Other Families
The last few days, the new Vandy recruits have been in town, and we've been showing them around Nashville, having parties and dinners, attending readings and performances, hanging out, going on tours, and you know, trying to convince them that two years here is the best decision they could possibly make with the next little slice of their lives. This is no easy task, as many of the accepted students have also been accepted to programs like Michener, Michigan, Iowa, and the like, or have partners to consider.
Last night, after spending several hours at a dinner party of the home of our graduate advisor, we took the prospective students to one of our favorite haunts: Mafiaoza's. It's a pizza place with a great patio where we also celebrated last year after the second-year's final reading at this huge curtained booth, with maybe 16 people piled in. Truly, though, that's how I feel about this program--they are like a family to me. We argue, sometimes we give each other the silent treatment, but we always want what's best for each other, and when it comes down to it, good or bad, it comes from a place of love. I'm gonna miss these people like hell. And that's one of the things that I've been trying to get across to newbies. If you want to have that kind of support, if you want to be around people who won't let you get lost, who'll call you out when you screw up or you're not working to your full potential, or who'll offer to buy you groceries if you don't get your stipend check til the end of August, that's what you get here.
At some point, we ended up playing Truth or Dare. It might be a stretch to call it that, because we're all a bunch of chickens, and only one of us ever accepts a dare, so really I should say that we played Truth or Truth. Anyway, one of my friends got asked what the most embarrassing moment of her life was, and she got kind of quiet for a minute. At this point, most of the prospective students had left. There was just one new poet, who we've all bonded with and are pretty sure is going to come to the program, which also makes the next part possible. Everyone's a few drinks in. And my friend, as a preface, turns and apologizes to him and says that she's likely going to cry when she gets to a certain point in the story. And that she's going to have to close her eyes, which we'd been teasing her about.
I'm not going to tell the story here, because it isn't mine to tell. But for several minutes, we were laughing at this story which at the outset was a story of triumph from high school, a story of winning and being on a team. And it was a story of triumph as a girl. But by the time she got to the end of the story, three other people at the table were crying. It was a story about how you can be torn down and be made to feel inferior for being a woman and trying to do things that guys do. As soon as she finished her story, I reached over and put my arms around her, and two other people at the table got up and came over and embraced her. We were laughing, and we were in tears. Maybe it sounds silly. But in that moment, I was just thinking how brave my friend was to share this piece of herself and not to back down from it. How easy it would have been to gloss over the story, to try to dull it, so she would be less vulnerable in the telling. But she didn't.
This is my other family.
Last night, after spending several hours at a dinner party of the home of our graduate advisor, we took the prospective students to one of our favorite haunts: Mafiaoza's. It's a pizza place with a great patio where we also celebrated last year after the second-year's final reading at this huge curtained booth, with maybe 16 people piled in. Truly, though, that's how I feel about this program--they are like a family to me. We argue, sometimes we give each other the silent treatment, but we always want what's best for each other, and when it comes down to it, good or bad, it comes from a place of love. I'm gonna miss these people like hell. And that's one of the things that I've been trying to get across to newbies. If you want to have that kind of support, if you want to be around people who won't let you get lost, who'll call you out when you screw up or you're not working to your full potential, or who'll offer to buy you groceries if you don't get your stipend check til the end of August, that's what you get here.
At some point, we ended up playing Truth or Dare. It might be a stretch to call it that, because we're all a bunch of chickens, and only one of us ever accepts a dare, so really I should say that we played Truth or Truth. Anyway, one of my friends got asked what the most embarrassing moment of her life was, and she got kind of quiet for a minute. At this point, most of the prospective students had left. There was just one new poet, who we've all bonded with and are pretty sure is going to come to the program, which also makes the next part possible. Everyone's a few drinks in. And my friend, as a preface, turns and apologizes to him and says that she's likely going to cry when she gets to a certain point in the story. And that she's going to have to close her eyes, which we'd been teasing her about.
I'm not going to tell the story here, because it isn't mine to tell. But for several minutes, we were laughing at this story which at the outset was a story of triumph from high school, a story of winning and being on a team. And it was a story of triumph as a girl. But by the time she got to the end of the story, three other people at the table were crying. It was a story about how you can be torn down and be made to feel inferior for being a woman and trying to do things that guys do. As soon as she finished her story, I reached over and put my arms around her, and two other people at the table got up and came over and embraced her. We were laughing, and we were in tears. Maybe it sounds silly. But in that moment, I was just thinking how brave my friend was to share this piece of herself and not to back down from it. How easy it would have been to gloss over the story, to try to dull it, so she would be less vulnerable in the telling. But she didn't.
This is my other family.