2023: Connect
My word of the year and what I’m gonna do about it
Each year since 2020, I’ve had a word for the year. I don’t choose a word; rather, I feel that it chooses me. My word is almost always late, landing in my mind a few weeks into the year like a leaf on the wind that can’t be rushed to the ground.
In 2020, my word was “home,” which was obviously a cosmic joke!
In 2021, my word was “survive,” which at the time I figured was a natural response to the ongoing pandemic, but it foreshadowed a very tough year in many ways.
In 2022, my word was “happen,” and I found myself buffeted all year by surprises and projects and travel - things happening to me, things I was making happen.
This year, my word is “connect,” and I’ve no idea how it will play out, but I know what I’m hoping for.
There’s a reason it’s sometimes called “uprooting:” the things that held you in place, the memories you made, the history you had that you never thought about — a lot of it comes with you, but some of it stays in the ground.
We’ve been living in Huntsville, Alabama for almost 4 years, and I’ll be honest and say that I’m still struggling with the permanence of this. I moved here reluctantly, supportive of my husband landing his dream job but deeply ambivalent about this city and state.
On the one hand: we chose this. We chose a lower cost of living than the other aerospace hubs, a dream job for Joey at NASA, a home base a few hours closer to our families in St. Louis, a city with very little traffic.
On the other: it never felt like we had much of a choice at all. (It’s an interesting thing, to resent the obviously correct moves you’ve made.)
And so for years now, I’ve tried. God, I have tried, but it’s been so much harder than I expected.
No one tells you all that you’re giving up when you leave your hometown for good. You’re giving up those loose connections of the people you went to high school with. You’re giving up your safety net: the people who would bring you a meal during an emergency, help you move, drive by the house to water the garden when you’re on vacation. You’re giving up the chance to say goodbye to your grandparents. You’re giving up proximity to your parents if and when you have children of your own: your kids won’t have cousins to play with; no grandparents will stop by with donuts for their birthday breakfast; no one will be waiting in the hospital as you labor; no one will gently nudge you toward a date night or offer to take the baby for a few hours.
No one tells you that settling somewhere else is stretching your connections, sometimes to the point of breaking. So you are free, but you are alone.
There’s a reason it’s sometimes called “uprooting:” the things that held you in place, the memories you made, the history you had that you never thought about — a lot of it comes with you, but some of it stays in the ground. Eventually you will forget the names of the streets you learned to drive on. You will return home and find that almost everything is the same, but it’s older. A few things change: the gas station where you used to get slushies after school, the color of the neighbor’s house, the ever-worsening potholes on that one street everyone complains about; but mostly, it’s the uncanny sense of revisiting your own memories and finding yourself a stranger.
I didn’t know any of this. I made my choices, and they were mostly good ones, but I didn’t know. I got the college degree. I married the boy who loved me. I supported him through grad school, and then… Alabama. (Look, I was never much for a 5-year plan, but I didn’t see this coming.)
People will say that you can choose your family, that friendship is just as powerful. They’re right of course, but that sort of sitcom existence requires, well, close friends. And in a world that’s ever more siloed — politically, racially, religiously — and designed to make it hard to connect, what’s a girl to do?
I’ve been thinking about how Joey and I can build a life here, far away from the place we began. About how it will continue to feel a little bit impossible with shallow roots.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I need to resign myself to this as our future, and I mean that in a positive sense. Because despite several years and owning a house, Huntsville feels familiar, but it doesn’t feel like home. I’ve been thinking about how Joey and I can build a life here, so far away from the place we began. About how it will continue to feel a little bit impossible with shallow roots.
Because it’s not that we don’t have friends. It’s just that there’s an inherent tentativeness to everything, and I’m beginning to wonder if I need to make it all a bit more explicit: “I’m choosing you. I want to show up for you. I want to be inconvenienced for you. I would love for that to be mutual. Can I count on you? Can I love you?”
I have a tendency to show up to a first encounter with my whole heart in the open; I am fully myself all the time, weirdly unafraid of vulnerability. Some find this endearing, some find it very annoying (everyone is right). I rush toward intimacy because I ache for it.
A friend recently pointed out that the real trouble I’m having is that I “can’t make old friends,” a statement that was so simple in its accuracy that I felt stunned. I’m impatient: I have a hard time splashing in the baby pool of friendship when I know the depths are out there.
So that’s one element of this year: connecting with the people specifically in this place. Not everyone needs to be my best friend; an emotional world should be built of both loose and tight relationships.
I want to recognize neighbors at the grocery store and know the names of the people we pass when we’re on walks. So this year, I’m both reaching out and saying yes. I want tea times and dinner parties and game nights and picnics. I want brunch with babies and casual stop-ins with potential new friends. I want new friends made around the pottery wheel, I want to hand bunches of flowers to strangers.
I’m also trying to contribute, to knit myself into the fabric of this place. I imagine a future where I walk or drive by buildings and can tell you about a project I worked on inside of them. I imagine that maybe I could help push our city toward better design for all of us; I could be known for my taste and my commitment to excellence. I imagine being in the backgrounds of photos that someone is sifting through thirty years from now, because I showed up when I was invited. I imagine being the house on our street who invites everyone for dinner and is always making something interesting. I imagine walking down to the elementary school and picking up someone else’s kid with mine, because his mom is home with a napping toddler.
Right now it’s all make believe, but I think it all starts with connection.
For Further Reading:
As ever, I find myself spotting throughlines as I move through the world, and I wanted to share a few.
I picked up We’re Not Really Strangers on a Target run, and last weekend I roped part of our friend group into playing it. While some friends were staunchly in the “this is not a game! this is emotional torture!” camp, I loved the weird vulnerability of it. It’s meant for two players, but it scaled pretty well; I plan to show up with it at coffee dates all year long.
I keep meaning to read Shannan Martin’s Start With Hello (And Other Simple Ways to Live as Neighbors). Shannan is a favorite follow on Instagram, where I’m regularly touched by her thoughts on community. (I just added to cart. I’m going to read it!)
Anne Helen Peterson’s Culture Study is a favorite of mine, because her observations are so measured and astute in a world that is constantly screaming. The post that got me hooked was this one from last year on friendships between parents and non-parents. In Huntsville, as a married woman approaching 30 without kids, I’m officially an outlier (in the rest of America, I’m pretty average). I’ve been thinking a lot about how some paths to friendship seem closed to me because I’m not part of the Mom Club. I can’t do anything about that, but I can be a good friend to my friends with kids. Her more recent post, A Shortcut to Caring for Others (and Being Cared for Yourself) has me contemplating how to implement this in my life.
I just finished How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, which features musings on place and community outside of our little screens. She situates her discussion in the language of philosophy, labor, and resistance to our weird hustle culture, but I think the implications ripple easily into connection and friendship.
I loved this video of Jane Fonda talking about her friendship with Sally Field and Lilly Tomlin, about how she just claimed them as her friends and they couldn’t shake her off. I love that!
