There are some moments that change your game, your view, your life.  They start out normally, but well, they never quite end that way, do they?  This is one of mine.

—

Yesterday afternoon, I decided to go to the grocery store to get a few things: some spinach to juice, some more brussels sprouts, and some fresh lettuce (no, really…this is how boring I am).

I got in and out of the store pretty quickly and got into my car. I noticed my tire pressure light was on but just figured I was a little low. As I backed out, I heard the all-too-familiar “kerthunk kerthunk kerthunk” of a flat tire. I maneuvered my car over to the side of the parking lot and got out to look at it. I might have uttered a few choice words when I saw the front tire on my driver’s side completely flat.

As I was walking around to my passenger’s side to get my roadside assistance card out of my glove box, when I heard a man say, “It’s too hot to wait for them. I’d love to change your tire.”

I turned around. The man was clearly homeless, but he was smiling and approached me without a trace of aggression.

I considered my options. I’ll be honest. There was fear. Part of me wanted to say no, to protect myself and sit alone in my car and wait because who knew what could happen? But it was the afternoon, broad daylight, with people coming in and out of the parking lot. What could go on, really? What would happen if I declined? I couldn’t really drive away.

When the man earnestly asked again, I agreed.

“I don’t have any cash,” I said sheepishly.

“I don’t mind!” he said, again.

I asked him if I could get him anything, and he refused again and again, finally admitting that he would love a bag of plain Lay’s potato chips and a Diet Pepsi.

Together, we unloaded the curriculum and crap from the back of my car. I went to lift a particularly heavy box, when he stopped me, insisting that I let him do it.

While he worked, I ran into the store. I grabbed several bags of chips and as many cold Diet Pepsi’s as I could hold.

When I brought them outside, he was already done and had loaded everything back into my car. He explained that he used to work at a garage and that my alignment was off and it had basically eaten away my tire.

I thanked him profusely for making my Sunday so much easier.

As I drove away, I saw him open one of the Diet Pepsis and smile.

I was smiling too, but it was through tears.

I don’t have anything profound to say, other than it’s things like this that renew my faith in people, over and over again. And for that, I am grateful.

—

Read about other things that changed my life here.

There are some moments that change your game, your view, your life.  They start out normally, but well, they never quite end that way, do they?  This is one of mine. You can read about the rest here.

—

I was frazzled and running late, barely making it to the post office by the 3:30 deadline for passport applications. I wasn’t just running late for that deadline, I was applying for my passport late, due to a series of snafus and issues. I’d been stressed about it for days and was so relieved when I reached the counter after waiting for the woman in front of me to apply for herself, her husband and their five children (aka FOREVER) literally in the nick of time.

I reached the counter and triumphantly displayed my neatly typed application, my birth certificate, and my driver’s license. The gentleman behind the counter asked, “Okay, where is your copy of your driver’s license?”

I’m not sure what my face did, but I know I wanted to cry. I looked at him and shook my head, and he laughed and me, and got ready to stack my items up and shove them back across the counter. I smiled, crestfallen, and he stopped.

He leaned over the counter conspiratorially.

“Here’s what I’m going to do for you, Amy…” he said. “I’m going to take all of this and you’re going to sign every document. While I process it, you’re going to RUN across the street and make a copy of your driver’s license. Then, you will come back here and give me that copy and I will give you your receipt. Got it?”

I nodded and smiled. As he filled out the paperwork, I whispered to him: “I need it expedited. I leave in a month.”

His eyes met mine and he threw his head back and laughed, a booming laugh like I’ve never heard.

“Of course you do.”

I ran across the street faster than I have ever moved for an errand, and returned with two minutes to spare. I approached the counter, where he was helping another flustered man, and handed him my copy. He smiled and passed my items back over the counter. I said thank you and smiled.

“Enjoy Paris,” he said. “And by the way…never lose that smile.”

And while it was a cheesy way to end our exchange, I got it then: that if I’d yelled or cried or been rude, I wouldn’t have gotten what I needed. Sadly, that’s my first response too frequently: to stomp my feet and throw a fit about getting my way. But instead it was a simple smile, a sad smile at that, that got me what I needed.

So often I think that helping others or making their day has to be some grand gesture or expensive gift. All I know is that this man, with his laugh and his help and his pity on a stressed out teacher running in after a long day made my day infinitely better, and I hope I can do the same for someone else soon.

There are some moments that change your game, your view, your life.  They start out normally, but well, they never quite end that way, do they?  This is one of mine. You can read about the rest here.

—

We were laying down, watching a documentary about CrossFit, happily tired and comfortable after a morning of massages and delicious soup and views of Lake Tahoe. I was half paying attention to the movie and half reading my Kindle when the subject changed from superhuman feats of strength to the story of an athlete who had lost his father. Listening to him talk about such a profound loss made me tear up, but seriously, who cries at a CrossFit documentary. It felt so stupid.

And so, I did my trademark Amy “hide my crying” move—a yawn and eye rubbing. But he was having none of it, and pulled my hand away from my eyes.

“You don’t have to hide from me, you know,” he said, wiping my face and hugging me.

They were such small words, but as I laid there, crying into his t-shirt—not just about the movie but about so many other small, stupid things, the year that we’ve endured and feeling lucky and dumb and happy all at once—and in my ratty sweats with no makeup and being completely boring on vacation, I realized that he was right.

There are some moments that change your game, your view, your life.  They start out normally, but well, they never quite end that way, do they?  This is one of mine.

—

I remember how cold she was when we first met, barely shaking my hand.  I was told I’d be shadowing her as I learned to teach the life skills class she’d once taught at the art center where I was now working.  I think she smelled my fear as she introduced me to the developmentally disabled adults I’d be teaching.  She cordially showed me curriculum, procedures, and explained a million different things and I felt so stupid compared to her, this confident, competent woman.

Our friendship started a few weeks later, in the parking lot of all places.  We were discussing some work issue when something shifted and before I knew it, we’d been talking for two hours, leaned up against our cars.  From that day forward, our friendship was off and running.

We went hiking and camping, drank Smirnoff Ice in my hot tub, and went to bars.  When my dad had heart surgery, she came with me to the hospital, because even though I’d never said it, she knew I was nervous beyond all belief.  She invited me to float down the river in her giant raft and didn’t even get mad when I realized that I’d left my keys in her car at the top of the river and we’d have to wait for rescue.  She made me my first mojito, and on one of the worst nights of my life, she showed up on my doorstep, uninvited, because she knew I needed her.

She told me over and over again that she didn’t know how to be a friend, that she screwed up every friendship she’d ever had, but that she cared about me.  She said that she was a mess, a problem, a girl who sabotaged herself over and over again.  Naively, I didn’t believe her.  I’d seen the sort of friend she could be to me.  There was no way, I thought.

Still, there was an intensity to our friendship I couldn’t explain.  We loved one another fiercely, but there were times when I felt painfully shamed by her.  She made a joke about my weight in front of co-workers that caused me to cry.  One of our clients had a severe seizure while we were at work, which was a normal occurrence, sure, but she thought I was wrong for calling an ambulance for all the bleeding, a viewpoint she made clear as she screamed about my stupidity in front of co-workers, clients and EMT’s alike.  She would have what she called “bad days” in which she’d stop speaking to me altogether.  I hated the up and down, the roller coaster friendship we’d built, but I thought I could fix it.

I invited her and her boyfriend along to a St. Patrick’s Day party even though I knew she was in a bad mood.  Her voice was sharp that night and I could tell she was spoiling for a fight, which she found, on a porch with the friend of a friend.  After listening to her spew and taunt, a drunk guy had lunged at her, choking her, trying to get her to just shut up.  I cried the whole way home, while she told me repeatedly that she should have fought back.

When I was let go at my job, we lost contact until a mutual friend’s wedding, where she hugged me and explained that she had to go, but that she missed me.  I sent her an email a few weeks later and we agreed to meet for dinner.  For the next few months, we rebuilt our friendship over beers and conversations on her porch.  I mentioned that I’d be hosting a New Year’s Eve party and that she should come.

The day of the party came, and I was dating a new guy I desperately wanted to impress.  I’d invited friends from all walks of life to my apartment and was terribly nervous about how they’d intermix, how they’d like my new boyfriend, how it’d all go.  I’d never heard from her and assumed she’d made other plans.

She showed up around 10 pm, clutching a 32 ounce plastic cup she’d filled with beer, drunk already.  When she came in, she explained that she’d broken up with her long-time boyfriend, that she was a wreck and sad and scared.  That night was a mess: she cried and talked too loud and hit on every guy in the place and generally humiliated me with her antics.  She went outside close to midnight and all I could hear was her yelling, the sound of a man’s voice and finally, my roommate running up the stairs telling me that my friend was getting into a physical altercation with a guy next door.

Thankfully, another friend’s husband took care of the situation and my roommate told me very firmly that if I didn’t ask her to leave, I’d be asked to move out because this girl was a liability.  I shakily asked her to find a cab home in my very bravest voice.  Instead, she grabbed her beer, flipped me the bird and told me I was a pretentious bitch.

When she called the next day, I didn’t pick up the phone.  Nor the day after that.  And while sometimes, I miss her and wish things could have been different, I know in my heart that they never, ever will be.

There are some moments that change your game, your view, your life.  They start out normally, but well, they never quite end that way, do they?  This is one of mine.

—

We met at work.  I was barely 22, freshly divorced, living on my own for the first time, going out way too often, confused and sad and scared of the choices I’d made.  One Friday afternoon, as we put the adults from the day program we worked for on their buses, I mentioned that I was going out that night.  He said he didn’t have friends in the area yet, that he’d just moved here.  I invited him without thinking.  He accepted and I was excited, though I wasn’t sure why.

Late that night, after too many drinks, he kissed me.  It was magical, even in a bar, with loud, terrible music and my friends swirling about, and the taste of whiskey on his mouth.  It blew me away.

—

It all happened so fast: the kiss, the first date, the first “I love you.”  He was the first man to make me feel truly beautiful, to feel desired, to feel alive in my own body.  I was so broken, but he held me.  He wiped my tears and listened; he brought me ice cream and roses the day I lost the job where we’d met.  When I started massage school, he quizzed me on muscles and tendons, listened to me prattle on, drank with me to celebrate my graduation.  He called and yelled at my landlord when they refused to fix my air conditioner, after too many nights spent sweating and laughing in my tiny shoebox of an apartment.  I fell in love with his family.  We listened to Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” over and over again, “We’ll do it all…everything…on our own.”

I believed.

I loved him.  He loved me.  I felt so lucky, like I’d been given a second chance at love and life.  When we sat in my parents’ family room, he said the words I wanted to hear, said that he wanted a future with me.

—

I went out with friends that night, to see a friend in a show.  We fought before I left, nothing big, at least that I can recall.  Probably the dishes, the cat, some minutiae of sharing space and a life.  I checked my voicemail, walking out of the theatre, when I heard his voice.

“We need to talk.  Now.  I’m moving back to Oregon.”

—

He got all of the stuff that had been living in my apartment for six months out on a random Thursday afternoon, while I went home and cried into my mom’s lap.  I didn’t believe it until I found his key under my doormat.  I sat in my hallway, holding it in my hands, silent and stunned and sadder than I’ve ever been.

—

Begging isn’t my thing, but when we said goodbye two weeks later, I begged, like a child who has just been caught doing something and knows they’re going to be in trouble.  Pleaded.  Said I’d move, said I’d be better, just please, please, please, don’t leave me alone. Please let me love you.  I have never felt more raw, more alone, more bare than that night, with him at my door and me on my knees, crying for all that I’d lost — not just him, but me in the process.

He said all the things I knew were right: that yes, we had love, but that surely wasn’t enough.  He wasn’t ever going to read a book or go to school, and I didn’t want to live in Oregon or drink beer every night.  We loved each other, more than anything, but we didn’t belong together.  It wouldn’t work, and it would hurt worse later on.

—

We don’t speak.  Not for a year and a half.  One afternoon, I run into his mom, a woman I loved.  We hug, I introduce her to my new boyfriend.  She asks all the right questions and tells me how much they all miss me.  I miss them, too.

—

My phone rings two weeks later.  Unfortunately, my phone was left at Target that afternoon, and I miss the call.  When I call him back that night, it is awkward.  We laugh, we talk about old times, I have tears silently streaming down my cheeks the whole time, because I can’t believe we’re actually talking.  At the same time, I know in my heart that he was right; that sure we have the past, but no, we wouldn’t have a future.

—

A year and a half later, as it’s about to be 2010, my phone rings again.  I am sitting on that same new boyfriend’s lap, when I see his name.  I take the call, and he wishes me a happy New Year, says he still thinks about me, that he wanted to be the first to wish me a good year.  I hang up too quickly, and go back to where I’m sitting, snuggled into my life.

—

I’ve never been so grateful for a broken heart.

There are some moments that change your game, your view, your life.  They start out normally, but well, they never quite end that way, do they?  This is one of mine.

The past year and a half had crushed me.  In a span of twelve months, I watched as everything came crashing down: my marriage, my job, my financial stability, my newest relationship which absolutely blindsided me with it’s rapid highs and lows.  I was fragile.

In that year, there had been moments where I’d questioned whether or not I wanted to live at all.

Sure, things were looking up, I guess. I had started my first year of being an English teacher, which was both exhausting and exhilerating with it’s joys and fears and ability to absolutely drain me.  But I wasn’t happy.  I moved out of the apartment I loved and in with a roommate to save money, and while my roommate was nice enough, I hated the area I lived in and hated listening to the laughter and love that she shared with her boyfriend.  The first boy I’d liked in months was ignoring me, claiming he needed “space” and I could no longer stay out until 5 am with my old friends because I was thrown into teaching, baptism by fire. I cried the whole way home everyday, wondering if I’d ever “get it” and be a good teacher, if I’d ever feel at home in the world again.

The morning started out like any other: I left for work early, stopping to grab a coffee at the grocery store nearby as had become my custom.  The area in which I lived was busy in the mornings, with everyone streaming out of their homes to head to work and start their day. After getting my coffee, I pulled out of the parking lot, latte in hand, and  accelerated to 50 miles per hour, headed towards the freeway.

Before I knew what happened, I was spinning, spinning, spinning across the road.  I heard brakes screeching and felt my head hit the driver’s side window.  What must have been 15 seconds felt like I lifetime as I careened across traffic, before coming to a stop.  As I looked out the window, I saw a car desperately trying to stop before hitting my door.  I could see the concerned face of the man driving, bracing to hit me.

But he didn’t.

He gently backed his car away from mine, so I could open my door, since his car had stopped mere inches from where I was marooned on the median, with a blown tire on the front right side, a stupid blown tire that could have killed me.  I came tumbling out of my car, gasping for air, crying harder than I knew possible.  I remember being so grateful to feel the cold air on my face, to get out and walk, to know that it could have been otherwise.

In my journal that night, I wrote only this: “I want to live.”

There are some moments that change your game, your view, your life.  They start out normally, but well, they never quite end that way, do they?  This is one of mine.

{Okay, so it’s a weekend.  Whatevs.}

It is October, and I haven’t flown in the three years since September 11th.  I am desperate to escape my life, because it’s feeling like I may never be able to do so.  I board the plane alone and sit on the aisle, sipping Diet Coke for the hour it takes me to land in Portland.  I don’t talk to anyone until I land in Oregon, and my friend Jamie greets me in the airport.  We take the MAX to a wine bar and sit down, talking and laughing the whole time.  With my first sip of chardonnay, I can feel my shoulders loosen and the tight space in my heart start to open.  Jamie is one of those exceptionally good friends where the conversation doesn’t stay on the surface for long before delving deeper, and I relax into our friendship, telling my stories and hearing hers.

As I fall asleep on her couch that night, I stare at the ceiling.  It is the first time I have slept alone in over a year, but I feel more rested, safer somehow, alone in this dark room than I do at home, tucked next to the person I am supposed to love.  I begged for the ticket to come here because I was feeling restless, like I might burst out of my own skin if I don’t do something, go somewhere, see something new soon.  Being here lets me feel like I can breathe.

Jamie shows me around the city the next day.  We have coffee, and I notice how friendly the locals are: proffering sections of their newspapers, smiling, holding doors.  We laugh over lunch with Jamie’s sister before going into Powell’s, where I truly believe I could get lost for several days, just enjoying the books and the smell of words and paper and ink—the things that I love.  We wander the famous rose garden, taking pictures, smelling the clean air and I sit quietly on steps, taking it all in.  That night, we go to a friend of Jamie’s for the night, listening to Ray Lamontagne, drinking merlot, and talking for hours after watching Before Sunrise, a movie that continues to raise the big questions for me.  No one knows everything, no one has it figured out, but they are trying.  I realize that I am not alone: that no one’s life looks and feels the way they’d like it to all the time.

The morning I fly home, we go to the art market and I buy a pair of earrings, a souvenir to hold on to from the weekend.  Jamie and I continue to talk, and I share things I’ve told no one.  I am happy.  I have fallen in love with a city, with a lifestyle.  For the first time, I feel at home in a place that is not my home.  I see strong women around me who do not have a man or a plan or a life that looks anything like mine; yet, I can feel the contentment.  I admire them.  I realize that I haven’t cried once that weekend, save for a good discussion that opens my heart and even though I may not speak the words, I can hear myself think and feel for the first time in months.

I feel alive.

As I sip my Diet Coke on the way home, I realize I have gotten a taste of what I want my life to feel like: warm, creative, friendly, independent.  Filled with wine and poetry and conversations that matter.  When I land, I make small purchases to remind me of that weekend: Ray Lamontagne’s album, a bottle of red, and a copy of Before Sunset, the sequel to the movie I fell in love with.  I tuck the memories away in my heart.

A few months later, when my life is upside down, and I am starting over, I remember this weekend and start building, a moment at a time.  And even now, when I lose my way, I think about those moments, those conversations, that precious two and a half days and try desperately to get back there, to that weekend in Portland where I found a small bit of myself in a place that was not my home.