Coffee and a Conversation
As Told Over Brunch is a home for intelligent discourse from the twenty-something perspective - so the stuff you gossip about over mimosas on Sunday morning or over takeout on your friend's couch when happy hour ends too early. We love chatting about our lives, whether it be the relationships we’re building (or destroying), lessons we've learned at work, struggles at school, growing pains we've felt, or even the food we’re talking over.
On my 13th birthday, my mom asked me for a wish list so I jotted down the desires of a bookish adolescent, which included the latest installment of “Eragon” and probably a tennis racket. Item #10 was “a bird.”
Read MoreMy grandmother never had spectacular health. Since I was a kid, she hobbled around on either a cane or walker before she graduated eventually to a wheelchair in which, at family dinners, I rolled my cousins around the house while my grandma swatted at us with her picker-upper stick and shouted, “That’s not a toy!” What was even less of a toy was her electric scooter, and it was also much more fun.
In the last couple of years, my grandma became bedridden. I do not think she would have used that word. My grandma was an optimist. “Bedridden” may imply some failing or inevitability. My grandma did not have that outlook.
Read MoreLast week I turned 24. Three days later the dog my family adopted twelve years ago passed away. I don't want to say my dog's passing is fitting, but it is cruelly symmetrical.
I was the only one in the family who could spell her name: Guinevere, not Gwenevere or Guenevere, but yes, Gwenny. I remember I wanted a dog so bad at 12. Our golden retrievers passed away two years before, but I was born into their family; I had never raised a dog.
Read MoreI think we've probably already safely established that I was an odd kid. I once wrote about how wonky my sleeping abilities were, but I left out one liiiiiiiitle detail. It was a recurring nightmare that only happened when I was awake. I'd think about before bed regularly, as there's no better time for a little girl to contemplate her existentialism than late at night when she should be sleeping.
I was raised a catholic, and could get down with the whole hanging out with Jesus afterlife plan. It sounds like a great thing to do after you've exhausted this life. Dying (not that I want to do it anytime soon) didn't seem that bad, as it's just a door to another life. But I couldn't quite wrap my head around the whole eternity ordeal. Forever is a very, very long time. Sometimes, I'd envision it as my body being a little spaceship rushing around the stairs forever. Sometimes, a little horse on a carousel going around and around ceaselessly.
Any way I pictured it, my stomach was highly unsettled. None of them seemed like something I wanted to do. Even if eternity is a more perfect version of this world, I still couldn't handle the thought of forever. It's just so incomprehensible and unknown. To this day, forever still gives me anxiety when I contemplate it. So I just usually don't.
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