We’re The Top Bell

Plenty has happened since this past January. Kath and I reunited with friends from all over the country. We also visited 15 national parks, spent 30 hours or so in the air flying to and from Tokyo, drove up from LA to the PNW, and started another assignment in Seattle. We trained for and later ran a marathon. And then, we drove back to the East Coast and parted ways. We changed. Sometimes in big spurts like Joshua Tree, others over time, like my car turning from white to beige from our west coast travels.

I wanted to start recording my thoughts because this past year has made me feel solid. That is the only way I can describe it. If I were a house, my foundation was just replaced after a massive earthquake. Some people might level the house. I say, build it up. I have built myself up to a point where I no longer care what anyone thinks. It might be steadiness due to an inability to be ruffled? I feel like I am super aware of how strong I am even when I stand. That my body is stacked and sturdy. The kind of feeling a person gets when they feel faint and finally make it home to dinner. Full. Full of life and entitlement. Entitlement to feel confident at no one’s expense. The feeling a person gets when they hear someone say “I love you”. Loved. Loved by myself unconditionally. A feeling I can’t find a proper comparison for because it is so deep within me, that it is almost too personal to put into words.

And this feeling is exactly what I needed to start my job in a new specialty in NYC. I had waited over two months for my NYS nursing license to come through so I could start working again. I had made a ritual out of calling the board of education to kindly harass ask if I was licensed yet. I won’t go into the complicated, yet incredibly boring, process that occurs when transferring a nursing license from state to state. I finally got the answer I had been waiting for after I made the call while on vacation in Denver. I had already been hired, so being able to legally work was a total bonus.

I moved on September 10th. I made the four hour journey from the Finger Lakes to New Jersey. I had finally committed to living with my sister, Angie, and working in NYC (something I had contemplated for the past two years). She lived in a town where the majority of the population was dead. It consisted of many Italian restaurants, two bars, and quite a few cemeteries. No joke.

After I went out for drinks with my sister and our other roommate, J, I then drunkenly unpacked my few belongings. The contents of my car consisted of a suitcase, duffle bag, hiking backpack, bike, and a $70, double-decker, self inflating, queen sized, ultra deluxe, air mattress. I watched it inflate with as much enthusiasm as one can have when thinking about sleeping on a glorified raft for the next three months. While my room was a fair size, the mattress took up most of the floor space. The room now resembled a bouncy house. I had to start brainstorming right there and then on what sort of creative spin I could put on my living situation if a “let’s go back to my place” option occurred. My chances of persuasion seemed pretty slim. This year may have made me more confident person, but I’m still a fairly realistic person.

Still, I was excited to live in this apartment I had only visited a handful of times. “We’re the top bell” will forever remain on the communal whiteboard of that New Jersey apartment. I totally misread the white board after visiting my sister over the years. Now her roommate for the next three months or so, I see that the statement was referring to the doorbell. I haven’t lived with multiple roommates for about 2 years. I’ve actually been living with my best friend from college, Kath. Here, I had thought that that statement was drenched in sassy, girl power, fuck-men-get-money kind of mentality. Nope, just the doorbell.

But in reality, living with women as roommates is that mentality. It’s beautiful. Granted, the only men I’ve lived with were my brother and father and that went by quickly without much fuss. My brother learned to wear his towel to cover his nips and my dad always let me have ample mirror time to curl my bangs and put on red lipstick (circa 1995).

My sister is one of my best friends, but also the anti me. She is a business minded, platinum blonde, five-foot nada, fashion blogger. She moves at 60mph and I am a turtle. She calls me a book worm and I call her a princess. She may be blood, but our relationship is actually held together by our sense of humor and a respect for food. We are so different until something makes us laugh. And when it does, there’s no stopping us. She also lets me have her leftovers because she doesn’t believe that the refrigerator has any actual scientific power to preserve food. What a princess.

And then there is our other roommate, J. She comes with a signature greeting: “hey girl hey”, an all black wardrobe, and the most complete dvr collection I have ever seen. She’s lived in the apartment for ten years now. In a sense, she is the antithesis of me, a girl who has moved three times in the past year. Because of this, she knows all of the spots in and around the area. Where to get the best bagel, who trims a mean cuticle, which diner is not selling meth out of the kitchen, and the best place to grab a slice. She also provided all the necessary kitchen appliances and a cake pan shaped like a penis.

SIDE NOTE: This is one of my absolute favorite things about traveling and human beings. Not penis cake pans, but the pride someone has in something they have found. When each person wants to show you the best. It really may not be the best, that term being so subjective, but somehow the claim has been made. Other places are meh or in the words of my sister, gross. Then there is the best. What that statement means on Yelp is that the ingredients are fresh and the floors are well swept. Hairnets are not an option but a requirement. What that statement means from a person is that the owner knows their name and their order. That that place stays open an hour later and the mozzarella sticks are $1 more but always homemade, never frozen. Maybe they know the place from an ex boyfriend or maybe they know it from way back when phonebooks were the best way to order all the fried food possible when drunk and high.

The next day, my sister and I went to North Arlington Pizza to pick up dinner. Still technically summer, the air was warm and the sun remained stubbornly at the horizon, not ready to set. Angie drove, and I found myself glued to the window waiting to see the city skyline. We saw that there was a detour and realized that the September 11th memorial site was closed off for a service. We decided to drive back to pick up J and go to the service.

We cried. A lot. I know that the whole purpose of this is to describe what I have seen, but sometimes you really do have to be in that moment. A fireman who had helped fifteen years ago, spoke to the crowd of people standing in the street and lacing the fence with flowers. He urged us to not let destruction be the only catalyst to bring us together. The speech ended with him saying how important it is to unite and work together even in the absence of tragedy. Of the many things burned and branded into my brain, I am grateful to him for that statement.

We walked back to the car reflecting on those words. And now I’m the top bell with them.  That includes but is not limited to: tagging along to hear celebs speak at the office, an endless search for a missing coffee shop, getting pedicures at our nail spot, scaring men on tinder/bumble, playing photographer and model, guilting each other into going to the gym, and building each other up.

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That week, my sister and I went on a dry run for my commute to work. I had a mini meltdown on the PATH when I found out it would be taking me about an hour and half to get to work. Angie had to do the nonviolent equivalent of slapping the shit out of me to snap me back to reality. Meaning, she told me to just go home if I was going to be pissed the rest of the day. Ain’t no way I woke up early to ride a train around and go nowhere. And it’s a good thing I didn’t. We ended up having lunch outside in Union Square. Union Square Eats was still up and running with tons of food stands from restaurants around the city. I feasted on arepas from Palenque while Angie waited for her pizza from Roberta’s. A restaurant based in Brooklyn, this was the closest Angie got to any borough outside Manhattan. That would not last long while living with me.

We did other classic things like go to Chelsea Market, eat dinner near the High Line. Later in the week, I convinced her to go to Brooklyn and thrift. If ever I feel gloomy, all I have to do is picture my sister’s look of disgust as I sifted through clothing at Buy The Bag.

As excited as I was to be in the city, I ended up in High Point State Park and Liberty State Park by the end of the week. I had already paid a visit to the saddest National Park in Paterson, NJ (Paterson Falls), but I was still craving some outdoors time. Both parks were beautiful, but Liberty State Park easily became one of my favorite parks. I made it there on a warm bright day with the wind whipping the excessive amount of American flags, making them click-clack against the poles. The sky and the water merged together, the same color of blue, and the patina-ed lady lib stood proudly behind.

 

High Point State Park was a totally different experience. Camping alone was not totally new to me. That being said, it was the first time I felt scared. The reason being that so many people have asked me how I am not scared. Before, I had an idea of serenity and total self realization in the wilderness. Now, I heard bears snapping twigs and murderers whittling shanks. I decided to leave the shell off of my single person tent in an attempt to let the stars comfort me, and to have a better idea of what was around me. Even with that fear, camping helped ease my fear of a looming orientation at a huge hospital in a new specialty.

That night, I set up my camera and tried out my remote for the first time in an attempt to capture star trails. I was unsuccessful in my choice of sky and found my pictures fluctuating in blurriness and brightness. Even so, I found it soothing. The action of holding down the remote and opening the shutter for a minute over and over again was mind numbing. The product didn’t matter. I had to just keep going. I had read that, when zoomed in, 20 minutes of shots were enough. But I could not stop. I knew the quality wasn’t there, but it felt like if I stopped I might miss my shot.

And that is what travel nursing feels like. It feels like I have to keep looking for that shot. It is unpredictably methodic.  It is being content and then realizing that it is time to press the button again and capture a new scene, even if things are aligning at an unreasonably slow speed.

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