Be sweet to me, baby
I want to believe in you
I want to believe in something
The music pours out of my new headphones, enveloping me in its rhythm. Michelle from Japanese Breakfast is a “pop genius,” Greg says. (She’s also a great writer — if you haven’t read her memoir, Crying in H Mart, yet, you should).
It’s amazing how just a few minutes ago, I felt ready to go to bed, ready to give up on this slice, but with a bit of music, my whole mood and energy can shift. I saw Ana and Gianna’s posts in my email inbox, and I thought, “What the heck. I’ve got a minute.”
Today at snack, Kim and I were talking about the absolutely miraculous way that people enter your life and suddenly become so important to you, it’s hard, impossible even, to imagine your life without them.
“To think, at this time last year, you didn’t even know each other!”
“We didn’t even know each other!” I said.
“Oh my god, yes! That’s crazy!”
On Sunday, Gi and I discussed a similar theme on our long 3-mile walk by the river. About the closeness of the friends you make as you get older. How, with you growing more into yourself, you develop perhaps deeper or more compatible friendships. Ones in which you may not share childhood memories or a similar upbringing, but which are unbelievably fulfilling, a joining of two kindred spirits and minds and hearts.
When I lived in Spain, I learned that they use the idiom “media naranja” (orange half) to mean one’s soulmate, or better half. In Miami, I’ve been lucky to find a few different orange halves.
I still remember when I first met Ana after she gave a Tuesday PD on writer’s workshop. I remember seeing Gianna in the front row of the theater on her first day, going up to her at snack time later that week to introduce myself. Kim’s smiling face and bright eyes in our classroom after her new teacher orientation, me laying all my cards on the table so she knew what she was getting into as my work wife. Your first joke, your eyes meeting mine across the room and then looking away.
Could I have known then that each of these humans would become an orange half of mine in their own way?
Maybe.
I may not be religious, but I do like believing in something.
Writing With Abandon 
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