Author: lizpres

Erin Janell Hill & The Connection of the Internet

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College. Oh college. Texas A&M, 1992-1995. This was where I truly found my people and my place. My people! From freshman year, meeting Mary Matella and Julie Polzer and Jana Sneller Bermudez (all within days of arriving at campus!), I felt immersed in the life of the mind, a life filled with laughter, a life filled with adventure and change and opportunity.

Part of this blossoming was after sophomore year, when I applied to work as an opinion columnist at The Battalion, the school’s daily newspaper. I didn’t get the job as a columnist, but they hired me as front-desk receptionist. In my first week they offered me a guest column, then allowed me to write one all summer, then I was hired. During this time, I met two people who would change my life. Erin Janell Hill, another columnist, is one of the truest, bluest, best, kindest, funniest, most ridiculous and tender and amazing person I’ve ever known. There will be more than one story about Erin during this year, but I’m going to start with the discovery of EMAIL and all of its glories.

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Erin consulting with our editor, Sterling Hayman, in the Battalion newsroom.

With my truest friends, there is always a courtship period, much like falling in love. That time when you first recognize a like mind, and can’t get enough of it. For Erin and me, that fall of 1994 was an immersion in a friendship like no other. We can each talk more than almost anyone else can stand, and yet, constantly interrupting each other, I genuinely feel like I never hear enough from her (and even more wonderfully, believe she feels the same way about me). Those two years left when we were both at school, it sometimes seemed that something didn’t really happen to me until Erin knew about it.

Which led us to one night, in the grimy, ink-soaked basement room of The Battalion. At the time, Lyle Lovett, a former Battalion reporter, was married to Julia Roberts, so I was digging through the morgue (the history of all stories at The Battalion) trying to find his clippings. I could hear Erin’s laugher coming down the hall, so I ran out to meet her — gleefully.

As we walked into the room, chattering over each other, I urgently asked her if she had read my latest email. At the time, this meant a black screen computer, filled with type in green or orange letters (depending on the monitor) with no italics, bold or … emoticons (can you imagine a LIFE BEFORE EMOTICONS?). Yes, that’s right, we put things in all caps a lot.

Anyway, Erin and I were frequent and fervent email users — what I wouldn’t give to have that correspondence at hand now. All of those letters filled with the huge questions we considered and daily minutia we experienced since we had last seen each other. And we went to the ’email computer’ set in the back room — right next to the morgue — and she sat down to read my email. As she read it, she’d say responses out loud, and I, still fruitlessly digging through the files for Lyle Lovett’s articles, would laugh and respond. The feeling of warmth and love in that room was a moment I would pin and put in my heart every day if I could.

That ability to constantly connect with Erin back at the beginning of email seemed like the very best hope for what the Internet could bring: Developing friendships, nurturing friendships, empowering friendships. Erin still lives in Bryan, Texas, and we see each other as often as we can. Months go by between even a ‘like’ on Facebook, and yet the friendship we nurtured in those black-and-orange emails in 1994 still makes me glow with love. Knowing and loving Erin helped me see what wondrous possibilities life holds, and introduced me to one of the best people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.

I haven’t stopped smiling since I started typing this email. Oh, the joy of that yesterday.

Missy Frazier and Silliness

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I had a hard time fitting in during high school — I hadn’t gone to school with the same people for middle school and elementary, and my interests weren’t necessarily the same as the people I knew. Also, and this is true today, I took myself too seriously and wasn’t always willing to laugh at things that were funny. Missy Frazier, who drove a Oldsmobile 78 in 1988 and who was one of the first people in our class to get her drivers license (sorry so many of the stories center around cars: This was Houston in the 70s and 80s, people — the bike stories will come, but, they gather speed slowly). As such, she had power and style — the Olds 78 was not only incredibly big engine with an unbelievable beige paint job, it also had power windows and locks that were controlled by VACUUM TUBES. Gather round children, and we’ll tell you stories.

Anyway, Missy Frazier and her car were the source of much joy for me in 9th grade. She let me tag along many places, she invited me over to watch her very sophisticated and funny parents playing cards with their friends (and her older sister create her awesome aura of awesomeness). This was the era of Love Shack from The B-52s, and the memory of driving down the empty roads between our school and our suburbs with the song at full blast, laughing and singing, is a joyous one.

ImageMissy and I started designing outfits for holidays — painting boxer shorts and t-shirts with an entire rainbow of puffy paints. This was a way to declare our friendship with each other, to stand out in the crowd, and to while away the hours after school. We’d start with an idea, and then riff on it and add to it until we felt the outfits were sufficiently crazy, laughing all the time about how silly we’d look. In this classic outfit, although Missy wasn’t a vegetarian, I had just become one, and we painted “Gobble Gobble Save the Turkeys” on the front. 

Those days were hard ones, figuring out how to fit in at Westbury, learning how to be a proper Rebellette … just wait for an upcoming story … and mourning my friends from middle school many miles away on the other side of Houston. If it weren’t for Missy’s unbridled joy for life and her open-hearted acceptance of my odd ways, those days might have shaded into impossible. I’m grateful for her love of silliness, which sustained me and encouraged me in those long-ago days.

Melissa McDonald & Inclusion

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Melissa McDonald was everything I wasn’t. Tiny in stature, with amazing blond ringlets and a charming, subtle way about her, she was my much admired friend in middle school. I liked her, I thought she was funny, and I was also in awe of her: She just had it all together. She had a crush on a HIGH SCHOOLER! She and her sister Kim (pictured, with me the giant in the middle) were best friends, even though Kim was TWO YEARS OLDER! These distinctions were big deals among the kids of Sidney Lanier Middle School in Houston, Texas in the mid-1980s.

SCAN0037Melissa lived in one of the coolest parts of town, West University, on Robinhood (I still remember the number, too) (I ADORED this girl!). She had two much younger sisters, and all four of them lived with their parents in a house that was apparently much smaller than other houses in West University. This was a source of some embarrassment to Melissa, and she had a strict, never-broken, no-visitors-allowed policy. I worked on getting an invitation to her house for years — I don’t know why, I thought being in the inner sanctum would signal, finally, acceptance of some sort that I was so desperate for in middle school (this story takes place a very long time before I learn that acceptance comes from within).

So one day, after years of being friends, Melissa agrees to have me over. I plan what I’m going to wear, and what I’m going to do, as if it is a visit to the White House. At her house, after my mom dropped me off, she put a blindfold on me, very tightly, and led me through her house to her and Kim’s room.

When I entered that sanctuary (with absolutely no peek to any other part of the house), I was entranced. I still remember with absolute clarity their gorgeous, jewel-like room, neat as a pin and with so many personal effects for the two most glamorous people I knew. We stayed there for hours, talking and laughing and just — being. It felt so good, to be trusted with entrance to a very beloved and private place. I felt like I had earned some star of approval. When my mom picked me up (with the blindfold in reverse, although I begged and wheedled to get to see more of the house …), I was glowing and floating.

Sometimes, in my dreams, I still think about that room. It’s a place I sometimes go to in my fondest times, a place where I feel happy, included and trusted.

Carey Donnelly & the Power of Team

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When I interviewed for the job that would bring me from Houston, Texas to my beloved Baltimore, Md. way back in 1996, Carey Donnelly was part of the team that interviewed me. At one point, I forgot an obvious word (a habit that I now blame on my children but which clearly predated them) and asked for her help. She said, “I don’t know the word.” And between that and her impeccable sense of style and fast, stylish sports car, I knew she was way too cool for us to be friends.

That was true for the first few months of my employment, and then a small moving trauma brought us together. I had moved thousands of miles without knowing anyone, and settled into a small suburb right by our office. It was — lonely. So after being there a few months, I left my sublet and rented an apartment in Mount Washington, an urban community near downtown Baltimore. It was an attic apartment with wood floors; love at first sight.

I hired movers, and they delivered everything except my gorgeous, beloved, bought-with-my-first-adult-paycheck-ever red couch. It was … too big. Too big for the stairs, too big for the apartment, too big to get anywhere. After canting it over the third story fire escape with three men carrying it, then removing the burglar bars from the windows, they got it as far as the … kitchen. And there I sat on it, crying.

It seemed so important! and a symbol of something! and not sure of next steps, I called Carey.

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My goodness. That girl — a friend should always have Carey with her on a hard day. She might have been a bit cool in the interview, and training me every day (again and again) tried her patience, but — with a couch tragedy on my hands, Carey sprung into action. In what seemed like two seconds, she had arrived at my apartment — with food. She brought good cheer. She brought a certainty that we could do it, and she brought stubbornness. She even brought Dr. Pepper!

We cemented our friendship that day, wedging the couch between the kitchen and the bedroom, then between the kitchen and the bathroom, and then just in different parts of the kitchen, until finally giving in and letting go. She stayed for hours. We got sweaty and mad. We laughed and laughed and laughed. I asked her why she didn’t give me the word in that darn interview, and she gave me her line, which she maintains to this day: “I had no idea what word you wanted!”

ImageFrom the start of that evening, we became a team. Our boss, Mitch, was happy to join in, and the rapport — the laughter, the friendship, the confidence that we were good at our job and better together — is something I still value 15 years later.

Work is great when it is effective, and infinitely better when it is fun. Though we only work together rarely these days, Carey remains my most stylish friend — and one of the truest.

P.S. Carey helped me locate a ‘sofa mover’ on the following Monday who came to my apartment, took the whole thing apart, and put it in the living room without a second thought. All problems have solutions — and the best problems also create friendships.

P.P.S. In looking for tonight’s photos, I found the one of Jana and I from last night’s story, and included it there.

 

Jana Sneller (Bermudez, now) & Being Known

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Jana Sneller got me in college. She just … she got me. She cracked me up, she treated me kindly, she knew me and she remembered me. For my 21st birthday, she showed me what it means to be known.

Early in the day, after giving me strict instructions to ‘look nice,’ she picked me up. As you see in the accompanying photo, I had a really awesome hat on, because I always obeyed Jana and I thought the hat was adorable. She parked me in the passenger seat of her crappy, beloved car and started driving. Telling me absolutely nothing about her plans, we whiled away the hours in the car, gossiping and laughing.

SCAN0049When we arrived, it was to the wonderful city of Austin, her hometown and a town I’ve always loved but spent didn’t know well. Our first stop, she took me to the famous Mount Bonnell in downtown Austin and got me out of the car. We walked up the lovely path, until at the top, revealed by fog I SWEAR I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP — there was fog in Texas! — was Jana’s wonderful dad, Dave, and her two youngest brothers, Matt and Jeff (all pictured). They were there holding signs that said, “Happy birthday, Elizabeth!” with their new puppy. It felt … astonishing. That someone else’s family would love me enough to stand on a mountaintop with signs to celebrate my birthday. To wait for me on a mountaintop with signs — this was before cell phones!Image

The day had just begun. Jana next took me to Book People, a famous bookstore in Austin, and said I was permitted to look at books AS LONG AS I WANTED TO. Jana was … not a reader (I mean, she knew HOW to read, but … she preferred to work out). She sat in a chair and patiently waited as I examined poetry, fiction and more books that I could find in College Station for what seemed like hours. I don’t even remember what I bought — just the feeling, again, that someone who didn’t HAVE to love me by blood would choose to treat me so well.

And then we went to West Lynn cafe. I was a vegetarian at the time, and it was the finest vegetarian restaurant in Austin. She had made reservations, and we were there right on time. I remember I ordered enchiladas. I remember Jana insisted that we drink a glass of wine — I was turning 21, after all! — and I begged off, saying I hated wine. Jana was unmoved, and ordered them to bring us a glass of the sweetest wine they had, “so it tastes like apple juice,” I said. They complied, bringing us a sugary sweet Gewurztraminer.

I don’t remember the conversation–I’m sure it was similar to all of our conversations, since we were only friends while we were young and enthusiastic. Boyfriends, mutual friends, other people we knew, professors, and our future careers probably took up some of the time, and teasing each other and laughing at silly stories we knew or made up took up more.

Jana had an early class the next day, I think — while I stayed at her parents’ house other times, I think that night we drove back to College Station. I don’t remember the drive to Austin, but in my memory the drive back late at night, talking over the day with Jana, was a fizzy, delicious delight.

We grew apart, and haven’t talked in decades. I think of her often, but never more so than on my birthday, when I remember how precisely she knew me, and how amazing it felt to be known.

Suzanne Beville Kiker: The Present of a Pedicure

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In Arlington, Va. there is no shortage of places to get a pedicure. While we lived there, my beloved mother-in-law and I had a favorite one, in Shirlington just next to the Cake Love bakery. One day while my two children were sleeping, we left them in my husband’s care and snuck off to have our toenails painted. 

I consider pedicures a sacred time of girl talk — the more private, the better. We had been having a lovely visit, and I hectored Suzanne to share many of her life stories with me.  I was asking her question about her youth, and her brothers, and her parents. She was very receptive, telling me stories of Florida and North Carolina in the 1940s and 1950s and talking about her parents marriage and how young her brothers were when they died. 

Suzanne, Clyde, Jason and Baby O

In front of her home of more than 40 years,  Suzanne’s face exudes warmth and love.

I turned to her, over the fumes of the paint and the ministrations of the pedicurists, and asked how she always managed to be so cheerful despite a complicated life. She looked quietly resolved, and said, “My parents were unhappy people, and I decided at a young age that was not going to be my route in life. I chose happiness. I choose it every day.” 

At the time, I protested and doubted. I’ve read self-help books, I know about The Secret, I’ve heard all about the power of positive thinking. But a smart, kind, loving woman like my mother in law just declaring that she chose happiness seemed … well, crazy. 

I pointed out unhappy times in my life, and how they precluded joy. I emphasized that sadness and exhaustion make it impossible to decide to be happy. I argued that she must be unhappy many times — maybe even RIGHT NOW. She smiled, serenely, and said it was a decision she made that served her well. 

At this point we were at the drying rack, where our toes were being warmed. We put on our flip-flops and walked gingerly to the car. The toenail polish stayed on for months. 

In the years since, I’ve chosen unhappiness again and again. I’ve dwelled on slights, and I’ve inflicted more than my share. And I still think that I’m partially right — that you can’t just ‘choose’ happiness, and that dwelling on sadness is one way to exorcise it. 

And then I see Suzanne, and see the love and joy she exudes in a quiet, thoughtful, generous way. And I wonder. One day a year or so, just to see how it feels, she inspires me to choose happiness. And for that, and for Suzanne, I’m thankful. 

Ed Williams & The 280 ZX

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SCAN0031-2In the summer of 1992, just after my high school graduation, I took a job assisting a real estate professional in Katy, Texas, about 30 miles from where I lived in Houston. My mom had just married my stepfather, Lou, and I was dealing with the sadness around that by going as far as I could for as long as I could until it was time to leave for college.

One day, my trusty beloved blue Toyota Corolla broke down. My mom needed her car, my high school boyfriend needed his car, and I couldn’t figure out what to do. I needed to get to work, for my own sanity and for my work ethic, and I hated to ask for help. After panicking for a while, I decided to call my friend Ed Williams, himself a 1992 Westbury high school graduate.

Since I met Ed, he’s loved cars. He drew cars at school, he talked about cars when we drove to school, he knew everything about every kind of car, and he hoped to be a car designer when he grew up. After making it through high school without a car, he had recently acquired a low-slung, red, sexy, complete junker of a car, an ancient 280ZX. He loved that car far more than it deserved.

Ed was hesitant — and yet Ed is a very kind guy. With some gentle persuasion (begging) he agreed. I walked over to his house in my very fancy work clothes in the early pre-dawn, and he gave me the keys to that car.

I hadn’t driven a stick shift in a year or two — as a matter of fact, I’d only been driving for a year or two, and had already been in several accidents. So his trusting me with his stick-shift, red 280ZX was an act of faith — an act of kindness.

That car was a total piece of crap. I’m not sure if it was a terrible car or I was a terrible driver or a terrible combination of both, but that was the longest round-trip drive I’ve ever taken. The car smoked, it stalled, and its rusty frame frightened me. I could barely get in and out of its low-slung seat. I prayed and prayed to get all green lights so I wouldn’t have to stop, downshift and start the entire painful process over. But I got to work. I got to work on time. I called Ed, telling him that both the car and I had made it without incident, and I brought the car back to him that evening.

I hate driving, it’s something I’ve always been especially bad at. I hate asking for help, acknowledging weakness is not a particular strong suit, either. But my memory of that day, stopped at the Katy Freeway toll booth and praying I could get the car started to drive away, reminds me of what it is to feel cared for. Of what it is to feel not alone in the world. Ed, loaning me his beloved car that he knew I could barely drive — That is just one yesterday that makes me appreciate Ed Williams and my own journey.