in the world who encounters me--is that while I groove on some aspects of society really well, I more often function like I'm from another place. Like, perhaps I used to be a mermaid. Or maybe I'm from some crazy place like Bohemia, except I don't really seem to have an accent.

Mostly I "pass" in (rural) American society by smiling a lot and asking questions with a sincere curiosity and warmth. It also helps that 9 out of 10 people here know I'm from here, or they know I teach someone they love yoga here, so they endow me with a certain amount of cred right out of the gate. This will often buy me enough time to learn what I need to learn before they fully cotton on to my cluelessness and get fed up.

Today, the kind folks at Tozier's Market in Bucksport had the sort of encounter I'm talking about.

A forty-something-year-old woman walks in the door, puts a paper on the counter and then says, cheerfully and with an almost childlike enthusiasm, "I'd like a lottery ticket, please! How does that work?"

The cashier sized me up and I don't know if she is just kind in her heart or if she made a decision to be kind right then--I think both--but she ever so graciously began at the beginning, which was just what I was hoping for.

"Do you want one of these? [pointing to the logos for some lotteries] Or one of these, that you scratch? [gesturing to the scratch tickets]"

Her assessment that I might not know the difference between a scratch ticket and a lottery ticket was incorrect, but I felt grateful that she did perceive that I knew next to nothing about what I was trying to do.

Me: "Wow! Who knew there were so many? I would like the kind that they draw numbers for? That kind. Not the scratch...How does that go?"

"Well, tonight you have Magic Number Balls [or something, I can't remember what she really said] and Lucky Winners [or something else; I really can't remember what the various lotteries are called. There really are a lot of them!]."

Me: "That sounds great! How much do they cost?"

"Well...this one is one dollar and that one is two dollars."

Me, brightly: "I'll take the one for one dollar, please."

As the clerk prints me a ticket, she explains: "The drawing will be tonight."

Me: "Okay! Exciting. So is that something that will be in the TV?"

By this point, her colleague had come over and they were both so sweetly observing me, like they couldn't quite get a handle on why I don't know anything about lotteries. Or maybe even TV.

The other clerk said, "Well...I think it may happen right before the evening news...?" And she sort of paused, as if to see if I understood what evening news was. I nodded. "Or, you can call the store and the clerk here will tell you the winning number...Or you can check...online..." And with the online bit, she trailed off. I think she thought she'd lose me there. Little does she know that what I lack in lottery know-how I more than make up in online know-how!

"Online! Perfect. Thank you!"

The first clerk rang me up and said: "One winning lottery ticket. That'll be $1.79."

Me, being funny: "Do I have to pay extra for a winning one?"

Clerk: Laughs. "Nope. It's included."

I'm not sure it's possible to convey the air of sweet confusion about the whole thing. It was utterly inconceivable to the women serving me that a grown adult who seemed to have her wits about her and definitely seemed sober would walk into a convenience store and not have any comprehension about how lotteries work. I must have seemed like an idiot. And they were SO nice about it. I love kind people, I really, really do.

When I got out to my car, I realized in my excitement about buying a lottery ticket, I'd forgotten something I went there for, so I went back in just as they were saying to a third colleague, "No! I don't think she'd ever bought a lottery ticket before!" Total bafflement reigned. It was all so charming.

They were surprised to see me, but I let them know with my smile and my body language that I know it seems funny that I don't know about lottery tickets. We all laughed--I totally got why it was odd.

And realizing I wasn't insulted--we were all on the same page--they asked the burning question, "Have you really never bought a lottery ticket?"

I explained how I'd bought a MegaBucks on my 18th birthday, but that was a really long time ago, and since then I'd bought a couple over the years as gifts for people, but it was always so many years apart and I never quite did understand how any of it worked or what it all cost or how you check the numbers or which one is best or how often they have drawings or any of that stuff. Like many things in life, my conscious awareness ended in 1990. I'm also always surprised when a first-class postage stamp isn't 25 cents.

I left really hoping she did sell me a winning lottery ticket. Wouldn't that be great?  I could buy those clerks a present--and also in all the press conferences, I could tell the story about how one day, I just felt lucky and decided to ask someone how to buy a lottery ticket and they were so nice to me and then we won! 

I bet that story would be in the TV...and also online...!