51. Anna and I walk back to the dorms past the reservoir after sneaking around in the storm tunnels by ourselves (read: without boys) at three in the morning, under a still strange moon and silver clouds.

52. Lydia and I drive through the Catlins in the freezing cold and pull off the side of the road to see sea lions in Surat Bay.

53. Sylvia and I go to Farmer’s to buy fishnet stockings for our first tribal duet together; later we go back to her house and watch British TV shows and work on our coin bras.

54. My clinical supervisor says “I smile when I hear you work.”

55. I swim with dolphins.

56. I go to a show by myself for the first time and understand consciously that I like my own company.

57. I buy fruit at an outdoor market in Switzerland and the vendor says “Mais vous avez un bonne accent…pour une americaine.”

58. One summer in Colorado we save a tiny bird and nurse it back to health, keeping it in a funny little clay pot and trying to figure out what it wants to eat.

59. I walk by a barbershop quartet singing on a street corner in the U District my first winter in Seattle, and they burst into a song about how they’ve never seen a girl like me before, smiling and pointing at me.

60. Amy and I drive her uncle’s brown 1979 Cadillac from San Diego to San Francisco as our high school graduation trip; we take videos of ourselves driving over the Golden Gate Bride and in Muir Woods.

61. D. says “Ciao amore stella!” when I answer the phone.

62. The hermit crabs skitter out of my way when I go for a moonlight beach walk in Rarotonga and everyone hugs me as I get on the midnight bus to the airport.

63. One of the women at the beach fales in Samoa gives me a bracelet and wishes me good luck with D. the night I leave.

64. The Key Girls and I drive around town one Christmas, looking at the lit houses and singing carols with the windows down, as loud as we can.

65. In Mexico I meet a woman who speaks a Mayan language when I am helping do the camp’s laundry; we both speak a little Spanish and she takes all afternoon to patiently teach me a couple of phrases in her language.

66. I go to my first Fat Freddy’s show in Wellington; we giggle and dance all night and I sing along to the parts of the songs I know.

67. I get totally soaked by a huge wave during a beach walk with David; he takes a picture of me stunned and dripping.

68. I have lunch with Linda for the first time and think that there may be something to this meeting-people-on-the-internet thing.

69. I go to the emergency room with a young kid who has been slipped a roofie in the gay club on Cuba Street; when she wakes up she sees me there by her bedside and says “Are you my auntie?”

70. Wearing gold lame platform stilettos with my gown and mortarboard, I listen to the only good college graduation speech I’ve ever heard: at my own, by Yolanda King, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.

71. In high school a popular girl comes up to me at the senior benches and asks me to write a poem for her to give to her boyfriend who has been in a car accident; later other popular girls, of whom I am deathly afraid, ask for the same favor.

72. Marah and I learn synchronized swimming together at Camp Kahdalea in 1985; it is the first time I have swum in a lake.

73. My mom and I take our first Christmas Day Bike Ride With A Stop For Conch Fritters.

74. I pretend to be Ayla from Valley Of The Horses, age eight, by wrapping a piece of cloth around myself and gathering sticks and leaves from our backyard to make my “pharmacopeia.”

75. I go on an all-women hiking trip to Yosemite National Park.

Posted on August 8th, 2008 by Chiara
Filed under: Everything