i will be back home very soon. 

but i’m very nervous. it feels a lot like when i was on the road for my last education story around exactly this time last year. what, specifically, do i feel? kevin asks. i am scared i can’t do it. scared i’ll run into the same roadblocks i dealt with last year–bouncer-like gatekeeper/secretaries, disappearing parents, elusive stories. i feel so much leftover anxiety from that difficult reporting trip that i can’t even think clearly about this story. i’m just stuck at fear.

kevin and i went to a coffee shop last night to work and while i stressed out over my story and tried to prepare for this trip, kevin took over my notebook. (i asked him to leave me a doodle.) i was going to wait till i was feeling anxious and lonely once i got to adelanto to look at it, but i snuck a peek at it on the bus to the airport.

he drew me, with a big heart on my shirt, announcing to the world: “hello! my name is julianne and i’m a reporter!”

it’s true, i’m a reporter!

time to go do my job.

“chugga chugga chugga chugga. do you know what that’s the sound of?” kevin asked me a few weeks later when i interrupted a quiet moment with another stream of worries. i shook my head. “it’s your brain moving…”

i’m still not sure what was going on then. most of those big psychological battles have retreated–i am not beating myself up so much anymore. i am not breaking up with kevin. he’d never replied to an email so fast. his response that morning was long and thoughtful and measured and calm. i read portions of it to becca out loud over lunch and she told me to save that email and refer to it anytime i felt similar doubts creeping in again.

it turns out that the analytical skills that serve me so well in my work are a detriment to my well-being and personal peace of mind elsewhere. it turns out that the command to “chill out” is actually the quickest way to make me freak out; i’m super sensitive to being told that i’m on edge, for one. and clearing my mind and keeping my brain still are things that takes a great deal of discipline.

====

it’s still a little odd to me to be so in love, to call a new person the pet names i used to call another. really vivid memories from my old relationship will occasionally pop up in the middle of a conversation or while i’m passing by a store–somehow it’s only the happy that remains. i take that as a good thing. but occasionally jack’s name will be on the tip of my tongue when i mean to say kevin’s and that is a little disconcerting. sometimes i feel like i live in the past and the future and the present simultaneously.

back in may he came by my office so we could have lunch together, and when i rounded the corner and saw him walking toward me, i jumped up in the air and squealed and ran toward him. i surprised myself with how excited i was to see him. love surprises me. even the hard days, the difficult conversations, the dark moments, they’re all easier with him.

well anyway, i tried it on. and it made it up my hips but barely squiggled back down. hips! hips! i didn’t have these when i was 12. this dress that was made for me, measured exactly to my body, pretty much fit everywhere else except around my bottom. there was nothing to be sad about, just lots to marvel at. the body! my female body!

==

every year for the last three years i’ve gone to an annual dinner with my dad for an organization that he founded. it’s their yearly fundraiser and it’s been in the same building around the same time of year every time i’ve gone. they invariably have the same pre-dinner cocktail hour, the same drinks and cheese and crackers set up, the same dinner bell that rings to let people know it’s time to come to the main hall to be seated. i sit at the same table every year, table 12 right in front of the podium. many of my dad’s old friends and colleagues–people he’s always introducing me to, the people he’s generously let me bug when i need sources and quotes, people who he’s clearly a mentor and star to–are always there. some i have my own professional relationship with now. some of his former students still tease me about how they were in class with my dad when my mom went into labor with me–or was it sharon? or was it eric?–well anyway your dad was so so so excited to announce it. stuff like that.

two years ago i’d broken up with jack for the first time, and was feeling broken and unmoored. my dad was honored by the organization that year, and was so clearly in his element reminiscing with all the other now-established academics and attorneys and advocates and judges who he came up with. my mom was sewing that night–she would give him her congratulations later, but first she had to sew–and i remembered trying to reconcile how they seemed to make this work out for themselves with what i felt was missing from my relationship. i remember walking away from the dinner that night and asking my dad: how much do you tell mommy about your work? does she get it?

i wanted to make it work so much i begged myself to fit my relationship into the model my parents had worked out for themselves.

the next year, with another, more final breakup behind me, that dinner felt like a cleansing fresh start. i remember that year being so full of so many firsts as i tried to readjust to life without jack. the first show season without him, the first BART rides without him, the first time i went to the farmers market without him. by last spring i was still shaky but feeling okay. i was easing into the realization that i was becoming a reporter. it still took me months to stop saying, “i write for a magazine,” when people asked me what i did.

and this year, things again are different. (the dessert is delicious every year, thankfully.) for one, tho i’ll forever feel like a neophyte i know immigration policy much better. i go to these dinners because there are people i need to find so i can hear the latest about how their meetings with senators and administration staff went. i want to know about the youth organizing they’re doing, the campaigns they’re setting up. i’m comfortable with the fact that i cover immigration, and that there are people whose knowledge i lean on often so i get my stories right. i’m a reporter.

and there are new people, there’s a new love. different anxieties. new excitement. life keeps moving, if you let it.

hello young lovers, whoever you are

i hope your troubles are few

all of my good wishes go with you tonight

yeah, i’ve been in love like you

oh, be brave, young lovers, young lovers, and follow your star

be brave, be faithful and true

you’ve got to cling to each other very close tonight

i’ve been in love like you

i’ve had a love of my own

i’ve had a love of my own

i know how it feels to have wings on your heels

and fly down the street in a trance

you fly down the street on a chance that you’ll meet

and you’ll meet not really by chance

don’t cry young lovers, young lovers, yeah

i’ve had a love of my own

be brave young lovers

===

some stevie. be brave. it’s okay. be brave. it’s okay to fall.

but by then the conversation stopped. i got distracted watching his left hand hold the pan as his right hand swirled the mixture around lightly. too lightly to create a decent roux. the whisk seemed to be hovering in the air above the simmering ingredients in the pan, it was barely scraping the bottom of the pan, and the flour was clumping against the shallots that were sitting around the sides. i was feeling anxious witnessing the sauce fall away in those key moments when the butter and the flour needed to be mixed and mixed and mixed until they became the roux that was going to either make or break the pasta we were going to have in a few minutes. on the back burner a pot half full with water was heating when he poured in the pasta. it wasn’t boiling yet but in the pasta went. i held my tongue. i’d never seen anything like that. there was so much happening in my brain. on top of all of this, it was completely silent on the stove. where was the chhh chhh chhhh that accompanies the sounds of dinner coming together in the kitchen? everything was simmering, but nothing seemed to be actually cooking the way it needed to be.

and then, unable to stand by any longer, i said with what i hope was good natured humor: “i’m kind of resisting the urge to tell you to move over right now.”

i’m not sure what he said after that, i was so intent on getting dinner back on track, but maybe we laughed, it’s possible i kissed him, and then he slid over and handed me the whisk and then i finished up the meal. did i mention that he invited me over so he could cook for me?

last weekend we were at his new place trying to figure out dinner again and after talking about a few ideas and flipping through this massive cook book i asked him if it was okay if i decided what to do with all the great stuff he had in his fridge and he laughed and said, “ha, i would prefer that.” and then i set to scrubbing the potatoes and cutting them up and mincing the garlic while he did something else in the kitchen. what was he doing? i have no idea. washing dishes maybe. and just as i was wrapping up the potatoes and seasoning them he came over and slid his arms around my waist and rested his chin on my shoulder and said that really, it was fine for me to figure out dinner because he felt kind of intimidated by me in the kitchen.

and i could feel something being cemented, something awful that i didn’t want to have any place in in my dealings with people i’m dating. i’m all for the division of labor in relationships but i think there’s a way that in hetero relationships (the only thing i’ve got experience with) women enjoy a little bit too much the power they have in the kitchen, and the ease with which they can scoot men out of there and whip up some delicious dinner. i see it all the time. the mother who holds off teaching her beloved son how to cook because it’s the one last thing she really can do for him that he can’t do, or has been raised to believe he can’t, do for himself. the new bride who wakes up 15 minutes before her husband so she can pack both of their lunches for the day, and makes sure she has dinner on the table every night she’s home, even when she’s worked a long shift at the hospital–even though her husband only makes dinner for himself when she works a night shift. women get all the credit but have all the burden. and then men get off easy as they plead ignorance about the ways of the kitchen.

cooking is no great mystery. like everything worthwhile it takes time, and effort, and a little creativity. it’s not women’s work. it’s love’s work.

one of my biggest fears about having kids is that my life will change so radically, and in a way that my partner’s won’t, that i’ll end up having to forfeit my professional goals, my big life dreams. i’m sure a little person would bring its own kind of fulfillment, but i can feel the resentment choking me already as i imagine my partner getting promoted or published, receiving accolades, moving and building a career for himself while i let my writing dreams fall away. that fear alone is enough to make me not want to be a mother. so if i want an equal partner i have to treat men like they’re my equals in these spaces.

a few days later we were chatting and i asked about the dinner he’d cooked, said it was something simple, easy, some kind of a stirfry. it sounded good, and i told him that, and told him too that i suspect that he’s probably pretty competent in the kitchen, and that whatever kitchen nervousness i’d seen with him was probably a little bit of a front. i fully believe the first part of that, but think i’m partially responsible for the latter.

oh, and it turned out that the pasta was perfectly done when he cooked it his way, with the barely boiling water. you learn something new every time.

my heart hasn’t been in it. i am anxious, because i can feel the weight of the work on me, because i keep getting rebuffed. because i am scared out of my mind every time i glimpse the breadth of this undertaking and what it’s asking of me. i would rather sit in my rental car outside the building than get out of it to go talk to strangers who i know do not want to talk to me. sometimes that’s exactly what i do. i sit in my rental car and glare at the building.

every day is a test of my outgoing guts. do i even have them? is what i often wonder. why do they so often abandon me?

can i get someone to talk to me? can i get someone to agree to share what they share with me with the public, who will read about it in an article that i am going to write? can i talk my way into a guarded public institution–and do more than just loosen people up. can i win OKs and administrative clearance to gain access to parts of the institution that will not pay me any attention? i am unaccustomed to inquiring multiple times about something i want after i’ve been told no. i give people their space, i respect people’s privacy, i let people who would rather keep to themselves keep to themselves. in my line of work these characteristics of mine are liabilities.

unlike a court trial, where all the action happens inside one box of a room from 9:30pm to 5pm, with an hour’s break for lunch, and whatever reactions you can scrounge up before people split for the day, i am the single driving force of this story. there is no story until i push it along. there is no action until i create it, or go to it, or stick my nose in it, until i pick up the phone, until i get the cold shoulder from mothers who are in the process of losing their homes, who’ve long ago lost their jobs, who initially are willing to talk, but then think better of opening up.

i was talking with a friend of mine who’s an organizer, and i compared pursuing a story to pursuing a lover. he said his job was something similar, thankfully. except that unlike dating, in reporting, i cannot take no for an answer. once i’ve decided i must speak with you, it is up to me to get it right, or risk losing a crucial source. like dating, though, nothing is that personal. but god every rejection throws me. i’ve hit so many reticent sources and found so many perfectly appropriate people who i would like to speak with, only to be stood up or ignored, that it’s making me seriously question my people skills (which is what good journalism, and good organizing, is all about.) like a rejected suitor, i find myself wondering often: is it me? what am i doing wrong? instead of pursuing people closely i’d rather give up and move on to the next person. i’ve little patience these days for cagey sources, even less patience for myself. i’ve never been that adept at the dating thing, either.

where is this story? this is my third trip for this project, and i often wailed this question as i stomped around town, cris-crossing the city to find what i was sent here for. calling dozens of people, never leaving any conversation without the numbers of three more people to call, pursuing every lead and doubling back again to scrape my sources clean. perhaps that is the benefit of multiple trips, a new dilemma now: it is not that the story must be found, i know it’s here. the story must be excavated. it is here. it is one that can be told, if i have the courage to push hard enough, the journalistic dexterity, to get this right.

the downside of this being my 3rd trip for this story is that i just want it to be over. my feet made leaden by fear and uncertainty, my brain paralyzed by my anxieties, about what? i can’t quite pinpoint. picking up the phone to call people is not such a huge task. one day this week picking up the phone and waiting nervously for the other person to pick up, and then being met by an anonymous voicemail (and feeling relief for both of us), was my only accomplishment.

i want to go home. but first i need to get people to talk to me. and before that i need to get up the guts to really talk to them.

waiting by the phone while my parents, who were out at a dinner where my dad was being honored, called me back so my mom could call her pharmacist sister and physician brothers to decide on the best treatment for me.

and then calling kaiser.

driving myself to safeway at midnight to pick up medicine.

being bounced around from one desk to another, waiting many minutes on automated telephone lines, swiping in everywhere with my medical record number, like i would have been better off if i’d a bar code embedded into my wrist.

running through the doors for my first same-day doctor’s appointment with my own adult insurance, with my first doctor i’d ever seen that my parents hadn’t also been to or didn’t already personally know.

riding up and down the elevators to get to my appointment.

hearing babies’ screams through the walls of the faux-wood paneled elevator as i rode up.

sitting in a sad, tiny exam room, chatting on my phone to ease the lonely minutes, and then leaving my perplexed doctor with nothing to offer me because my mom and the kaiser on-call nurse had already done everything that could be done.

at every turn, little waves of realization that my parents have protected me from so much of the world for my entire life. and swimming in the gratitude, of course, but also fear. so much more i must know nothing of, so much more left to face eventually.

you can’t make these stories up. and so i wonder: what do people do with theirs? i want to hear them all.

i give away my number pretty easily–i rarely do anything with the numbers of people i get, i rarely respond to the texts i get. i am still practicing my polite, firm “no.”

this guy tried to pick me up over the intercom of a rental car shuttle bus last week–he opened with: “YOU MARRIED?”, and “I DON’T SEE A RING ON YOUR FINGER, THAT MEANS YOU’RE SINGLE, RIGHT?” it was just me and him in the gigantic bus when he took to the mic and got right to work on his bit–”SO YOU DATING?” his voice called out over the bus speakers. “NOW IS THAT MULTIPLE PEOPLE? ONE PERSON? HOW’S THAT DATING GOING FOR YOU?” “HOW OFTEN YOU IN LA?” “NOT THAT OFTEN? YEAH, YEAH. I WOULD LOVE TO SEE YOU AGAIN WHEN YOU’RE IN TOWN.” and god, i made him work hard, because i kept laughing at all his lines without ever giving him a no. how could i? i can be a good sport, sometimes i’ll be coy just so i don’t embarrass the other person. but hey, i did not give him my number.

this weekend’s waste of my night award went to a guy who kept his hand in the small of my back the whole time we talked. i sacrificed good dancing time for this man, who let me know before he’d even told me his name that he was accepted to wharton, and berkeley, but that he wasn’t sure which he would choose, because he had to run his hedge fund company in la jolla, the hedge fund of which he’s a partner. i said: “what? warden?” and he said “harvard.” he told me he’d read my magazine before and i told him i was honestly skeptical that he ever had. “what do we cover?” i asked, and he said: “i don’t know, i read a lot. but i know i’ve read it.” and it was too dark for me to roll my eyes at him, and still he kept his hand at my back, and i really just wanted to go dance with the european boys who weren’t trying to impress anyone and were having a good time grooving to the musical stylings of pitbull.

it’s all a lot of fun, and i don’t have any expectations of anyone and i am still new enough to single girl life that i feel like a naturalist in a tropical jungle, learning about its exotic species and funny weather patterns and curious landscapes. there are the people that are terribly direct and have no time to waste–and no charm to spare, and there are people who are plain slimy and there are people who are friendly and fun and confident enough to hang back, and there are people who are slippery like fish. everyone is gay until proven otherwise. i love that every non-asian bar plays the black keys; i find it amazing that almost every asian club has at least one older white man who hangs out and leers at the women; i am fascinated with bartenders’ tattoos. good music is so hard to find. and oh man, do i love mojitos made with sake.

one of the best parts of it all, still, is the report back with becca, teasing each other about single life and the silliness of all its rituals.

my girlfriends tell me that’s exactly my problem. i don’t take enough risks, and i love making fun of dating too much. “you’re out, but you’re not out there,” one said. you cannot hide anything from your girlfriends.

last night becca and i got into bed, still drunk, eyelids drooping heavily. and we told each other how much we loved each other for the dozenth time this weekend, and marveled at how great it was to know that we’ll be friends for a long, long time. forever, i believe is how long we said.

i don’t know how else to end this. girlfriends, boys, flirting, dancing, basil gimlets. stories, stories, stories.

as in, my new process for figuring out what to do next, when it comes to this story, means asking myself what would come most naturally to me (wailing in my car while i sink down in my seat under the steering wheel, is what) and then doing exactly the opposite. so far, it has netted results. though, hmm, doing anything besides wailing in my car would likely always accomplish more, right?

i am inclined to respect people’s privacy. i hate to make people feel uncomfortable; i think i often feel more uncomfortable approaching people than the people whose comfort i am so concerned about feel. i do not pry when i do not know someone well; i try to let people tell what they want to when it’s comfortable for them.

but there is no room for that here, in reporting.

instead, the exact opposite is preferred, indeed required, in this line of work. assertiveness, frankness, fearlessness are all job requirements. or as becca said to me when she dropped me off at the airport thursday night (after i spent the car ride wringing my hands and listing all the things i needed to do that i was unsure i could get done): “BALLS OUT, JUN.”

women really need their own phrase of empowerment. vaginas out?

i spoke with my dad this weekend about the trouble i was having getting this story, and the difficulty i was having getting a mom to open up. i told him i needed to go back to her house and show her my face and ask directly, honestly, repeatedly if necessary, for her story. he said, “well, if she doesn’t want to talk to you, you have to respect her privacy.” and i had to tell him that it was my job to get her to talk. if she said she didn’t want to talk, it was my job to convince her to speak with me. every no is an opportunity to ask another question: is there a better time? can i come to you? what if i tag along while you pick your son up from football practice? what’s the name of your caseworker?

i can see how the aggressiveness that reporters have the license to deploy can be the thing that gives reporters the rush.

i got this mom to talk. i got this woman to let me spend 6 hours with her. and i got this mom to let us photograph her inside her house.

i’m not sure what will come of this story, but i consider those two accomplishments significant enough.

there’s an old email from my editor that i found while i was cleaning up my stickies on my computer tonight. he sent it to me while i was in LA reporting for the trial. and i read it just now and it’s the kind of note that i should be re-reading more often, even though that story wrapped up months ago and he’s too busy to give me constant encouragement anymore.

“And choke down that nervousness! Best antidote is to just dive in, honestly. These guys are just lawyers, nothing more or less. Just go up and ask ‘em questions. Any questions. The point is to get your flag in. …. Also, remember, you work for your readers! They’re looking to you to have those awkward moments so you can get them the info they need.”

and of course, there are so many more awkward moments i’ll need to stomach before this is over. the story is not nearly done. tomorrow i need to go find a football coach.