Becoming....

            I remember sitting in my women’s studies class during the winter term of 2007. It was shortly after the plane crash. I was still living in Linds’ and my apartment, and I was sitting in this boring class with a horrible teacher who later told me she didn’t care if I was going to my best friend’s funeral, I couldn’t miss the midterm exam. I reflect on that class still with hostility, mostly because of that teacher and her terrible existence (as I said, hostility) but it’s also interesting that because of one person I met in that class, I began work at the Assault Prevention Shuttle as a first step towards forcing myself out there, to make a friend at school. She also introduced me to my college boyfriend… Weird all the things that came out of this one place… Anyways, I remember sitting there and writing this list, of things I wanted for my life. I stumbled upon it the other day and thought I should share where I was seven years ago….

      -          I want to make tons of friends, and carry on Lindsey’s laughter.

-          I want to take part in making people’s lives better.

-          I want to travel the world.

-          I want to be liked by everyone, but not anyone.

-          I want to quit caring about the little things and focus/remember the important ones.

-          I want to tell everyone and anyone how absolutely beautiful and wonderful they are.

-          I want to talk, listen, learn, know.

-          I want to be open-minded.

-          I want to love everyone and let them know this.

-          I never want to forget the people in my life.

-          I want to carry Linds and Steph in my heart no matter how hard it is, and let them continue to teach me.

-          I want to go to the middle of nowhere and scream and laugh and cry.

-          I want to experience everything like has to offer, that will make me feel more appreciative.

-          I want to be passionate.

-          I want to be sad, and know that happiness will always come.

-          I want to smile in the rain, and open my arms to the sky.

-          I want to plant trees and build homes.

-          I want to help my brother feel loved and independent.

-          I want to be my own person.

-          I want to splash in puddles, because that’s all that matters in the end.

-          I want to fight what I feel is wrong.

-          I want to promote what I feel is right.

-          I want to grieve and take back what has been lost.

-          I want my heart to break and be rebuilt with a multitude of love in many different colors.

-          I want to be someone’s world.

-          I want to find the end of a rainbow.

-          I want to go for a walk, to stop and take a step into a different perspective.

-          I want to BREATHE.

-          I want to travel the world, live by the sea, and make the world a more beautiful place.

Seven years have gone by since one of the most iconic moments of my story took place. Coming home has been interesting. I’ve had a lot of conversations about Lindsey and what she means to so many different people. It’s been hard and quite frankly, I’ve felt very much like an asshole, because relative to so many people, I have moved forwards. Not that they haven’t, but I’d find myself feeling like I don’t mourn her loss enough relative to others. I’m not focusing on her enough, I’m not putting enough…. something into this. But I know I haven’t forgotten or moved on or moved past it, I just love so much focusing on the good things about her and what she’s brought into my life, her and her sister Stephanie. A huge piece of who I am today is because of having known those two incredible women. Another huge piece of who I am today is because of losing them and how I lost them. For someone who outwardly admits to having a terrible memory, I can remember so many details of finding out, of reading her last message to me before she got on the plane, of taking care of Greg, of crying, of putting together the slideshows for the funeral, of all of it.

One of the things that came from this plane crash was an intense reevaluation of who I am and who I want to be. There were things I wanted to change about my life and goals that I had that I never really realized I had. I realized that there were things about me that I really hated, things that made me honestly question why someone like Lindsey would want to be my best friend. I learned a lot about who I was and who I wanted to be, and it wasn’t really until Greg and I broke up that I had the freedom and the will to pursue this person. So I made this list as my terrible teacher was lecturing about the history of feminism, and I came up with a driving vision for myself.

Looking at it now, it’s interesting how many of these things I’ve accomplished or am currently accomplishing. It’s interesting to me, how many of these things I still value immensely but have forgotten to be actively pursuing, and it’s interesting how far I still have to go. There are so many things that I could add to this list, as my vision for the next seven years is becoming hypothetically more focused. But really what it comes down to is that I want to be a better person. Coming back has also shown me that this person I was working towards has not completely come to exist yet. As I said, I have more work to do. I have new challenges as well. I’ve become who I am currently, and probably sacrificed some of the good in me for other pieces of good, but I want them all. Maybe I’m being a little selfish, but on this note, I’m ok with that. I hope that the pursuit of becoming who I want to be never ends. But I also hope that I like myself throughout this pursuit…

I’m not really sure where my life is going to take me. I have been at my job for six months and I usually love it, for the time being. I know it’s not my forever, and there are a lot of things that I’d really like to do, and a lot of things that I’d really like to be. It’s hard to pace myself and let me grow into me in the way I want to without hurting others, and then figuring out that balance, and figuring out how to make myself better because of that… But maybe that’s what I meant when I titled this blog, Some Kind of Wonderful…. I am really happy with my life thus far and all the adventures that I have been enveloped in… and maybe that’s a little of what I meant when I named it that too… Maybe I don’t know yet… and I think that’s ok too.

Ramblings from the post-adventure adventure....

            So, let me begin by acknowledging how long it has been since I posted to this blog. I recognize that six months have gone by, and to be honest I’ve started writing a few posts, and never felt like they were things that should actually be finished. That’s the problem with writing. Sometimes something starts as a seed with so many wonderful possibilities, but as it grows it becomes something that the writer didn’t envision, or it doesn’t quite match the image in the writer’s mind. So much of this blog has been me passionately sharing my adventures and ideas about experiencing these adventures. Sometimes I find it hard to match my experiential definition of adventure with that of which I am currently living. Don’t get me wrong, this is an adventure.

I have spent much of the last six months immersed in what I would call domesticity. This is not a bad thing, or a bad word, or a disappointing thing. It simply is, and although I love my job for the time being, and my home, and being closer to family and friends, this is a very big change for me, as I assume you all thought it might be. Part of the reason I wanted to do this, get a “career” like job, or a “grown-up” job as I like to call it, was to see if this was an avenue I wanted to pursue in my life, for the long-term. I haven’t come to any conclusion yet, however, I do believe I’ve been able to narrow down the general skills I’d like to pursue having for a career, or series of employment experiences that I may choose to have throughout my life. Sounds somewhat ambiguous huh?



  Well, I spent this last weekend down at my dad’s property, and for the first time in a long time, I felt much more like myself than I remembered feeling for a while. I woke up eager to do some manual labor, nail stays on the fence that I was a part of building seemingly forever ago. Throughout the last three years, I’ve commonly had to drag myself out of bed to face this kind of task, but it finally felt normal again, and for that I am immensely grateful. Although I wouldn’t say I’ve experienced much of the things people say returned Peace Corps Volunteers experience when they return to this world (freaking out in grocery stores, snapping at loved ones because they don’t want to hear about your experience, frustrated at the consumerism of this country, annoyed at the pettiness of American’s problems – admittedly I’ve found that last one to be quite comical rather than frustrating). I feel as if I adjusted pretty well, picking up where I left off is what it seemed like.

 

  Yet also over the last six months, I’ve spent a good deal of time feeling pretty crappy about myself and things that I was doing. Case in point: the holidays were exhausting and drug on forever. I can say that I contributed to other people’s unhappiness during that time. And these are people I care about and hold very dear, but I said or did some things that aren’t like me at all, and were not thought through, and were ultimately very hurtful. I don’t need to rehash all of these things again, but I would like to apologize again for these things, because hurting people I love is never my intention nor is it something I want to be a part of who I am. So, I’ve been trying to get back to being a person that I like that I feel is a positive person for people to have in their lives, and although I ultimately feel that way about myself, I do know that I have some work to do.

The holidays were filled with family. My mom came down from Alaska, and my brother, K, and Gracie all came and spent five days with me. I loved having them and being back around family, although it did feel weird after Christmases in Africa. I got to see my cousin Jax and all of the extended Foster clan, which I always enjoy, and I got to see my dad in and out throughout the holiday season. New years was actually really good this year. It wasn’t the beach in Zanzibar, but it was filled with friends and family, and some really good food courtesy of my dad. As many of you know New Years is just simply my least favorite holiday and will probably always be so. I was pretty apprehensive this year to be spending it in Bend, with many of my girlfriends who I actually spent New Years so many years ago with. There were some wounds threatening to surface, but all in all it was a wonderful night. We were walking down the empty streets of downtown when the countdown happened, and it just felt like a good way to celebrate. No countdown, no wasted shenanigans, no big show, just a group of amazing ladies to hug in the middle of the streets at midnight. It was a great night, yet I still hate new years.

  So, anyways, I’ve thought a lot about content for this posting. I could talk about Zambia, which was amazing. I was kind of in a crabby mood for parts of it, because I was about to come home for the first time in two and a half years, but my friend Kate was a wonderful trooper. We traveled down to the Victoria Falls, which is amazing…. Absolutely beautiful! We did a walking safari where we got within 30 yards of a mother rhino and her baby, and we did a lovely booze cruise on the Zambezi river at sunset where I finally got to see my hippos! They’re so cool! Zambia was wonderful, and someday I might flashback and share more about it with you…

I got back to the states on June 30^th. My best friend Katie picked me up from the airport, and it felt like we picked up exactly where we’d left off. I was hosted by Ry and K on the fourth of July, but didn’t make it to the fireworks. The jet lag had full blown caught up with me at that point. Then there was a family rafting trip on my all time favorite river. Several years ago, I mean A LOT of years ago; I wrote a piece at a place called Fishtrap, a writer’s workshop in northeastern Oregon. This piece is entitled “I’m Home” and it is entirely about the Grand Ronde river and what it’s like to have a set of oars in my hands and floating down this river that has felt more like a home to me than many of the places I’ve lived in. Moving around my fair share as a youngster, I had my battle with trying to find my place, that sense of belonging that is seemingly supposed to accompany the nuclear family style dream of a home. It dawned on me one day, that my home was not where my house was, but rather it is there in the Grand Ronde valley.

I’ve come to discover as I’ve gotten older, up into my wise years of early adulthood, that I actually belong in many different places. I have many homes. There are many places that spark this feeling in my heart that I equate to feeling at home. A family friend once used the phrase, “citizen of the world” while talking to me, and this phrase has stuck with me consistently over time, and although I can’t speak to their definition, I’ve come to love defining that phrase for myself and experiencing the adventure that comes with my own personal definition of this. That being said, one of my homes, and probably my oldest home, will always be the Grand Ronde river, so what a place for me to return to when I am fresh off the plane, and really have the opportunity to be at home. It was Gracie and Kaleigh’s first rafting trips and I also took my friend Katie. I can’t honestly do justice with words explaining how great it felt to be there in my raft, oars in hand, reading my favorite river.

I spent a great deal of time immersed in the stress of job hunting, qualifying my skill set, my ideals, and my passions and figuring out if there was even a possibility of merging them into this shape that made sense to me and was actually possible. The first job to call me back is the job I now have, and I’m very happy doing this, direct service, working with teenagers, and helping people make better decisions for themselves. I’m very happy with it, for now. Unfortunately this tension and interviewing and job hunting, overshadowed a few pieces of my trip to Alaska, but it was still a wonderful trip just the same. I met my mom in Anchorage in the “slug mobile” as she calls her gynormous diesel pick-up truck and slide in camper. We road tripped around Alaska, went to Denali, and Wrangell-St. Elias and hung out in her spacious traveling home.

I never actually saw Denali, but in my mind I got to see something better. Don’t get me wrong, I love mountains, but I think and I hope that someday I will get to see Denali the mountain. We were on the bus back to our camp ground and we stopped to see a beautiful bear on the hillside across from us. My mom said she thought she saw something white further up and I saw this beautiful wolf slide into the brush. No one but my mom and I saw it, and I was feeling like one of those tourists cry wolf when looking at a coyote or something. The bear started walking up the hillside towards the brush, and he too disappeared into it. Shortly thereafter the wolf came running out with a caribou leg, and the bear was following close behind. The wolf dropped the leg and the bear plopped down on top of it, reclaiming his territory. It was so amazing to see them interacting with each other, and to see a wolf! How cool!

Years and years ago my brother and I learned what our totem animals were, me being the wolf and him being the bear. I think both of us have always been drawn to our individual animal representations over the years as well. That being said, I thought there was something familiar in the way the bear, we’ll call him Ryan, was chasing the wolf and stealing back the meat, then plopping down on top of it to keep the wolf from getting it. That’s not to say the bear (or Ryan) is selfish whatsoever, but it did seem like something we’d do to each other simply to remind the other that we’re not done playing our good-humored sibling rivalry game. It was an incredible sight and my mind was blown. Seeing a wolf…

            Oh and I got to see a lot of glaciers in Alaska, and I love glaciers. They’re so cool. Ok I’m beginning to get a little nerdy on here, but glaciers are amazing, living things. I know that sounds weird for those that have never been up close to a glacier but they breathe and move, and change and are just amazing. So I got to spend a lot of time with glaciers, and even hiked across one in Wrangell-St. Elias, with my mom. Glaciers are so cool! Anyways, I started work shortly after I returned from Alaska, and have been on this adventure ever since.

            I continue to learn about myself, constantly and incessantly, although this is what I hope for in my life. I want to constantly be growing and becoming a better version of who I am. I need this piece to fill some of the holes that I had and I’m glad that I have the opportunity to have this experience in a long line of experiences that I have had and will have. I’m not sure how to conclude an inadequate summary of the last six months of my life. It has been wonderful and it has been a struggle, and it has been filled with laughter and happiness. I assume that is much how most of my life will go, and I am absolutely ok with that, and feel immensely lucky because of that. And each of you are a part of that, so I cannot thank you enough. You’ve helped make my life something that I am very happy with… I only hope in some way I am doing the same for you…

And now….. pictures….

1. The Victoria Falls. 2. The bridge on the Zambian side and the mist from the falls. 3. Kate and I hiking down to the Zambezi river below the falls. 4. The falls yet again 5. The rhino mother and her baby. 6. Hippos swimming in the Zambezi above the falls 7. Sunset on the booze cruise. 8. My dad and Gracie sitting by the Grand Ronde, reminiscent of my childhood doing the same thing with my dad. 9. My raft (previously my mother’s raft) tied up at Malibu 10. My niece beating me up on the river! 11. Katie at the oars 12. Katie and I hanging out at Malibu 13.The Grand Ronde 14.The Wallowas in NE Oregon 15.-18. Denali National Park 19. Driving down to Valdez 20.-21. Glaciers are SO COOL! 22. Kennecott Mine in Wrangell-St. Elias National park, the biggest national park in the United States 23.-24. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park 25. Katie, Carina, Myself and Megan toasting to and celebrating Lindsey 26. Christmastime! 27. Mom, Gracie and I out on the beach 28.New Years: Gracie, Meagan, Me, Kelsey, Katie, Annette and Emily 29.-30. Megan and Katie and I celebrating Katie’s bon voyage to Ireland 31.-35. The property 36. Driving back through NE Oregon…

Enough pictures for you folks?