I will turn 23 on a train crossing the Romanian-Moldovian border on May 6th, the first day of Orthodox Easter for Romanians and Moldovans, a milestone for me, and a meaningless Monday for most of the rest of the world.
The last year has been the most extraordinary year of my life, not only because of the things I have done, the people I have met and the places I have seen, but also because of the possibilities that have opened up in front of me. This last week as I have prepared to leave Bucharest, the capital of Romania and a city that has come to feel like home, I have spent a good deal of time reflecting on the adventures of 22 and contemplating hopes for 23. There are too many memories and moments to record here, and I still have yet to make sense of most of them. Each flashing moment of importance that I remember feels as if it were a piece of a puzzle or mosaic. I hope that once this fellowship year is done the funny and the serious pieces, the easy and the incredibly hard pieces, and the brilliantly clear and confusing pieces will come together in a larger picture, project or testament. However, for now I have only the pieces:
Things I never expected to do while 22:
– Ice skating in India in the top of a mall in a T-shirt. We arrived at the ice rink in an open air rickshaw.
– Attempting to float a candle down the Ganges. Banana leaf boat capsized the Holy Candle within <2 seconds.
– Making friends with the street girls who stopped me every day on the way home from the Delhi slums. I never gave them money and they never stopped asking, but they were always happy to see me.
– Eating red velvet cake off of real china in Delhi in a coffee shop Martha Stewart’s mother would have wet her pants over. Hello turquoise tiling and cast iron ovens.
– Waltzing in a rooftop apartment to 80s music in an Indian suburb
– Practically crying from ecstasy when an expat offered me a jar of peanut butter in India. God bless you, Jeff.
– Reading the entirety of Long Walk to Freedom in 4 days
– Traveling through townships solo in a public van that could be opened only by sticking one’s arm out the window and pulling the exterior door handle
– Going on a safari and humming ‘Circle of Life’ under my breath the entire time
– Taking up yoga- in South Africa. After living in India for 2 months.
– Holding the 3 day old baby girl of a 19 year old girl I had interviewed the previous week who was abandoned by her boyfriend and her family
– Baking unintentionally pink cucumber bread. Vanilla and red food coloring are packaged in the same bottles in South Africa.
– Living with rats
– Sleeping in a room that formerly housed the Vice President of Liberia with a lovely alcove for bucket showers.
– Wearing a floor length bright pink African skirt suit to church, followed by the beach
– Going speed dating on Valentines Day at a restaurant owned by Gaddafi’s former belly dancer
– Visiting a Liberian jail that had only recently received inmate and jailor uniforms, enabling one to tell the difference between inmate and guard
– Snuggling during a springtime siesta on a ski slope trying not to slide downhill.
– Turning 23 on a train bound for Moldova.
Above all this year has shown me possibilities for my life that I didn’t contemplate. I could teach English in India, learn to wear a sari, and go with the rest of the middle class in the country to watch a Bollywood film every weekend. I could devote my life to international development in Africa and spend years working in obscure and struggling corners of the globe trying to bring health, peace and good governance to poor and disadvantaged women. I could work for an American company in East Europe and, in 20 years, throw my kids in the back of a german car for weekend skiing trips. I could open a hostel on some remote pacific island or work for the foreign service or play my flute on the street corners of a European capital or run for public office. 22 has taught me that the perimeters of my possibilities are defined only by my own perspective and desires. 22 has taught me that this freedom is true of very few people, and that, for now, I am one of the lucky ones.
So here’s to you 22. You’ve been a life-changing, ridiculous, intense and wonderful year. Here’s to the friends, the lessons learned, the really hard parts, the goodbyes, and the quiet triumphs. Here’s to the tears on airplanes and the whoops on mountaintops. Here’s to Minnesota, Boston, Maine, Delhi, Nepal, Cape Town, Monrovia, London, and Bucharest. Here’s to the new opportunities, new perimeters and new horizons. Here’s to 23.
A Corner in Time 