Hello! I’m Crystal, and while I’m a feminist who (theoretically) rejects our culture’s obsession with both youth and manufactured beauty, I have to admit that I’ve been on the weekly existentialist-crisis plan since I turned thirty-six last November. (And let me tell you, neither the frequent references throughout media – both social and mass – to milestones of my adolescence being “ohemgee, over twenty years ago, can you believe it?!” nor the ominous shadow cast by my fast-approaching twenty-year class reunion is alleviating those issues.) Luckily, existentialist crises are rife with opportunities to enjoy some of my favorite authors (especially Walker Percy, Sylvia Plath, and F. Scott Fitzgerald) even more deeply, which complements my career as a teacher of English literature and composition at the high school and college levels. Plus, the navel-gazing that ensues keeps me in touch with my Generation X side (over twenty years after Reality Bites first hit theaters).

I first met Jen through our online journalling community, circa 1999. Incidentally, she was also real-life college friends with one of my friends from church, which was especially cool back in those early days online when most people scoffed at us for sharing so much of ourselves on the Internet. 🙂 I’m grateful for her ongoing friendship over the years and especially her love of snark and kitties and saying the right thing before I even know I need to hear it.

Living in California’s Central Valley has always meant oppressively hot summers, often in swamp-cooled homes with dusty yards, but it’s also meant my favorite holiday: the Fourth of July. For most of my life, my parents hosted this gathering, which meant that we could have a some of our friends join the festivities and that we (my mother, sisters, and I – plus any friends who happened to be hanging out) had chores to complete as the day drew nearer. Extra work may seem like a detractor from holiday fun, but having something to plan broke up the monotony and aimlessness of mid-summer. Plus, there is a strange joy in spending the evening of July third hoeing and burning the tumbleweeds that had long since taken up residency on my parents’ acre of dirt and weeds. The highly polluted air gives us brilliant sunsets, and without fail, I would look around in the fading twilight, sweaty and dusty and sore in that satisfying way that only comes from yard work, riffing on stories and inside joke until the joy that was swelling in my chest exploded into uncontrollable and highly contagious laughter.

Eventually, the last pile of tumbleweeds would be burned and doused, and we’d linger, chatting as long as possible before exhaustion sent us retreating to our respective homes for showers and sleep, quiet smiles on our faces as we drifted off in our finally-cool sheets under the swaying ceiling fans, achieving the sort of contentment that so often eluded us. These are the moments that I now know author Kurt Vonnegut would “urge [us] to please notice[…] and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’” Thank you, Jen, for giving me the opportunity and inspiration to do just that here.