Finding My Balance

I needed to find my balance. This wasn’t an existential crisis with which I was dealing. No, this had far more practical implications: I wanted to ride a bicycle. My brother Pete had a two-wheeler and after watching him and scores of other kids of all ages ride up and down the road on which we lived, I wanted to do it, too. But how?

You see, I was born with the equilibrium of a frat boy after an all-night keg party. I possess the balance of a two-legged bar stool. I trip over things, those things most often being my own feet. I fell down two steps last year because I was admiring one of my cats and ended up having not one, but two foot surgeries. A neurologist once made me walk heel to toe in his office and after about three steps of trying and failing, he actually said, “Let’s just hope you never get pulled over for drunk driving because you would fail stone-sold sober.” Gee, thanks, doc. I didn’t know any of this at the time I wanted to learn to ride a bike, I just knew that I had tried to ride one and couldn’t do it. But then something truly life changing, at least for an eight-year-old, happened: my brother offered to teach me.

Pete is nine and a half years older than I am; therefore, we did not have much in common. He was off doing teenage things while all I could do was stare longingly at a bike I couldn’t ride. His friends were always extremely kind to me, though, so much so that to this day I can remember their names and faces. But I was always the tagalong little sister, the team mascot, if you will. And while the mascot is fun to have around during the pre-game festivities, when it’s time to hit the court the mascot is relegated to the sidelines. So while Pete was hanging out with his teenage friends, I was alone either in the woods behind our house or in my room, writing. It was okay, though. From a young age I always relished solitude. But here my brother was now, willing to give up his time to teach me to ride a bike.

So it began. First, we needed a venue. Since our house was on a hill, our driveway was too steep for lessons. The two homes across the street, however, shared an extra wide driveway perfect for our lessons to commence. Day after day my tall, thin, teenage brother held the back of his bike while I pedaled. Whenever he felt I was somewhat in balance, he would let go. I would promptly wobble and begin to fall. His hands quickly reached out to catch me. I don’t remember falling very often; two or three times, maybe, but the desire to get it right and the encouragement of my big brother kept me going. Sometimes we went clockwise around the oval of that driveway, while other days it became a NASCAR track (“Take a left! Take another left!”). All the while I pedaled, Pete held on, let go, then grabbed hold of the bike as I began to fall. I’m not sure how long these lessons continued. To me, it seemed like the entire summer, but it may have only been several weeks. But day after day, week after week, the lessons continued. I began to think it was hopeless, but my brother did not give up on me. Then, one day...magic. I was pedaling along, clockwise, when a shift occurred. I was no longer wobbly. I was no longer unsteady. When I rounded the next corner, I noticed that my brother was at the other end of the driveway, smiling from ear to ear, just watching me ride. I was doing it. I was balancing myself and riding a two-wheeler all on my own. My brother never looked so proud of me.    

I found my balance at age eight. Throughout the decades since, I have lost that elusive equilibrium, metaphorically speaking. Examples abound of a life that quite assuredly became unbalanced. I allowed my body to reach 306 pounds. I remained in a job that I hated because I was fearful of the unknown. I developed and continue to struggle with chronic pain. But as I look back on this memory of achieving such perfect balance, a memory I had buried until a silly television commercial brought it back into my consciousness as swiftly as a lightning bolt, I wonder if the memory of that summer and all it meant to me can have a deeper meaning.

The me who played in the woods and wrote alone in my room has always thought that aloneness was my superpower; that I did not require any other humans to achieve anything. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps balance is found by surrounding oneself with the kind of support that can only be found in other people. I have a husband who is everything to me. I do not have many good friends, but those who are truly my friends form a foundation in my life that no earthquake could crack. And I could not have learned to ride a bike without the unconditional love and patience of my big brother. 

Six months ago our father passed away. Because of the difference in our ages and gender, I am certain our experience during this time of overwhelming grief was quite different. Our families and friends were there to comfort us, but we also held each other up. Pete's calmness and medical knowledge provided the reassurance I needed that our dad did not suffer. My writing helped with a eulogy to honor our dad because words come more easily to me. There are many more examples, but they all basically point to the same thing: balance. I guess the best way I can look at it is when the giant cosmic see-saw of life lifts you up and then drags you back down again, sometimes what you really need is your big brother there to hold you steady until you can once again find your balance and ride off on your own. 

Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It

This essay was entered in a contest for inclusion in an anthology of essays entitled "Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It." Out of 2,000 essays, 50 were selected by Elizabeth Gilbert and her publishers. I was not among them. I am a loser and this is my losing essay. Enjoy. 

Once I noticed its existence, it became impossible to ignore. Once felt, its presence could not be unfelt any more than I could undo the color of my eyes. I sensed it before I even knew how to write or what writing was. I would take one of my father’s pens and a sheet of construction paper and make long lines of scribbles across the page, emulating what my dad did when he made out estimates for his carpentry business. Although I couldn’t yet write words, there was something about putting pen to paper that felt natural to me, like I was born to do it. It was the spark of something I could not yet define. I didn’t have access to the kindling necessary to create fire at that point, but the spark for writing was there.

When I finally learned to write and had mastered the fundamentals of spelling and grammar, there was no stopping me. In elementary school, I folded paper up into little books and filled them with simple stories that made sense only to me (and perhaps my imaginary friend). In middle school there were more involved stories that used slightly bigger words. By high school, though, I had discovered a love of writing poetry, and the combination of unrequited crushes mixed with my fledgling poetic spirit resulted in notebooks filled with terribly sad, desperately bad, mournful love poetry.

Then high school wound down and with it, the biggest decision of one’s teenage life: where will I attend college and what will I major in? The obvious choice for a wannabe writer? Journalism. I was accepted at a small liberal arts college with an excellent journalism program where I was certain I would learn the skills necessary to gather all the kindling I needed to become one giant blazing writer. Unfortunately, I never checked in with my personality when choosing this life trajectory. Considering I possess the assertive qualities of a scratching post, available merely for other beings to rub up against, stretch, and sharpen their claws upon, pursuing people for a story and asking them invasive questions to gather quotes was simply an absurd career choice. After two years and a lot of thought and angst (not to mention driving my friends crazy with my indecision), I changed my major to English. A much more solitary, thoughtful major.

After college, I floundered. Unable to find work that had the slightest thing to do with the written word, but with college loans looming before me, I worked as a diner waitress, a foster care caseworker, a day treatment worker for special needs students, and a child abuse investigator. I did whatever I had to do to pay the rent, the loans, and feed myself while my writing dreams were quietly stomped out.

Eventually I got married, moved to New Jersey, and got a Master’s degree in English with a writing concentration, thinking that maybe this would get me closer to a suitable career path. I applied for dozens of positions and was finally hired by a medical advertising agency, beginning as a proofreader and working my way up to editor. Then, one glorious day, I was promoted to copywriter. I felt as though the universe had unlocked and swung open a giant door, one on which I had been knocking for many years, and I was suddenly on the other side. I was a professional writer, at last having achieved my life’s dream of being paid to put words on a page. What I slowly came to realize, however, was that writing for an ad agency had nothing to do with creative writing. I wrote what the client wanted and rewrote what the client did not approve of. This tends to happen a great deal in advertising, usually around 5 p.m. on a Friday afternoon with a deadline of 9 a.m. Monday morning. Which brings me to the other thing about advertising that did not jive with my personality. I don’t do stress well, and 99.9% of advertising was working under intense pressure. I crumble under pressure. I seemed to crumble every day on that job; a stale, broken cookie sitting in a swivel chair producing nothing onto her blank page but tears. After several years of dreading getting up in the morning because I was completely miserable at that job, I finally left, creatively used up and stale.  

I tried teaching English to freshmen and junior girls in a private Catholic high school. I loved that job but, again, my personality failed me. I neglected to realize that along with discussing poetry and writing and The Great Gatsby, I had to discipline unruly teenagers. Again, I of the scratching-post personality could not handle this aspect of the job. I was let go after one year. Apparently even teaching writing wasn’t going to work out for me.    

It was hopeless. Finding a career path in which I could write was obviously not what the universe had planned for my life. I decided to return to working with special needs students. I got my teaching certification and made a vow to devote school breaks and summers to writing. I wrote poetry that was fair and stories that were poor. I just didn’t feel any of it. I wanted to write, yes, but there was no passion left for it. My creative spark had disappeared down a black hole and even the desire to get excited about writing something I could take pride in had apparently gone with it. I needed something to ignite the fire.

Then I read Eat Pray Love and something happened. My stomach growled for pizza and gelato and my heart yearned to know God, of course, but beyond that I heard in Elizabeth Gilbert’s words a truth that so resonated within me that something clicked. I read a story that wasn’t fiction or poetry but Liz’s own journey told in her own unique voice. When the realization hit me, it hit hard. I have a story! My soul shouted. And I have a voice! My personality answered back. And there it was. I would write my journey in my own quirky way.

I began digging. I pulled away layers of doubt in an excruciating excavation process. I loosened up insecurity until it gave, yanked away low self-esteem, used a crowbar to remove my fear of failure. I dug and dug, layer after layer, until once again there it was. That tiny spark I had so tirelessly began covering years ago. It was still there.  

I reread Eat Pray Love. I bought the audiobook to play in my car. I can do this, I thought. I began writing my story as the spark came to life once more, then began to burn. With every stroke of my pen I felt the fire grow more intense. I took several memoir writing workshops. These provided piles of kindling that I desperately needed. I spent long hours writing, rewriting, and proofreading what I’d written. The fire grew brighter and hotter as the pages spilled out. Then I took a big step forward. I submitted an essay about my father to the website that relates to the type of dementia he has. My finger hovered over the send button knowing, with absolute certainty, that I would receive nothing in return for this submission but rejection. Instead, my essay was published on the association’s website. I would never have had the courage to put my work out into the world if I had not begun the process of excavation and rediscovered my passion for writing after reading Eat Pray Love. Not a chance.

My story, a memoir through my journey with a significant weight loss followed by chronic pain, is in terrific shape now. Will it be a bestseller? Probably not. But ultimately that is not important. What matters is that I rekindled my love for writing in a way that finally worked for me and that I put fear aside in order to write my story, as well as the other stories that seem to have been waiting patiently to pour out of me for so many years. Now they have their chance.   

Eat Pray Love didn’t make me leave home to pursue travel to distant countries or radically alter my life. While Elizabeth Gilbert’s search for pleasure, devotion, and balance led her around the world, Eat Pray Love made me travel to a land of creativity buried deep within me that had long since been abandoned. Then it provided the match that my creative fire needed to begin burning. I sit now before a blazing inferno of creativity.

           

I warm my hands gently over the fire, turn back to my notebook and once again put pen to paper. My journey continues.

The Unexpected Gifts of Lewy

(This essay was originally published on the Lewy Body Dementia Association website on July 2, 2015.)

My father is thoroughly enjoying his lunch. Bite after bite, he raises the fork from the plate to his mouth, chewing every bit of food before swallowing. He doesn’t pause too long between bites because he is hungry. I watch him take another piece and blow on it gently, cooling it down before putting it into his mouth. When I ask him how his meal is, he says something in a barely audible voice, then very clearly says, “Just like my father.” Then he turns to me with the most luminous smile that I may have ever seen on his face; clearly, he is having a happy memory of his father.

I watch closely as he continues to eat. I wish I could share in the joy he is getting from this meal. I wish I could smell the wonderful feast before him. I wish I could see the food. But I cannot do any of these things because all of it — the plate, the fork, the food — is a hallucination. As an entire meal, one that is real, sits untouched on the table before him, my dad continues to eat the feast that only he can see. I know that tomorrow he may be back to eating his normal meal. But for right now, I can’t help but feel my heart break watching the man who so loved to eat consume nothing but air.

My father has Lewy Body Dementia and, like all forms of dementia, it has taken so much from him. His memory, cognition, ability to walk, fine motor skills — all are being systematically diminished as his family watches helplessly.

But Lewy has brought with it some unexpected gifts. As my dad became increasingly delusional, his thoughts initially frightened me. On one occasion, he motioned for me to come closer to him. Then he whispered to me, “Your mother is running a whorehouse.” My father said this with great seriousness, as if he was telling me a secret formula for curing the common cold or where I could locate hidden treasure. I attempted to arrange my face and body language such that it did not reveal the two strongly conflicting yet equally powerful emotions raging within me. One side of me was struck with an overwhelming desire to throw myself onto the floor and roll around in great fits of giggles as I pictured my stern German mother presiding over a bevy of call girls, while the other side felt tremendous waves of tears rising because my logical, straight-arrow, hard-working dad was not trying to make a joke. He was completely serious. This whole conversation began because my dad was afraid of the men who were coming to the nursing home to kill him due to my mother’s “business” troubles. I put on my serious face and leaned in closer to him. “You didn’t know, did you?” he said. “No,” I whispered. Oh, but there are so many things I didn’t know before Lewy entered our lives. Among the things I did not know? My dad is in the CIA. He is engaged to an African king’s five-year-old daughter. My uncle is growing vegetables to sell to Mexico. My father owes $30,000 in child support for a son he fathered last year (when he was 86). My husband Bill has a cabin in the Adirondacks and is raising chickens. These were not rational thoughts. They were not the thoughts of the reasonable father that I knew. Whose thoughts were they?

Then I realized the vivid imagination these thoughts were revealing to me. No longer confined by the societal and cultural norms to which he had been adhering, my father’s thoughts were at last allowed to wander into darkened corners of his mind that had remained unexplored until Lewy shined a light into them. Inhibitions gone, filters off, my father’s mind was finally free.

My father’s contentment with his life has also been brought into focus. I hear no regret in his voice. No sadness in our conversations. There seems to be nothing lacking in his life. One day he looked up at me and said, “I’ve had a good life.” This man who left war-ravaged Germany in 1954 with a wife and five-month-old baby to sail for the ten-day voyage to America is content with the life he built for his American family. The only thing he consistently yearns for is a simple hamburger.

Lewy has also had a profound effect on me. I guess that is to be expected. With each new symptom that arises, each tiny change in my dad’s character, I feel as if Lewy is holding a chisel to my heart and tapping away, creating newer, deeper cracks. Initially, all these chasms did was allow tears to escape. Huge rivers spewed forth as I grieved for the bits of my father’s personality that were slowly dying. Then a shift occurred. I realized that these painful perforations in my once closed-up heart were allowing love in — and out. It was as if I suddenly had a conduit to feelings I had never allowed myself to access before. Of all the times in my life to be strong and withhold my emotions, which I do so well, this is not the time. If these feelings need to wash over me as rivers of tears, I shall allow it; my dad deserves nothing less. That’s letting love in. I also allow love out. This wonderful man who taught me to shoot a .22 when I was thirteen, who gave me away to the man I love at 29, who was always firm yet kind, who taught me respect and hard work and loyalty, is the one who needs me now, and I will spend every precious second I can with him, being fully present and surrounding him with the comfort that he will never be alone.

Lewy Body Dementia will continue its pernicious dance in my father’s brain, taking away parts of him as I watch helplessly. But Lewy has given me a glimpse into an imagination I never knew existed in him. It has shown me what contentment looks like. And it has given me a wide-open heart with which to love my father through it all. I don’t know what Lewy has planned next, but I know that I will be there during every step of my father’s journey, sitting beside him, breathing in his strong, gentle soul. His memory will continue to fade, but my love will never diminish.

Celebrating Poetry and the Villanelle

April is National Poetry Month and so, of course, I could not allow the month to go by without writing a blog post that contains a poem. I wrote this poem a while back while I was experimenting with different poetic forms. This is not just any poem, you see, this is a villanelle. What is a villanelle, you ask? (Admit it, you really, really want to know.) Thanks for asking! 

A villanelle is a nineteen-line poem usually written in iambic pentameter (a ten-syllables line of poetry with the stress on every other syllable). It consists of three tercets (three-line stanzas) and one quatrain (a four-line stanza) in which the entire first line is repeated as lines 6, 12, and 18 and the entire third line is repeated as lines 9, 15, and 19 so that the lines that frame the first tercet weave throughout the poem like refrains in a song and form the end of the concluding stanza. There are only two rhymes in the entire poem, and it is considered one of the most difficult forms of poetry to write well. The most famous villanelle is probably "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas which contains the famous line, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." My favorite is Sylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song," because I have a teeny, tiny obsession with Sylvia.

Anyway, while I am certainly no Dylan Thomas or Sylvia Plath, here is my attempt, in my own quirky way, to write a villanelle. You have my permission to laugh. Out loud, if necessary.


Dieter's Lament

There is nothing but lettuce on my plate,
Since tight-fitting clothes have ruined my day.
I wish I could fit into a size eight. 

Lettuce costuming is my game of late,
Romaine, bibb, iceberg dressed three dozen ways.
There is nothing but lettuce on my plate.

I yearn for thinness to be my true fate, 
But chewy fudge brownies stand in my way.
I wish I could fit into a size eight.

Tasty low-cal meals I strive to create,
But salad is starting to taste like hay.
There is nothing but lettuce on my plate. 

I would scrape away the fat that I hate, 
If only my stomach were made of clay.
I wish I could fit into a size eight.

Someday I hope to be proud of my weight,
To be thin once more I constantly pray.
There is nothing but lettuce on my plate,
I wish I could fit into a size eight. 


So there you have it. My attempt at one of the most difficult types of poems to write. And no, I don't really want to fit into a size eight (my skeleton wouldn't even fit into a size eight!) but there weren't enough words to rhyme with the word twelve. That's why I keep my poetic license up to date at all times. 

Life as a Lemur

Last year we visited Busch Gardens in Tampa, specifically to see the animal care center featured in a television show we often watch. The center had pretty much closed down for the day, but two veterinary technicians were carefully weighing and measuring ingredients to formulate some sort of animal concoction. We engaged them in conversation and learned that they were making food for a sick lemur. We watched as they created a precise mixture of ingredients essential for the lemur's health, carefully weighed into the correct proportions. But this lemur was a persnickety little guy and had not been eating well, so the vet techs had the challenge of adding different flavors to the same base to see what they could get the lemur to eat. Lemurs happen to like fruit, so they added honeydew to one mixture, mango to another, and then created one with banana. Anything to get this guy to eat so he could regain his strength. But the base -- the essential nutritional package -- was always the same.

Now, it seems, I am the lemur. Not a sick one, but still. I am spending my life as a lemur. I have entered the world of Medifast, or, as I enjoy referring to it, Planet Lemur. In the vast universe of weight-loss plans, books, ideas, notions, far-flung stupidity, and flat-out whackiness, planet Medifast is not one on which I ever expected my spaceship to land. After living for so many years in the comfort of the largest planet in the weight-loss universe, planet Weight Watchers, I voluntarily launched myself into the unknown and had been floating aimlessly (although sadly, not weightlessly) through space looking for suitable atmospheric conditions upon which to land.

After successfully losing 125 pounds on Weight Watchers and keeping them off for six years, several painful events occurred which I did not have the emotional coping skills to handle. So I stuffed them down using the only tool in my familiar toolbox: food. I stretched my daily points at first, telling myself I was sticking with the program, but eventually it became obvious I had veered quite far off course. By the time I could face the scale and fully assess the damage, it was bad. Very bad. So, as any good little Weight Watcher would, I went back to diligently counting, weighing, measuring, and dutifully recording everything I put into my mouth. I stepped up my walking regimen. I did everything right. But it didn't work. The scale wouldn't budge. My clothes did not become looser. My body, it seemed, wanted no more of this tried and true program. My body, it seemed, was stuck. The points program was suddenly pointless.

Then I spoke to my dear college friend who had recently started the Medifast plan and had already lost more than 30 pounds (she has since lost a whole lot more). She knows the intimate details of my struggles with food, and although she never suggested or advised me to try Medifast, I was intrigued. On the plan, I would eat five Medifast meals a day and one healthy meal of lean meat and vegetables. I thought about it for weeks and vascillated back and forth between thinking it would never, ever work and that it was a terrible idea to wondering just exactly what I had to lose. Well, the simple answer is weight. Weight is what I had to lose. I had a closet full of clothes that no longer fit, my blood pressure and cholesterol were climbing, and I felt, yet again, like a failure. I began to research the program more thoroughly. The meals are completely interchangeable, having basically the same nutritional stats, the same nutritional base; hence my crowning these meals lemur food. But instead of fruit flavors to entice a sick lemur, Medifast entices me with a variety of flavors of bars, shakes, soups, etc. As I looked toward my friend, pounds lighter and happily living and losing on planet Medifast, I made the decision to try the program.

So far, it has been an incredibly successful journey. Since I began in April 2014, I have lost more than 50 pounds. I'm almost to where I want to be, at which point I will begin a period of transition and then maintenance. I know this is not the route to weight loss for everyone. I never thought it would be for me. But for right now, I feel good. I am less self-conscious, I have a closet full of clothes that fit again, and I can see my collarbones. It's the little things that make me happy.  

So here I am, a lemur in my new world. I have carried this theme to every corner of Planet Lemur. Wherever there is lemur food, there is a photo of a lemur. My desk drawer at school is labeled "Lemur Headquarters." At home, both my kitchen cabinet and my box filled with extra food feature photos of lemurs. The lemur is my official mascot of this journey. On a recent road trip to the Midwest, we went to a zoo and I made a beeline to the lemur exhibit. Once there, I pulled out one of my lemur bars and one curious little ring-tailed lemur was so intrigued that he grabbed the cage and looked at that bar so longingly and with such intensity, I swear he wanted it. If he could have jumped that fence and landed on my shoulder, I would have shared it with him. Those lemurs and me, we're on this journey together. 

Airport Limbo

Here's my current situation: I have traveled to a new land, one in which I will no longer eat emotionally. It has been a long, exhausting journey, and I am still half loopy from the Dramamine I took to keep from becoming ill on the journey. The plane lands and I gather my tote bag from under the seat in front of me and take my carry-on from the bin above me. I walk down the ramp toward the interior of the airport, and with every step, I can feel my will becoming stronger. This is it. I am going to end this. Forever.

I walk confidently toward the only obstacle I have left: passport control. I approach the stern-looking German in charge (seriously, who better to represent my subconscious than a stern-looking German?) and hand him my passport. He looks at it, glances at me, slams the passport down firmly and says, "Nein!"

"But my papers are all in order," I plead. "My passport is here. I have photo ID. You have to let me in."

"Nein!!" he says more firmly.

I gaze past his broad shoulders to the beautiful countryside behind him. I see a pastoral landscape. Peaceful. Filled with lovely mountain lakes, Adirondack chairs on expansive porches, meditative walkways, biking trails, lots of cats and dogs waiting to be loved. Everything one could want during a time of anxiety or emotional upheaval to calm oneself with something beyond the siren call of food.

I look back at the passport control agent. "Why?" I ask.

"You are not yet ready," he says matter-of-factly. "You are to stay here and learn what you need to learn until it is time to enter this land. Now turn around. Schnell, schnell! Next!"

I turn slowly, dejected, and look around at the holding area in which I am to remain. The room that surrounds me is both my worst nightmare and my wildest food fantasy. Surrounding me on all sides is -- what else -- food. Tables are stacked with the finest marzipan, women hand out samples of every flavor of pie imaginable, and freshly baked cookies are stacked sky high on silver trays. There is an entire table with authentic Key lime pie, while another is devoted to nothing but piles of fudgy brownies. Trays of scones and danishes are surrounded by muffins as large as a baby's head. Approximately every other delectable food table is followed by a coffee kiosk, serving coffee, latte, cappuccino, and tea. Tables with books of poetry, works of great literature, and blank journals are set up in the middle of a grand courtyard, encouraging the patrons of this vast wonderland of sweets to get comfortable and stay put, eating and drinking for as long as possible.

I look around and slowly come to the realization that I have been sent to my own personal hell.

If I Were a Shoe...

If I were a shoe, I’d be a Birkenstock. I first became familiar with these wondrous shoes after Bill and I went to Germany in the early 1990s. As we walked around Bonn with my cousin Wolfgang and his wife Sabine, these shoes were everywhere. It seemed that every third pair of German legs was being transported around that beautiful city on a pair of Birkenstocks.

“Those shoes,” I finally asked Sabine after my curiosity was sufficiently piqued. “Are they good?”

“Oh, yes,” she said enthusiastically. “Very comfortable and good for your feet. But not very pretty, I think.”

Pretty or not, I was intrigued. When we returned home, I had to drive all over North Jersey to find a store that sold them. Apparently Americans don’t feel the love for Birkenstocks like the Europeans do, because this was no easy task. Keep in mind that this was before the days of that wondrous shopper's dream called the internet. Eventually I found a store and I bought my first pair. They were expensive, but I was sure that thousands of German feet could not be wrong. So I wore them one day, but after a few hours I realized I had made a costly mistake. They were horrible; not comfortable at all. I put them back in the box and shoved them in a dark corner of my closet for at least a year.

Then one day, guilt over the purchase price got the better of me and I decided to give them another try. I wore them once. Then I wore them again. And again. Soon I wanted to wear nothing else on my feet. Once I had broken them in, I realized, they had become my own personal shoe. I don’t know the exact science or mechanics behind them, but apparently when pressure from walking and the heat from your feet are given time, the foot creates indentations in the cork bottoms that basically mold to your feet. They become like slippers, only better because you can wear them out in public. I’ve been obsessed with them ever since. I wear my Birkenstocks almost every day—winter or summer, clogs or sandals. I even have one pair of dressy black ones.

To walk in a nicely broken-in pair of Birkis is like talking to an old friend—it molds to you and you to it. Even after being put on the shelf for the winter months, come spring, my sandals—or the relationship—still fit perfectly. No need to get re-acquainted or experience another awkward break-in phase again. I find that the best friends I have are like this: a perfect fit no matter how much time or distance exists. No break-in phase necessary. Just slip into the comfort of the relationship and start the journey right where you left off.