#1 All I hear is laughter; all I feel is hope

Rest in peace Nana Reet, you'll always be one of my favorite roommates

two of my three sisters, love built right in

Three months before I turned 21, I moved in with a 99-year-old woman.

My cousin Liz and I were both commuting to college and couldn’t afford to move out of our parents’ houses. So, we moved in with her elderly grandma, Nana Reet, and called it a win. The year was 2015 and the future looked good enough to taste. I had just finished a summer of lifeguarding, was falling head over heels for a boy, and my cousin, who doubled as my best friend, and I were about to live in Morristown, New Jersey for nickels and dimes. The vibes were immaculate.

Nana Reet’s house would become our headquarters for big life moments. We lived our lives upstairs, with three small rooms and a bathroom, while Nana Reet ruled the ground floor. We studied upstairs in a room we called “the office” which was just a couple of Walmart desks, chairs, our minifridge and bar cart. There I spent all-nighters writing papers and poems, discovering moscow mules and creating study playlists with Liz. We shared one of the two rooms left over, while a third friend had a room to herself that doubled as our TV/hangout spot. I tried to sleep alone in the third room before it became the office, but I hated it. My cousin agreed, this was our one chance to dorm together and we weren’t going to waste it.

So we made dinners with Nana after classes or on weekends, often sharing a glass of Sutter Home’s finest, and listening to her stories of growing up in Morristown, getting married and raising her kids there. We’d listen to the town’s history, say goodnight and head to the bars, and update her on our shenanigans at our next dinner. In return she would tell us stories about her one gal pal who danced on a table that one time.

Morristown is a well-known New Jersey town, recognized for its downtown area full of restaurants and bars that encircle what’s called the Green, a small park surrounded by traffic. It’s near a handful of small colleges which makes the town bars popular. It also serves as a small commuter hub to New York making for an interesting mix of drunk college kids and drunk wall street bros after midnight. Whether in large groups of friends or solo bar crawls, Liz and I just had so much damn fun.

We turned 21 dancing between the Morristown bars, going to trivia nights and themed cover band parties, followed by the famous 2am Grilled Cheese Factory sandwiches. We turned 22 and spent so many nights with different groups of friends dancing and flirting our way through Motown, making questionable decisions. I talked to too many band members, chased men who slapped my ass, and one night fell into a popcorn machine. That still haunts me. But what we did, we did together and we took every opportunity to make the most of our time.

This entire decade has felt like a coming of age, like I needed to earn my ticket to ride. Liz and I lived together in Morristown for two and a half years and we were actively grateful to have the time that we did. It was a relief to not have to seek the other out, a relief to know that the person who felt like home would be home when I got there. When it was time for that chapter to end, we sat on the floor eating Chipotle and cried our little eyes out.

So much happened in our little upstairs suite. We stressed about exams and graduated from college. I fell in love and was heartbroken for the first time. Liz taught me to deadlift in our grungy basement gym as she studied kinesiology. We slept with the windows open, sometimes with our feet sticking out over the sill, in the dead of winter because the radiators were so intense they made us sweat. We went on our first double date with the men we would later marry. We walked miles along rivers and streams, made videos and read books, celebrated holidays and made a life for ourselves. It was and remains one of the happiest chapters of my life.

It broke my heart to leave and the only thing that made it bearable was knowing how lucky we were. What we left behind, was good.

Croqueted through those Morristown years was an undeniable thread of anxiety. About the future, about what would happen after college, about making it through those final collegiate years. I was so burnt out and slightly depressed by the time I graduated and so unsure of what to do next, that I did nothing. The only thing I could think to do to jumpstart my little heart was to leave, like a dash of cold water to my face.

So I did. And as I drove out of the state toward Raleigh, North Carolina I felt immense relief for having done it, for having left almost everyone I loved, for an unknown. For better or worse I was making choices and whatever happened next, I’d deal with it.

I made plenty of mistakes in those “early twenties” years and I would go on to make many, many more. But I knew I had to keep moving. I lived in Raleigh for six months and learned a lot about myself. A close friend died suddenly in the summer of 2018, bringing me back to New Jersey, and jarring me awake in a different way. Soon after that I started to coach high school field hockey and fell in love with coaching and fitness. Life started to get a little more colored in and for the first time a purpose started tapping at the corners of my mind.

Time doesn’t feel the same forever, (said the 29-year-old). It stretches and snaps. Moments that feel big and overwhelming dull as we move farther away from them, their waves taking longer to reach us. Grief and Love feel like cousins of Time, cohabiting for years before making cyclical appearances. My time with my cousin in Morristown feels like a decade ago but when I access those memories, they stretch, filling my chest with each inhale.

Some people have always known their trajectory. That’s never been me, I’m a personality hire, for sure. I’m still trying to figure it out and deal with the choices I’ve made and set myself up for the ones I have to make now. But looking back at the young woman I was leaves me with more pride than I was expecting. She loved so deeply, and hoped so fiercely. We are, all of us, layers upon layers of an evolving person, something so indelibly divine. That comforts me.

I wouldn’t be who I am today without all of the people growing alongside me. Some are yet to be introduced to you, some will stay with me, immortal in memory, stretching and reaching throughout time so that all I can hear is laughter and all that I feel is hope.