On a Sunday

Sunday walks are my favorite walks. I love walking on any day of the week, but particularly on Sundays. People seem friendlier. Yards look better kept. Cars drive slower. Dogs bark softer. I'm fully prepared to accept the fact that all of this is in my mind. It's as though everyone in the city, myself included, has gotten the questionable stuff out of their system over the weekend and is thinking about the week ahead as they water their gardens or watch their kids play or chat with their neighbor or heat up the coals, and have no time to give much thought to the strange lady walking alone at sunset down the sidewalk. As though we all - both them and me - believe that no harm can come to us on a Sunday. Maybe it's a remnant of my days in Sunday school surfacing, giving me a false sense of security on the holy day. Every other day of the week, I wish I had a more obvious reason for walking. A dog. A bag of groceries. A flashy camera. A casserole to deliver. Anything to answer the questions that I imagine arising in the minds and the eyes around me. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I feel like I'm slightly somehow inadvertently propositioning every thing that I walk by. I sense sideways glances and pauses in low-toned weekend-business discussions. Like I, despite my calm appearance, could potentially do or say something to get the party started at any second. Or maybe they just need to say something to me, then I'll get the party started. I scurry past each person, each group, purposeful and with a set jaw, till I'm well out of party-starting range. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I feel kind of creepy when I walk. Like parents get one look at me and call their kids in for dinner, in where it's safe from the strange lady walking down the street alone. Dogs don't seem to trust me on those days, either. Trotting away with their ears low, ready to nip at the weirdo who just wants to give them a pat. Neighbors watch me walk by, noticing my resemblance to the menacing character on the "neighborhood watch" signs posted all over the place, the one with the pointy black hat and cape and a large red X over it. I've always wondered how those signs work. Do people in a neighborhood really get together and say to each other "let's watch out for one another and show those bad guys they can't mess with any of us...'cause if they mess with one neighbor, they mess with the whole neighborhood!" and then they cheer and hoist their signs high in the air and go around, together as neighbors, and plant those signs. Frightening the bad guys and the strange ladies. I hope that's how they work. I feel none of these hidden, and probably mostly imagined, thoughts from people on a Sunday. All I sense from people on a Sunday, if I sense anything at all, is "I hope nothing bad happens to that nice lady walking down the street alone." That's all I sense in the smiles, nods, waves, and good evenings. Enough to make a strange lady's heart soar and to make walking every day of the week worth it.            

Pie.

For a while, I was pretty sure I was moving back home this summer and not renewing my contract, as many of my posts on here might have indicated. What a roller coaster. One week, I was in love with Turkey, the next I wanted nothing more than to curl up on the couch beside my mom and never leave again. One day, I told my boss that I wouldn't be back next year. A couple days later, I told him that I changed my mind and would like to stay. And both times when I spoke with him, I was sure of what I was saying. Sure of my decision. Luckily, I haven't felt the strong urge to change my mind again, even now that I've been back in Reno for a few days, reconnecting with friends, reestablishing my role as a family member, reacquainting myself with a place that will always feel like home. Home, home. I know that at the end of the summer, I'll be returning to Turkey for another year. And I'm pretty sure I'll be looking forward to it.

The thing is, I'm always going to miss my family and Reno. I'm always going to miss my grad school cohort. I'm always going to miss my PC Romania friends and my old high school drama buddies. I'm never going to live those lives again. They're gone. If I tried to move back to and recreate any past time of happiness, it would never feel the same. I imagine it would only feel hollow and superficial. I do, at times, really miss my old self and the person I was in those places. I'm not wildly different depending on where I am, but I feel like there's some inner glow that I just don't or didn't feel in certain places and stages of my life. Glow is a cheesy word, but I can't think of any other word to describe it. I didn't feel glowy in China. At all. And I didn't feel it much when I was in Eugene, either. It's a certain self-confidence and contentedness that makes me not question and dissect everything I do. It makes me laugh more. It makes me happier. I don't understand fully what that inner glow depends on, but it doesn't feel as bright as I'd like it to in Turkey. And that's part of why I think I want to stay. What is it that I'm lacking there that I had elsewhere, where the glow was more solid? Can I create it on my own, anywhere? Does it mean I need a new hobby? I need more people? Closer people? More sleep? Better Turkish? A bigger piano? A different job? Stronger coffee? I want to figure this glow thing out and see if I can master it. Master myself. My thoughts and my own happiness. I know that it is, mostly, all up to me, but jeez what a big task. Making myself happy. It's easier to blame outside things - mean people, a bad job, a crappy apartment. But those are all things that I am in control of and can change. I can choose and adjust the adjectives that go with those nouns. There's no reason for me to be unhappy and unglowy in Turkey. So, my task for next year is to dissect life piece by piece and find the pieces that bring about the most significant amount of glowiness and cultivate them. Preserve them in a jam jar. Maybe I'll even make a pie chart or a graph or something displaying the results of my dissecting. Or just a pie. Pie is pretty glowy.