Nov

Identity theft.

“Hopefully, this will be the last time I ever talk to you,” he said. “Because that will mean that you’re not the victim of a crime again. Good luck, and have a great life, Sarah.”

Have a great life. The finality of those words sure stick, don’t they?

For the last couple of days, I’d been playing phone tag with a prosecutor in the San Diego District Attorney’s office. Nearly two years after she’d stolen my identity, made a fake I.D. with my name, address and date of birth on it, and impersonated me all over San Diego County, the woman who’d opened up a slew of fraudulent credit cards in my name had been caught and was going to jail. Justice was being done. I couldn’t believe it.

However, when it came time to make the final call to the Assistant D.A. to confirm the information that he needed – that I had successfully disputed all the fraudulent charges and that the banks, not me, had absorbed the financial burden of this woman’s theft – I was strangely reticent. I wasn’t sure why I was dragging my feet, why I was delaying calling him back. I was busy (of course, I’m always busy), but it was more than that. There was something about closing this chapter in my life that I didn’t feel quite ready for.

I first learned that my identity was hijacked on February 4, 2013, when I received a call from a fraud investigator at Neiman Marcus. A woman had visited their San Diego location to fill out an application for a store credit card, and Neiman’s flagged her right away as suspicious. She was nervous, and appeared to be taking instructions from a man (surveillance cameras picked him up in another area of the store) via cell phone. Neiman’s did a quick Google search to try to locate the real me (good luck – there are about a million Sarah Kellys in this world), but were unable to find definitive evidence in a short span of time that this woman was an impostor. Unable to act without proof, they accepted her application, flagged it as potential fraud, and sent her on her way.

Almost immediately after my conversation with Neiman Marcus’s fraud department, they started arriving: the avalanche of both credit cards and rejection letters. I would spend countless hours over the coming days, weeks and months undoing the damage that had been wrought in the space of one weekend-long credit card application joyride in San Diego. Time spent canceling cards, filing fraud alerts, getting documents notarized, faxing, sorting, calling – sometimes pleading – with the powers that be that it was me, that I was who I said I was. Nobody has time for this garbage. It is a full time job to reclaim your identity when it has been taken away from you. And in my case, the timing could not have been worse.

When I received the call from Neiman Marcus, my father was in the hospital, gravely ill with stage four pancreatic and liver cancer, and awaiting a transfer – arranged by my half-sister Deirdre – to at-home hospice care. Ten days later, on Valentine’s Day, dad passed away, quietly, at home. His death was a mere four and a half months after the sudden death of my mother, a death which sent shockwaves through my life that I still haven’t recovered from. I can see now, with perspective, that I didn’t even begin to process my mom’s death until well after my dad died. He was too sick, there was too much to worry about, too many fires to put out. Not the least of which was my maternal grandmother’s rapid decline into advanced Alzheimer’s disease. One day she knew who I was, the next day, I became a person of no consequence.

My identity theft was a relentless pain in the ass that I didn’t need, that I didn’t have time for and that I certainly didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to deal with. When it happened, I couldn’t believe it. I made jokes about it, laughed at the unfairness of it all. But really, it felt like a sucker punch, like the universe kicking me in the gut when I was already about as low as I could go.

But here’s the awkward truth; a truth that I’m literally coming to terms with in this moment as I write this blog. It’s a truth that reveals my hesitancy to wrap up that unfortunate chapter once and for all. In the midst of the biggest crisis of my life, there was something incredibly powerful about having to fight for who I was. What I lamented as some sort of karmic curse was actually, in all likelihood, a gift. Not only did it offer a distraction from all the impossible, emotionally loaded jobs that had to be done in the wake of my father’s death, but at a time when I felt like I was drowning, when I felt like I was disappearing into nothingness, my identity theft fight required me to state clearly, emphatically, over and over again: I am who I say I am. I am Sarah. I am still here. I exist, dammit.

So when it came time to call the Assistant D.A., I procrastinated. I put it off. And at first, it didn’t make sense to me. After all, I’m happy to have this case resolved. I’m happy the person who stole something so precious from me is being punished. It’s a win, but strangely, it also feels like a loss. Because though I won this battle, the war rages on. Twenty-one months later, I’m still fighting to find my way back to me. A wild, fearless, big-dreaming me from my youth that I lost long ago, or a me that I always wanted to be but that I never quite became. I don’t really know. What I do know is that in the case of my identity theft, there was a path to follow. A long, arduous, tedious, frustrating paper trail of a path, but a path nonetheless. But with everything else, there is no path. Just an ongoing struggle to heal, to rediscover, to fall in love with life again, and to try to figure out who I’m supposed to be.

And so, with one chapter now closed, the fight goes on.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Me/Memoir/Well-Being

Extra Dry Martini/grief/Identity Theft/Neiman Marcus/Olympia/San Diego/Sarah Kelly

Oct

The great pumpkin.

I scanned the aisles of Target, looking for a last-minute Halloween costume . . . for my dog. The selection was sparse. There was an abundance of ‘wiener dog,’ outfits – essentially a hot dog suit for dogs – complete with ketchup and mustard and relish. Kind of funny, but they were only available in small dog sizes. Leo, a 45-pound Chow mix, was definitely a size large.

After rejecting a paramedic outfit and a gunslinging cowboy, I finally settled on the only thing left that would fit him: a giant stuffed orange pumpkin suit.

Leo hated it. Hated. Especially when we put it on him and paraded him down Pacific Coast Highway on Halloween afternoon, a day that was too hot in the way that late October days in Southern California can still feel unnaturally like summer. He dragged his feet, stopping to smell things, refusing to come along, all in his own quiet rebellion. Even when passersby gushed about how cute he was – this 45 lb., fluffy, golden haired lion dressed in a pumpkin suit – Leo feigned indifference, as if to say, ‘How dare you humiliate me, humans. I am a dignified creature, and in case you haven’t noticed, I already have a fur coat.’

Happy Halloween, friends!

11 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

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Dogs/Extra Dry Martini/Halloween/Halloween Costumes/Leo the Lion/Pacific Coast Highway/Sarah Kelly/The Great Pumpkin

Oct

The best laid plans.

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

– To a Mouse, by Robert Burns (paraphrased from the original Scottish text)

My Dad used to quote that line. He quoted it a lot. My Dad used to quote a lot of things – literature, poetry, Shakespeare. He was well-read, intellectual, with a flair for the dramatic. All of those things I’ve just said are a complete understatement.

It’s funny the way that his favorite words find me, now that he’s gone. How they grab me. How a piece of text will pop into my head out of nowhere and I’ll hear it echoing in my brain, always in his voice, deep and tinged with a hint of laughter, a dash of Irish mischief.

I used to roll my eyes when Dad would quote some famous piece of text, theatrically, in that way that he did. It would verge on melodrama, but he really meant it. Or at least, he sold it well. During his court-mandated stint in rehab after a drunk driving incident, Mom would tell me stories of how Dad charmed everyone, how he brought other rehab patients to tears with his eloquent quotations of some of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets. He impressed everyone, even the addiction counselors. But Dad was never serious about getting sober. He just wanted to win the room.

It’s so strange the way that our subconscious mind puts things together, so weird and wonderful the way long forgotten memories come flooding back when we least expect them to. Now, when one of Dad’s favorite quotes pops into my head, I figure it must be because I needed to hear it; it’s some lesson I’m still learning.

Just like the line, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. If ever there was a line reverberating in my brain lately, it’s that one. Because my life these days is nothing like I thought it would be ten years ago, or five years ago, or even a few months ago. I’ve learned (or am learning) that nothing is certain, except uncertainty. As I try to hold on to the hopeful optimism that’s been a constant companion throughout my life (when I was a girl, Dad used to call me ‘Polyanna’), I find myself in a frequent tug of war between long-held dreams and current, inescapable realities. And as much as I know that the surest path to freedom is to release my expectations, let go of the past, embrace the moment, and move the F on, it is a heck of a lot harder to do that than the Buddhists would have you believe.

In fact, I’m not even sure that letting go of expectations is entirely possible. How can you? If you do something, anything, in your life – take a job, make a plan, start a relationship, a friendship, a project, you buy tickets to a concert on Saturday night – you have a picture in your mind of how it’s going to go, don’t you? You anticipate. You dream. You imagine the outcome. It’s what we do as human beings.

So here I am, with all of the best laid plans I made for my life gone completely awry, wondering what now? And so I take comfort in those words. Because I’m not the only one to make big, grand plans that just don’t work out. I’m not the only one to build a dream and then watch it crumble. I’m not the only one to feel like I’m too old, too lost, too hopeless to start over, and yet start over I must.

Thanks for that reminder, Dad. Thanks for allowing those words to come to me – via you – just when I needed them the most.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 5 Comments

Buddhism/Dad/Expectations/Extra Dry Martini/Rehab/Robert Burns/Sarah Kelly/Shakespeare/The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

Oct

This blog.

I need to spend less time on this blog. It pains me to say that, but it’s true. It doesn’t mean abandoning it, it just means giving a little less of myself here, so that I have a little more of myself to give somewhere else.

I am so grateful for Extra Dry Martini. I’m grateful for what it began as, and I’m grateful for what it has become. I started blogging just a few short months before my entire life hit the skids. As events shifted and spun around me, what started as an experiment to indulge my love of the written word rapidly became a lifeline. It became a vehicle to help me process overwhelming grief and loss, and was often my only avenue to connect with the outside world when I felt desperately alone. I know that writing is no substitute for therapy, but this blog became therapeutic because it enabled me to articulate my thoughts and feelings, to write them down, to look at them, and to realize that they didn’t have to define me. This blog has helped me gain clarity about who I am and who I want to be in a deep and profound way. It’s simply impossible to imagine my journey over the last two years without it.

Publishing a weekly blog post is intensely satisfying. It makes me feel a sense of accomplishment because in a relatively short amount of time, I can find a beginning, middle and end, and when I’m done, I get to share my post with the world. Writing is a lonely process and I’ve been very lonely as of late. Publishing regular blog posts assuages that loneliness and makes me feel a sense of connection and purpose. It allows me to dialogue with friends and fellow bloggers and to receive their feedback and validation.

But feeding the instant gratification that I crave has also allowed me to forestall bigger dreams. If I can feel validated as a writer in this space, why should I bother to tackle a larger, lengthier, more challenging piece? If I can share little bits of my soul each week, why should I bother to write the whole thing out, to map out my entire past, present and hopeful future? I love writing this blog, but it’s time to admit it: I have been using it to procrastinate. I have been using it to resist the pull of my bigger, more all-encompassing story. I have been using it to avoid what really scares me: to tell the truth, all of it, in long form.

I’ve just returned from an intensive writing workshop on Orcas Island in northern Washington State. The workshop was actually less about writing and more about unlocking creativity and giving yourself permission to live the life you dream of. At least, that’s what it was about for me. Over the course of three and a half days, I listened to the stories of other writers from all walks of life and all different types of backgrounds. I focused inward. I asked myself some big questions. And what I came away with was this: I need to make a change.

This blog is intensely personal to me. It has formed the core of my heart over the last couple of years and has, at many times, served as my best friend over a difficult and tumultuous 2014. I don’t have any plans to abandon it. But the reality is, my life is full. I have too many things I want to do – admittedly, a good problem to have – and not enough time to do them all. And if I want to tackle some of the bigger writing projects that have been tugging at my heartstrings – projects like finishing my semi-autobiographical screenplay and writing my memoir – I have to make time and space in my life for them. Starting now.

I’m not exactly sure what that’s going to look like. Maybe it means enforcing a time limit on garbage activities like surfing Facebook or watching TV. Maybe it means that my posts here become a little shorter and a little less polished. Or maybe it means that not much of anything will change for the people who have been faithfully reading this blog, but the change will simply be an internal shift that only I’ll notice. I’m not sure yet. What I do know is that that the change needs to happen, and l’m approaching it in the same way I approach every topic I write about on Extra Dry Martini: with as much openness and honesty as possible.

Thank you for supporting me on my journey. You have no idea what it has meant to me. You have no idea what it will continue to mean as I move forward and throw my arms around the big, scary, what’s next question. So thank you. Thank you for reading. Thank you for helping me along the way.

And here I go.

Until next time, friends.

Sarah

11 years ago Short URL 7 Comments

Well-Being/Writing

Extra Dry Martini/Fear/Memoir/Orcas Island/Sarah Kelly/Write Doe Bay/Writing

Oct

The Other Side of Fear.

Over the last couple of years, several of my friends have called me brave. I’ve sat with them over meals, over coffee, over wine, in cafes, in restaurants, in bars, in movie theaters and on park benches. These gatherings – to catch up, to check in, to touch base – have more often than not involved them asking how I’m doing, and me, trying to spin things toward the positive, trying to portray life in the best possible light, trying to smile because I’ve grown so weary of all the tears.

Inevitably, the ‘brave’ word comes up. But I don’t believe it. It doesn’t feel like me.

Why brave, exactly? Because I watched both of my parents die at a relatively young age? Because I weathered a year of incredibly hard things? Because I’m still weathering hard things? Because through it all, I’ve kept going, rather than falling apart?

But really, what choice did I have? Life is a surprise, unfolding events over which I’ve had no control; over which none of us has any control. Like it or not, the truth is that I’ve had little choice but to accept everything that life has thrown at me, and try to move forward. So how exactly, does that make me brave?

I suppose the realization of just how little control I have should make me feel a certain amount of freedom, right? After all, since nothing can be done, what’s the point of worrying about the outcome, or of feeling afraid?

But it hasn’t worked that way. In fact the opposite is true. The certainty that nothing is certain has, ironically, only amped up the control freak in me, has only elevated my every anxiety. My fear of heights? Worse. My fear of flying? Worse. My fear of just about everything? Worse.

So when people call me brave, I want to laugh out loud. I’m afraid of my own shadow, people. I’m like a little kid all over again, except not, because when I was a little kid I wasn’t afraid of things like I am now. Call it a lack of awareness of my own mortality, call it blissful ignorance about the fragility of human life, call it the magic of childhood wonder and amazement, call it the ability to create with reckless abandon without fear of judgment. Call it all of those things. But whatever you call it, I wish I still had it, instead of this pervasive, paralyzing certainty that danger is everywhere and that nothing is safe.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a passive person. I’m hyper aware of the fact that I’m afraid of everything, and it pisses me off. I hate it. One of my best – and worst – qualities is that I’m stubborn as an ox, and when I feel the fear snaking its icy fingers around my neck, I fight. I realize the irrationality, the pointlessness of my fear, and I struggle to put myself in situations that scare me. I fight my impulse to stay home, hiding under the covers. Over the last few months, I’ve forced myself out of the house to meet new people, to join new groups and organizations, to try to stand on my own two feet as this different person I’ve become. I’ve tried to be braver with my writing, recounting personal things that are difficult to talk about. I’ve tried to be braver with my art. I’ve started projects that I’m worried will fail. I’m worried that, ultimately, I will fail.

Most of the time, I feel like a fraud, because I’m not brave at all. But I want to be. I’ve pinned the Jack Canfield quote ‘Everything you want is on the other side of fear,’ to my bulletin board and I read it so often that the words echo in my brain. And I resolve to keep fighting the icy fingers snaking around my neck.

Tomorrow, I’m leaving on one such fear-fighting mission. I’m heading to a writers’ retreat on a remote island in northern Washington State. A whole day of travel to get there – planes and shuttles and cars and ferry boats – and then 3 ½ days spent sharing a cabin with strangers, delving into things I can’t even imagine, but that I can only assume will be personal, vulnerable, and hopefully life-affirming. It’s like summer camp meets the first day of school on steroids. I’m terrified. And I can’t wait.

I am not brave. I am about 100 miles from brave. I am fragile. I am easily broken. I am afraid most of the time. But I am also angry. I am fighting. And I am doing everything I can think of to get to the other side of fear. I hope this weekend helps. I hope I find something on that island, in those Washington woods, that I didn’t have before. I hope it teaches me something I didn’t already know. I hope it makes me just a little bit braver.

Wish me luck.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 18 Comments

Me/Travel/Well-Being/Writing

Brave/Extra Dry Martini/Fear/Jack Canfield/Sarah Kelly/The Other Side of Fear/Washington State/Writer's Retreat

Oct

Time Out.

A gentle breeze blows across the outdoor terrace as I sit underneath large stone columns, sipping iced coffee, scribbling in my journal, occasionally looking up from my writing to stare out and scan the hazy blue L.A. skyline, reminding myself where I am. It’s a Tuesday afternoon, the first day of fall, and I’ve reserved these few hours as a much-needed time out. To be with myself, to write, to wander and to daydream. It’s something I rarely do, but today, it seemed important.

It’s amazing how protective I am of this time. How annoyed I am that the Getty Center should be as busy as it is on a weekday afternoon well past Labor Day. I have to restrain myself from glaring daggers at the woman who plops down at the table right next to me – really? There are at least two dozen other tables scattered across this expansive patio. Why choose that one? I flinch at the shrill shriek of a child, and then scowl at his parents. I cringe at the clusters of people who hover for a time right next to my chair, talking loudly, oblivious to any concerns about personal space.

I shouldn’t be annoyed. After all, I chose to come here, to this public place. If I wanted solitude, I should have stayed at home. But solitude is something I’ve had too much of lately. My one-bedroom bungalow is fine for privacy and quiet concentration, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of inspiration. It doesn’t offer many opportunities to fill the well, to stimulate the senses, to let in new experiences, to promote new ideas. I can work and work and work, but the well of creativity quickly runs dry without new images, new life, to draw from.

I suppose that’s why I’m here. It’s why I rose early to get my work done so that I could take the afternoon off. So that I could ascend to this beautiful place high upon a hill, so that I could browse artwork and gardens, so that I could look down and marvel at this massive metropolis that I call home.

I didn’t really come here to write. I knew I wouldn’t get much done, though I made a valiant attempt at it. I came here to be. Because on this beautiful September day, the first day of fall, a day which also happens to be the second anniversary of the death of my mother, I told her that I would. I told her that I would try harder to reconnect to my life. To allow myself to gaze with wonder at beautiful things that she would have enjoyed, like the texture of the paint on Van Gogh’s Irises, and the lush vegetation and tranquil streams in the Japanese garden, and the stunning stone architecture that’s everywhere in this place.

I told her that I would, and so I did. Or at least, I tried. I wandered the West Pavilion and lingered for an inordinately long time among the small but stellar collection of Impressionist paintings. I walked to a lookout point and stared down at the city, at the suckers stuck in gridlock on the 405 freeway, grateful that at this moment, I wasn’t one of them. I put away my phone, taking a hiatus from the emails and the texts and the Facebook messages, recognizing all the while how difficult it was for me to do this, and that was exactly the reason why I should.

I find it nearly impossible to take time outs like this. Time outs just to be with myself and to think and to reflect and to not have to do anything. Chalk it up to my OCD, but relaxing is almost guilt-inducing for me. I always feel like I should be accomplishing something, not just sitting around. Even when I watch a movie, it’s something I’m studying for acting class. Or when I really need to do some deep thinking, I’ll go for a run, because at least I’m getting a workout in at the same time.

But all of this compulsive doing hasn’t done much to help me out of the lost space I’ve inhabited these last couple of years. Checking things off the to-do list – while satisfying – hasn’t done much to help the cavernous, nagging hole in the pit of my stomach. Productivity hasn’t cheered my flagging spirits or healed my persistent heartache. I have been doing a lot, but clearly I have been doing something wrong.

So, on this day, I made a promise to my mom that I would take some time out – even just these few hours – and I would soul search. And I would listen to what my soul said, and I would act.

I suppose I can’t expect one afternoon to solve all of my problems. After a few hours of taking in beauty, of soaking in the sunshine, of trying just to be, I didn’t feel any clearer than I did before. I didn’t experience any profound epiphanies, and I didn’t feel any closer to knowing ‘what’s next’ for me. But I’m still glad I did it. I’m glad that I allowed myself this time. Mostly because it made me recognize that I need to do more of it; to make space in my life for time like this. To relax. To be still. To imagine. To dream. To take in the world and to wonder about it. And to breathe.

Perhaps knowing that – and doing it – is a start. At least, for now.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 50 Comments

Los Angeles/Me/Well-Being

Extra Dry Martini/Getty Center/Impressionism/Japanese Garden/Los Angeles/Meditation/Sarah Kelly/Van Gogh

Sep

The things my mother gave me.

Today makes two years. It was two years ago today, on September 23rd, that I received the worst phone call of my life. It was Sunday morning and I was still in bed, my phone in the other room. I heard it ringing, distant, the musical jingle breaking through the quiet September morning. I rolled over slowly, a sense of unease already stirring in the pit of my stomach. It was too early; who could be calling? Not that early, true, but early for a Sunday. The first football game hadn’t started yet. On Fox, Terry, Howie, Jimmy and the gang were still making their predictions about which teams would win, still letting fantasy owners know which probable and questionable players were active.

I lifted myself up out of bed, crossed the room, and picked up my phone. I retrieved the voicemail, a tearful message from my Aunt Sandy, my Mom’s brother’s wife, telling me it was an emergency, telling me to call her, or my Dad, at home. I called Dad. I should have called her.

I think about that moment – that decision about who to call – often. I wish I could go back and redo it. My Aunt would have been gentler, would have been kinder when delivering the news. But it was my Dad that I wanted to talk to. My Dad, hard of hearing, elderly, gravely ill with stage four pancreatic and liver cancer. My Dad, who was incapable of softening the blow. ‘Mom’s dead,’ he said, across the line, distant, emotionless. The bottom fell out.

And so they began. Two years that would shake and stretch and shape me. Two years that would threaten to shatter me. Two years during which – at times – I struggled and fought and kicked and screamed and rebelled against circumstance, insisting upon being OK by the sheer force of my will. And two years during which – at other times – I gave in. Two years during which I almost gave up. Two years that carved a hole in my family, that carved a whole in my sense of who I thought I was.

Today, as I stand on the other side of those twenty-four months, scanning the distance between then and now, thinking about what and who I’ve lost, and what – ironically – I’ve also gained, there’s one image that’s burned in my mind.

The image I can’t escape is of the last time I saw my mother. She is standing in the driveway of my parents’ house in Olympia. Rail thin, slightly disheveled, though she had pulled it together quite significantly from her collapse of a few days prior. Pulled it together for me, I suppose. We’ve just hugged goodbye, and after providing her with a list of caretaker referrals to help with Dad, after securing a promise from her that she’ll find a counselor, that she’ll talk to someone, I board the airport shuttle. As I turn to wave goodbye one last time, there’s a look on her face that I don’t think I’ve ever seen: it’s soft, yet sorrowful, with an intensity that’s completely unfamiliar, an intensity that’s very unlike my one-hundred-miles-from-intense mother.

I’ve thought about that moment many times over the last two years. I’ve wondered if she knew then that she was dying. I’ve wondered if she knew that this would be the last time she’d see me, her only child. I’ve wondered if the reason the look was so unfamiliar, if the reason she held me in her gaze so intently, was because she knew this was it, and she was trying to memorize my face. I’ve wondered if, in that moment, she was trying to memorize my face for all eternity.

There are so many gifts that my mother gave me; she was generous to a fault. There were cherished treasures that she bestowed upon me while she was still alive, and equally valuable gifts that I could never have anticipated receiving after she was gone. In addition to the ruby and emerald rings, the gold pieces from her jewelry box, the vintage wardrobe gems like two pairs of knee high Finnish leather boots, a Chloe scarf, a pink hand-beaded Leslie Fay cocktail dress, there are other, less tangible, things I take with me. Lessons about the person I want to be, based on who she was, and who she wasn’t. There are qualities I strive to emulate – her kindness, her compassion, her generosity, her sweetness. There are things I’ll never achieve. I’ll never be as good of a chef as she was, never master her green thumb in the garden. And I’m definitely not as nice as my mother was, not as giving, not as yielding. I’m more stubborn, more argumentative, more selfish.

But many of the qualities that I admired about my mother also let her down. I can see now that she never took time for herself, never set boundaries, couldn’t say no to the demands of others, even when they were outrageous. I can see how people took advantage of her, and how she let them. I can see how she absorbed every harsh word, internalized every worry, how insecure and how fragile she was. I can see how she burned out, how she couldn’t ask for help, even when she desperately needed it.

People who knew us both tell me that we’re alike, my mother and I. We have the same smile, the same laugh, the same mischievous sense of humor. We look alike and we even sort of talk alike. I’m grateful for all of it. But (I’m sorry, Mom), I’m also grateful for the ways that we’re not alike. I’m grateful that I’m able to set boundaries in order to protect myself, in ways that you couldn’t. I’m grateful that I’m strong enough to say no when something isn’t right for me. And I grateful that, though, like you, I’m strangely resistant to asking for help when I need it, I’m beginning to overcome that. I’m starting to ask. And I’m learning that when I ask, help tends to arrive, and it really does, well, help.

So on days like today – which are often – when I’m missing my Mom so badly that it threatens to overwhelm me, I try to hold on to what I know is true: my mother loved me, she wanted my happiness above all else, and she wouldn’t want me to use something like her not being here as an excuse to give up. She would want me to keep going. She would want me to be strong in ways that she couldn’t. She would want me to embrace my life.

Today marks two years since I lost the most important person in my life. Before I know it, it may be ten, twenty. But what time, what death, what grief can never wipe away are all the beautiful, generous gifts that my mother gave me. And on this day, two years hence, I pledge this gift to you, Mom: I promise to never stop pushing. I promise to take nothing for granted. I promise to be happy in every way that I can. And I promise to do all of these things, even when it’s hard. Even on days like today. Especially on days like today.

Thank you, Mom. I love you. I’m so grateful for everything you gave me.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 7 Comments

Family/Love/Me/Memoir

Extra Dry Martini/Fox NFL Sunday/grief/Mom/Olympia/Sarah Kelly/The things my mother gave me

Sep

Olympia.

We left Anchorage on a bleak, snowy day in late November. It was just after Thanksgiving, and just before my fifteenth birthday. I remember how bitterly cold it was. I remember snow-topped Atlas Van Lines moving trucks parked in the driveway in front of our house, a stately, three-story slate grey Alaskan chateau on Hidden Lane. I remember sulking, dragging my feet, not wanting to go. I remember little else.

Come to think of it, I can’t even remember where we celebrated my birthday that year – 1995 – sandwiched as it was between Thanksgiving and settling into our new home in Olympia, WA. It’s funny how little I remember from that time. Mostly, I remember the weather: the Alaska deep freeze, the cold Olympia rain, the ice storm that hit with a force shortly after our arrival, the tree branches that froze and crackled and splintered throughout the night, littering the road and falling on power lines, knocking out our electricity. Our new house, situated as it was at the end of a long, narrow peninsula called Cooper Point Road, and then down a private, gravel, pothole-filled path with a sign at the top that warned ‘end of county road,’ was very literally in the middle of nowhere. Which meant that when the ice storm knocked out the power, it stayed out. For days.

And then there was Olympia itself. Upon crossing into the city limits, visitors are greeted by a sign bearing a red, white and blue shield in the form of stars and stripes, proudly proclaiming: ‘Welcome to Olympia, an All-America City.’ True? I suppose so. But mostly I remember Olympia as a small-ish Pacific Northwest town with a bit of an identity crisis. A place where state-workers, government bureaucracy, federal buildings and all of the other trappings of being the state capitol came together with the dreadlocked, hemp-wearing, Evergreen State College-attending hippies, the self-consciously artsy, delightfully quirky PNW hipsters, and the more affluent, old moneyed country club set – the ones who owned boats and waterfront homes and wintered in warmer climates.

When I arrived in Olympia in 1995, from what might as well have been a foreign country – Alaska – I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I was no newcomer to the Pacific Northwest – both of my parents grew up there and I’d spent nearly every summer in Seattle or at my Grandparents’ beach house in Allyn, WA – but Olympia was something else entirely. An odd, eccentric town where all these different and distinct segments of the population intersected, amidst a backdrop of gloom and rain, of tall trees and water-facing cafes and dirt roads to nowhere. I didn’t fit in at all, and yet, strangely, it was exactly where I belonged.

I remained in Olympia for less than four years, bailing as soon as I could to attend college in Los Angeles, and choosing to return only infrequently, on random summers and holidays. And though L.A. has now been my home for many years, there is something unshakeable about Olympia. It was so different than any place I’d ever been before, and so different from any place I’ve ever been since. For the Alaska girl used to the long dark winters where Christmas lights cast a soft glow against the snow, the endless summer nights near the solstice when the sun never seemed to go down, a place where you could go ice skating in your backyard and moose frequently roamed city streets, it represented total culture shock. And for the woman who sought bright lights and bigger things, who has traveled the world, and who made Los Angeles her home – with its vast expanse of freeways and smog and traffic and unnaturally beautiful people – Olympia remains a beacon, a reminder of a more innocent version of myself, a longing for a simpler, more offbeat, more authentic life.

On my last few visits to Olympia, I tried my best to recapture the good old days – the rainy afternoons passed journaling in indie coffeehouses, the outdoor concerts in Sylvester Park with its gazebo strung with white lights, the treasure hunts in the epic Goodwill on the corner of Cooper Point and Harrison, 90’s music blaring over the loudspeakers, the long walks around Capitol Lake, the beautiful boys in too-baggy clothes killing time at the skate park. I’ve tried my best to recapture the Olympia of old, but the truth is, it’s no longer the same. The magic of nostalgia that held me in its grip for so many years while I slogged away in gritty L.A. has withered in the face of cancer and alcoholism and mental illness and hospice. The lighthearted teenage memories of watching old movies at the Capitol Theater and dance parties and bingeing on late night french fries at The Spar now compete with doctors’ visits and funeral arrangements and sorting through the contents of my parents’ house.

The thing about my arrival in Olympia as a fourteen-going-on-fifteen year-old at the tail end of 1995 is that it was perfectly timed. It was so easy to be a teenager there. You didn’t have to work hard to manufacture the tragic angst you so desperately clung to as part of your identity; it was already baked into the cake with the gloomy rain-soaked skies and the tall trees and the grunge music and the drive-thru espresso stands with ironic names. But the thing I didn’t realize about that time in my life – the thing that I could only realize later, with perspective – is that it was actually beautiful. That I wasn’t really as dark or as moody or as tragic as I pretended to be, that I was only playing at it. It wouldn’t be until much later, when I was touched by actual tragedy, when grown up responsibilities eclipsed the teenage worries that had once seemed so heavy and oppressive, that I would truly understand the difference. And then, more than ever, would I long for those bygone Olympia days.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Family/Los Angeles/Memoir/Olympia

1990s/Anchorage/Evergreen State College/Extra Dry Martini/Grunge Music/Olympia/Sarah Kelly/Sylvester Park

Sep

Past Lives.

I just hit my fifteenth year in L.A. The milestone arrived quietly. So quietly, in fact, that I barely even noticed it. It wasn’t until this past Saturday, when I was parking my car on a familiar street in Silver Lake, experiencing an odd sense of déjà vu as I climbed out of my too-dirty Prius, gold linen clutch in hand, heading to an afternoon brunch, that I realized that it had already happened. I had missed it. I paused for a moment, the hot September sun beating down on my back, and thought about how very different my life was from the girl who arrived in this city fifteen years ago, how every different my life was from even one year ago. The thought crossed my mind and then I quickly dismissed it, exhaling a puff of air as I trudged uphill toward a house full of people that I’d never met.

Déjà vu has been my constant companion these days. It’s almost as if my past has been chasing me, trying to meld my younger self with the current, Sarah 2.0 version. For starters, I find myself living alone for only the second time in my life, in a place that, while a bit bigger than the shoebox Culver City studio apartment I rented when I was 24, is oddly similar. Like my old place, it’s bright and airy, it has an enclosed patio, and it boasts friendly neighbors. My new place is a few miles east of my first solo digs, yet close enough that Culver City, very different yet very much the same, has once again become the closest hip neighborhood, once again my default stomping grounds.

On Friday evening, the night before that Silver Lake brunch, déjà vu paid me yet another visit. Driving home from my girlfriend Zoe’s new apartment, an L.A.-spacious one-bedroom in Mar Vista, where we gathered over dinner to talk about love and loss and family and hope and romance and well, the things you talk about when you’re in your early 30s and single and you’re missing your mom and you’re wondering what it all means. Tired and ready to head home to bed at 11 p.m. (definitely not the me of 15 years ago), I turned right onto Inglewood from Washington and flashed back to all the memories that had been made on that street when three buddies of mine rented a post-college apartment there, an apartment they nicknamed the ‘Inglewood Palace.’ I thought about parties and football games and hangouts and good times. And I thought about one of those friends who’d passed away far too soon, about another, now a father and a college professor in Fargo, North Dakota, and another, my best friend of the bunch, who’d recently left L.A. to begin a new life with his wife in the Bay Area. How familiar that street felt, as if no time had passed. And in light of the years that had passed, in light of all that had happened, how foreign it felt too.

Back to Saturday, to brunch, to Silver Lake. I was standing in the kitchen of an unfamiliar house, wearing a sleeveless black silk cocktail dress that used to be my mother’s, a dress that I had realized (too late) was far too warm for this September day, mimosa in hand, making small talk with women that I’d never met before. I was at a literary salon that I felt privileged to be invited to, where the attendees were almost exclusively writers, some aspiring (me), some very successful. I felt a little bit like a fraud, like a kid playing dress up, fumbling for things to talk about, this blog, my life, the book I want to write. I was trying to be as engaged as I could be in the present moment, but I couldn’t help feeling my mind wander down the hill, toward an apartment one street over on Golden Gate, where ten years earlier (God, could it really have been ten years ago?) my friend Mary and I passed many evenings drinking wine, engrossed in deep, meaningful conversations about politics, art, love, the meaning of life. Conversations that, in truth, weren’t that much different than the ten-years-later conversation I’d had the night before over champagne and pasta at Zoe’s place in Mar Vista. Then and now, we were preoccupied with what would happen to us; we were worried about becoming the people we were supposed to be.

Have I become the person I’m supposed to be? No, not yet. As I stood in the kitchen of the house in Silver Lake, listening to two impressive female writers speak about their books, about their writing process, about their lives, I could relate and yet, I couldn’t. They talked about motherhood, mid-life crises, and menopause, all things beyond my experience, things that were looming in the somewhat distant future. But they also talked about going through transitions, about needing to change when life had become too small, too narrow, too claustrophobic, about the ever-present need to grow. And to that, I could relate.

I’m about a million miles away from the baby-faced eighteen-year-old college student who arrived in L.A. fifteen years ago. I am, and yet, I’m not. I’m certainly older, definitely wiser (though I’m the first to admit, not always wise), and I’ve been shaped and stretched by the roller coaster that is this life. But the one thing that hasn’t changed after all this time: I’m still trying to figure out what it all means. I’m still trying to figure out who I’m supposed to be. As my mind wandered back to that apartment on Golden Gate, the words of one of the authors broke through my reverie. ‘Life is cyclical,’ she said. ‘Things are wonderful, and then they’re not. Things are terrible and then they’re not. Everything passes.’ And something about that statement clicked in my brain. Maybe this pervasive sense of déjà vu, of revisiting these familiar places from my past and seeing them through older eyes, is exactly what’s supposed to happen. Maybe it’s my opportunity to review where I’ve been and make different, better choices about where I’m going. Maybe it’s a reminder that life is cyclical. And maybe it’s telling me that I’m on my way. That I’m one step closer to becoming the person I’m supposed to be. At least, I really hope so.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 6 Comments

Los Angeles/Me/Well-Being

Culver City/Deja Vu/Extra Dry Martini/Los Angeles/Mar Vista/Past Lives/Sarah Kelly/Silver Lake

Sep

Tennis.

I spent a lot of time this past Labor Day weekend glued to television coverage of the US Open. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always found something soothing about the game of tennis. The rhythm of a long rally, the squeaking noise the shoes make as players scuffle across the court, the sotto voce commentary. But the main reason I can’t let a major tournament pass by without at least tuning in is because of my mother.

My mom played tennis throughout high school and college, and in her day, she was superb. Though I never got to witness her play when she was at the height of her game, I’ve heard the stories. I’ve seen the trophies and awards she won, listened with rapt attention to the tale of the legendary match where she and her female doubles partner outplayed – and beat – the boys.

Throughout my life, I was keenly aware that mom’s biggest regret was the fact that she didn’t pursue a pro career. She certainly wanted to, and from everything I understand, she was good enough to at least give it a shot. But her parents – both successful court reporters – were adamant that she choose a more conventional life, and they pushed her to attend law school. Mom didn’t push back, at least, not hard enough. She went. And she failed out – or dropped out, I was never sure – after her first year at Gonzaga. Mom ended up following in her parents’ footsteps and becoming a court reporter too. Her career was short-lived (she worked just a few years before marrying my dad and moving to Alaska, where she managed his law firm), and I’m not sure that she ever enjoyed it. She suffered from severe anxiety throughout much of her life, and she once confessed to me that she’d get so nervous about the pressure of the job that she’d often throw up before showing up for work.

The reminder of her unfulfilled dream was a constant companion throughout my childhood. It was present when we rose early on weekend mornings to watch breakfast at Wimbledon, present in her obsession with Chris Evert (her favorite player), present in the infamous screaming match she got into with my grandmother during a holiday dinner we hosted at my parents’ house in Olympia, during which years of my mom’s suppressed rage boiled to the surface and the only thing that kept my grandmother from storming out of the house was the ice storm swirling outside, making the roads impassable.

And it was especially present in the fact that my mom was constantly signing me up for tennis lessons, whether I wanted them or not. I was a good kid. Quiet, shy, polite, I earned straight A’s in school and generally didn’t rock the boat. I was my mom’s only child, and a tremendous source of pride for her. I felt the weight of that pride from an early age, and, not wanting to screw it up, I towed the line, and for the most part, stayed out of trouble.

A rare exception was one summer in Anchorage, when my tennis instructor called our house, concerned, because I hadn’t been showing up for my lessons. I was 11 or 12, old enough to walk by myself from our house on Hidden Lane to the tennis courts at a downtown recreational area called the Park Strip, and bratty enough to decide that I’d rather blow off my lessons in favor of killing time at Fifth Avenue Mall with my friends.

Busted, I confessed to my mom what I’d been doing. I felt my face flush with hot shame as I admitted lying to her, telling her that my lessons were going well when I was really hanging out at the food court with my buddies. I prepared for the storm of her anger – after all, I deserved it – but it didn’t come. Mom didn’t yell. It was much worse than that. She looked sad – almost as though she might cry – and so, so disappointed in me. It was as though by rejecting the sport that she loved so much in such a cavalier, spoiled, pre-teen way, I had destroyed her dream all over again. I had let my mom down. And it felt awful.

She never signed me up for tennis lessons again. I went on to dabble in various other sports – volleyball, softball, track and field – but I never got really good at any of them. In my heart of hearts, I was a nerd, a bookworm who loved making up stories, who loved poetry and art, who sang in the choir, who read Shakespeare and imagined myself a regal, corseted, high-born lady in Elizabethan England.

I don’t think my mom ever fully understood my decision to pursue a career in the arts. She didn’t feel the goose bumps I felt when sitting in a darkened movie theater, didn’t know the rush I experienced from standing on a stage in front of a live audience. She certainly didn’t understand the draw of Los Angeles, with its urban sprawl, and smog and traffic and crowds.

My mom and I were very different people with very different dreams. But I think the fact that she lived with the regret of giving up on hers also made her so fiercely protective of mine. Time and time again, she defended my choices to family members and friends who didn’t understand what the hell I was doing. She offered financial support when I struggled, which was often. She sent me flowers on every opening night. And when she did travel to Los Angeles to see me stand up on a stage and tell stories, she was so very proud. And she made sure everyone knew it. Especially me.

I’ve spent the last two years overwhelmed by grief. First, in denial of it, pushing myself to ignore it, throwing myself into work, pretending it didn’t exist. Later, paralyzed by it, unable to make important decisions, unable to move forward with my life. Finally, lately, I’ve been succumbing to it, allowing it to wash over me, to consume me.

But it has only been very recently that I’ve begun to get angry. Angry for letting circumstances that are out of my control dictate my fate. Angry for acting like a victim, for feeling sorry for myself, for sleeping too much, for whining too much, for indulging in my vices too much. And mostly, angry for abandoning my fighting spirit.

Watching the US Open this past weekend made me miss my mom something fierce. But it also made me feel closer to her than I have in a long time. It made me pay attention to her ever-present voice in my ear, telling me to be as brave as she knows I can be, to stop moping, to get off the couch and to fight for my life. Watching the US Open made me remember that the greatest gift my mom ever gave me was her unwavering belief in me. It reminded me that the worst thing I can do – like that summer when I ditched my tennis lessons – is to let her down.

Sometimes it takes something as innocuous as a tennis tournament to remind us that our dreams are fragile, precious, ephemeral things, and if we don’t grab onto them, they can disappear. Many people don’t get to live their dreams, either because they’re afraid to, or because life throws obstacles in their way that they don’t think they can surmount.

I am one of the lucky ones. Despite circumstance, despite pain and trauma, despite grief, I have everything I need to live the life I want, and the only person standing in the way of that is me. And though my dreams might look different than they did when I was 18, that’s OK. Because I’m different, too. The thing that hasn’t changed – that has never changed – is my desire to stand on a stage, or on a set, or behind a camera, or in front of a computer, and tell stories. Stories that entertain, that inspire, stories that have the power to heal.

Thank you, mom, for reminding me how precious my dreams are. I promise that every day, I will continue to fight for them. I promise that I will never give up. I promise to do it for you, and most importantly, I promise to do it for me.

Until next time, friends.