Have you ever asked yourself what makes a family? It seems that blood and marriage mean nothing in the face of misfortune. For better or for worse were just lines recited, because when the “worse” reared its difficult head, the responses were frightening. Family is made up of those who stay by your side in the face of adversity. Most importantly, family is love. Love is tested by everything that has happened and everything that has changed. Love gives us the courage to continue on with day-to-day life. Love is what makes us cry and what makes us hope. Love is what makes us reach out to strangers and, in turn, love them as family too.

I’ve also learned so much about friendship in the past two months. My best friends have showed concern, given me a shoulder and sent their prayers to whatever gods they believed in, all with the hope of giving some comfort to me, to my Mom, to everyone affected by this accident. I am grateful that people have been there for me, because I don’t think I could have handled this on my own. The fact that my friends will check in allows me to talk about how things are progressing, about how I feel and allows me an opportunity to vent. If I held all this in, I would die.

My own strength has been tested. I’ve had to be strong for my Mom because this is even harder for her. She is watching someone she loves dearly struggle, but she’s kept at a distance. It’s so difficult on her, and I play the role of friend and family. I must listen, advise, and—most importantly—love her, because she is my mother and she has always supported me and would do so if it was me in this situation. Still, it’s been difficult for me to watch her endure this trial. What’s hardest, though, is visiting SW. I try to keep my head while I’m there, but it’s so hard not to cry. He’s not capable of being the same person, but he is—somewhere in there—the same good person he was before the accident.

Watching the recovery process has been difficult. I haven’t been able to visit as much as I would like to, but each time I do, he looks a little bit better. Most of the time, he knows who I am right away. There are times, though, when he mistakes me for my Mom or knows who I am but can’t remember my name. One time he compensated by calling me Denise Jr. His tone is different, though; he sounds confused. You know that feeling when you have right after waking up in a strange place and not knowing where you are? From his tone, I’d assume that’s what a traumatic brain injury is like all the time. Lately, he’s been very sad that he can’t go home. He cries, and asks my Mom or his sister or me to help him, because we are family. And family helps.

But we are helpless.

I worry that SW will never be able to comprehend the sentiments behind what we’ve written. And I constantly wonder how long this will take, and how we will weather this storm. At times we can feel completely overwhelmed by what is going on in our lives, but we keep hoping things will get better.

Things were good. I didn’t realize how nice life was until everything changed and the emptiness filled its place. Little things catch me off guard, and I wonder if that will ever change. Will things ever go back to being good, or will good be redefined?

We just have to take it a day, a week, a month at a time.

Megan and Meredith are the closest I’ve ever had to sisters. We were in Girl Scouts together from Brownies through high school graduation, and in the seven years since high school graduation we’ve managed to stay friends. There were times when we didn’t get along and maybe even disliked each other, but now that we’re older, we appreciate the history we share. We can sit down for a meal and it seems like we never spent any time apart. Today, Meredith entertained us with stories of near-death experiences on her travels to Africa, and Megan provided much-needed updates on how she returned to this area to pursue her career.

Megan and Mer weren’t the only friends present. Dan, of course, was here; Kim, who I met through Dan and Keanan, stopped by after a wedding shower in Lebanon; and Megan’s wife, Kara, accompanied her. These represent a newer circle of relationships, an extension of friendships forged in the past. Friends introduce friends to their friends and friendships or relationships blossom. People connect. It’s fascinating to take a step back at the end of the day and reflect on the conversations of the day. So few people can make me laugh the way I laughed today. And I haven’t laughed like that in a long time.

The food was great, too. Parties have become much more classy since the days of jungle juice. Mer and I did manage to kill two bottles of white, drinking about 3/4 of a bottle each. She also brought stuffed mushrooms that went over quite well and Dan and I had picked up crackers, veggies, hummus and horseradish cheddar bacon spread at market that morning. The main course was grilled chicken, pasta salad and corn on the cob. We finished with some delicious pie. Food only managed to quiet us for a few moments, though. The central focus of the day was conversation and stories of the past and discussions of the present and future.

I know that I’m extraordinarily lucky to have such amazing friends in my life. I know that my family and Dan love me, but the love in my house today was different than the love that’s here at other times. Today, my home was filled with sisterhood (sorry, Dan, you’re an honorary sister). We share a history and common interests and a general concern for each other’s well being. We are a family, fashioned from scouting, built on social networks and brought together by benevolent forces. We are fortunate, and I will try to remember this when times are rough.

So much has changed about the liberal arts college where I spent some of the best times of my life. Massive construction projects that were just beginning as I graduated are now complete. There’s a new theatre (where the lecture took place, actually), new dorms that look like luxury hotels on the inside, and a new dining hall that reminded my friend Sara of an Atlantic City buffet. Oh, and Kent Circle, with its 7 or 8 coveted parking spaces, exists no more (this will only matter to readers who lived in the Hill dorms, the Cullen dorms or Kent). While I’m somewhat jealous of the students who get to have a much more comfortable campus experience, I’m also glad that I got to live in a converted office building (Gibson), an ancient building filled with creative arts majors (Middle—a dorm they will never get rid of because of its historical significance, but will never be the same as it was in 2004 when the best people ever lived there), and a slightly dumpy dorm with centipede issues improved only by the showerheads my best friend’s father donated (Worcester). The students who reside in Sassafras may never know what it’s like to sleep in several layers of clothing because northwest winds defeat the purpose of walls when radiators break (Worcester), but they also won’t have a gritty college experience to create anecdotes for nostalgic diatribes in blog entries. Yes, being back on campus at this point in my life has caused me to wax poetic about my time there, but I will try to pull myself back on track.

This was my first visit back to campus since starting graduate school (aka deciding to make something of myself), so perhaps the reason I enjoyed it so much is that I no longer feel like my degree is a complete waste. The company didn’t hurt, either. My darling friend Alisha (the one with the Dad who gave us water pressure in Worcester) is in her final semester, and she played hostess to Dan, me and several others. Sara, the founder of The Medium lit mag and someone I’ve worked with on multiple projects, came down with Rielly who I remember being involved with pubs too even though we didn’t hang out. Alisha’s good friend and fellow senior Maureen was present, and her brother Rob who worked with me on a group project in advertising and went to high school with Dan, showed up part way through the reading. Could you keep track of all that? Everyone shared more ties than those, as WAC is a tangled web, but those are the ties to me, the antisocial babbler. Standing in Alisha’s kitchen was probably the most social I’ve been in months, and I guess the difference for me is that on campus, even the most random social situations (usually) aren’t awkward. It was nice to swap stories and anecdotes, and it was good to show Dan more of what made me me.

We witnessed the lecture itself from the balcony of the new theatre. Rather than dealing with the crowds, we chose to sit somewhere that we could see, hear and pass a communal thermos of fruit juice and alcohol. Daniel Handler was dry and watching my Dan (who refused the thermos, by the way) watch him was part of my enjoyment. Handler opened with an anecdote about his research into the Eastern Shore, which he accomplished primarily through reading the Kent County News.  He mentioned an article about a chicken house fire in which thousands of chickens lost their lives that was currently under investigation and a story about the heat-sensing abilities of snakes. From these articles, he deduced that the Eastern Shore clearly had a problem with arsonist snakes. Cue laughter. There were some uncomfortable moments—the kind where a speaker makes jokes about Judaism/Anne Frank, and you don’t know enough background to guess if it’s okay to laugh (it turns out it was because he was raised Jewish. Does this mean I can make Lutheran jokes?). Handler also talked about the name Lemony Snicket, and how he came to write books for children. For him, it started in childhood, with a serious dislike of books where everything magically worked itself out for the protagonist. He wasn’t a fan. Life is harder than that, though you may never have Count Olaf trying to get you.

Returning to Washington College, if only for an evening, proved to be a worthwhile adventure. Though I miss undergrad terribly, returning to campus creates a sense of pride rather than a sense of longing or regret. I miss the carefree lifestyle I led there, where my biggest worry was the next paper due or an upcoming test. Now I see WAC as a place that taught me how to learn. Through my liberal arts education, I grew to love research and writing. I would not be who I am today if I had not attended that Sophie Kerr weekend in 2003; my decision to attend Washington College is single-handedly the best decision I’ve made so far in my life. I have a second family made up of wonderful friends, an inquisitive mind fostered by my education, and the ability to return to a place where an author who writes books where children narrowly escape death gives a lecture that makes me realize there is nothing wrong with life being a bit difficult. It’s life, and WAC has given me a positive outlook on it.

I’m not going to lie; sometimes, seeing all these happy couples pushing strollers and planning parties makes me feel like a failure. A ton of my boyfriend’s friends are getting hitched within the next 18 months, and half my high school acquaintances have different last names on Facebook these days. I always thought that I would be like my Mom; she was married in her early 20s and had me when she was 26. Well, I turn 26 this year, and I have no plans to have a baby any time soon. I also thought I’d have a career and–at the very least–an apartment by now.

So what gives? I guess I’ve always been kind of a late bloomer. I’ve done things at my own pace all my life. Graduating from a liberal arts college with America’s impending financial crisis just over the horizon didn’t help me, either. I worked where I could and I don’t have a lot to show for it aside from anecdotes and a strong dislike for Republicans. I wasted my talent and my intelligence before deciding to start taking online graduate courses and substitute teaching, and now I’m working for the career path I should have taken all along. Am I upset that I made the choices I did? No. I loved working on campus publications. Even if print media is, essentially, dead, I still love designing and I’ve made some life long friends through my experiences with The Collegian and The Medium. Could I have stayed in the basement of Reid Hall until 4 in the morning if I was doing ed block at WAC? Probably not. As far as not having the career I thought I’d have at 25? I guess I’m at least working toward something now.

Living at home isn’t so bad, either. My boyfriend lives at home, too. The majority of my (unmarried) friends who don’t live at home live in shared houses with friends. If I had friends in this state and spare money, I’d consider such an arrangement. The economy is different than it used to be, and that is something we’ve all had to accept. The housing market is still shaky, and renting seems like throwing money away when the alternative is sharing space with someone who knows when to give me my space. You see, my relationship with my Mom isn’t always Gilmore perfect, but I have an entire floor of a house to myself when I need it. Some folks like Dan aren’t as lucky and don’t have as much personal space or as casual of a relationship with their parents. I guess I have to consider myself lucky, and remind myself that it could be so much worse before I let myself spiral out of cognitive control over housing and career situations when I see a wedding invitation.

There are just so many wedding invitations these days. If it isn’t wedding invitations, it’s pictures from the reception in the Facebook stalker feed, or–worse yet–drooling, seemingly alien lifeforms and people I never expected to breed holding them up for the camera with big smiles on their faces. This is the mess that sets me off, and makes me wonder where I went wrong. Why is my life not redefined by a permanent addition and a different tax filing status? Am I damaged goods after my craptastical 2006-2007 failed relationship? Should I be worried that Dan hasn’t asked me my ring size? How can those folks from high school still like each other enough to be married? One Facebook status, one text message, one piece of juicy gossip if and when I do actually have a night out with friends… That’s all it takes to set off these neuroses. It doesn’t help that sometimes people ask why Dan and I aren’t making more plans.

The fact of the matter is that I’m perfectly normal. Some of my favorite people from college aren’t married, and they don’t plan to be married any time soon. Dan and I have an excellent relationship that doesn’t need to move at anyone’s speed but ours. Quite simply, we’re not ready. We are both Virgos and we like plans and assurance, and we would like to take this whole thing slowly, thank you very much. I’m taking classes, working toward a career I will enjoy, and he might have a job with a salary, but he’s not exactly sure it’s where he wants to stay if the recession ever ends. I think that in the long run, he and I are more likely to be happy than some of my friends who rushed into things and made rash decisions. And although it sometimes sends me into an emotional tailspin, I’m really happy for those friends who made it work and are living happily ever after. More power to you; it’s just not for me–yet.

The night we were discussing her impending visit, I noticed a truck in a parking lot covered in bumper stickers. The most notable of these stickers? “I’ll forgive Jane Fonda when the Jews forgive Hitler.” Yeah, seriously. What the…?

However, the real WTF moment was while we were out at the bar. Now Jill and I have always been a bit crass; it’s just who we are. After a couple of beers at a local pub (a classier joint than the outings of our early twenties; the one bartender here puts the shamrock in your Guinness foam!), we were discussing which celebrities we thought would die this year. I mean, 2009 was a year for tragic celebrity deaths with Farrah, Michael, Patrick, Brittany, etc. 2010 has potential. First on Jill’s list was Amy Winehouse. The lady bartender overheard, and joined in our conversation. She also had Amy Winehouse at the top of her list, which made us happy and allowed her to stay in our conversation.

Big mistake.

This woman said that she wouldn’t mind seeing a certain high-ranking political figure die. I don’t even want to write it into a sentence on the internet that’s how “Holy Mother of God, are you SERIOUS?” such a statement is to me.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that the Change We Can Believe In™ was too good to be true. That’s not the President’s fault. The people in the other branches of government are working hard to light the flaming hoops for him to jump through. He has a lot of messes to clean up. He’s trying his damnedest and he’s doing a pretty good job with the shitty hand he was dealt. We could be living in a nuclear holocaust by now, or at least in a world where we shoot animals from helicopters. Reacting in a very unJill and unLindsay manner, we tried our best to steer the conversation back to the Isle of Sanity. I pointed out that my friend was from the Capitol, and Jill stated that many people in her land would be very sad if anything like that happened.

The bartender backpedaled a little bit. She kind of went in to why she doesn’t like him. Apparently “naming foreign dignataries” isn’t high on her list of presidential qualifications. She would prefer someone “regular.” Like Sarah Palin.

Really? Really?!

I don’t think we even really responded. The look on our faces said it all. She tried to qualify “regularity” by saying, “or you.” In retrospect, this doesn’t make me feel much better. I don’t want to be in the same category as Sarah Palin for anything but my X chromosomes.

The conversation wrapped up after I steered it to local politics and we politely asked for our tabs. I tipped fairly generously considering she had just grouped me with the newest Fox New commentator, so maybe she will finance some education or something.

I surely hope that my friend comes back to PA after this. I’m not sure I would!