The Wanderer

Most of the stories my mother tells about me growing up have a common theme - my wandering ways. I have no recollection of it, but she says as soon as I started crawling, she'd turn around to find me gone. A quick search would find me at the bookcase devouring my older sister's storybooks. Once I was older and walking, my wandering off became riskier and more terrifying for my parents. Taking me shopping must have been a nightmare for them because if something caught my eye, I was gone always knowing where I was but failing to inform the worried parent that I was just browsing and not accepting a candy offer from a creepy stranger with a van. The exasperated looks I received when I was located are too numerous to count.  Pretty sure my parents thought their shy daughter would be too timid and frightened to ever leave their side, but I proved early on the only thing I was shy about was telling them where I was going. Once I was found, I'd show them the 'neat' thing that had lured me away and then reluctantly follow behind them like a dutiful daughter. 

I've never stopped wandering. The intrigue of new places, new things and new experiences are still catching my eye and leading me away from the presumed 'normal' path. Seven years ago, I decided to wander off to New York City. I grew up seeing it in the movies and on TV; I'd taken a few trips and seen firsthand how fascinating and special it was. There was so much to see and do and try, and I've seen and done and tried a lot of it. I'm sure I could've wandered here forever with its constant changing and surplus of shiny, new things. When I was a child and I'd wander off, my family would always draw me back. Things are a little different this time, my parents aren't the exasperated ones, two little boys are. Those nephews of mine have dulled the allure of the new for me. Suddenly, seeing a new exhibit pales in comparison to their first day of school. No date has been finalized, but I've already started warning those little cuties that their aunt is coming home for good and they'll soon be sick of her.

Growing Up on the Finish Line

My dad helping me get ready for one of my first races.

I cannot accurately remember my childhood without thinking about the countless races I attended with my family. My dad began running before I was born, and I joined my mom and sister as one of the little cheerleaders at his races from infancy. Weekends were rarely just about toys and cartoons; they were about waking up early and driving to a nearby town for their annual 5k, 10k or marathon race. My sister and I would wait patiently (and sometimes impatiently!) for the runners to make their way through the course, and then we would take our place at the finish line to wait for that familiar face to cross the line. Watching all the reports coming out of Boston in the past day, it's been hard not to think about my own time lingering around a finish line waiting, watching with nothing to fear. 

Finish lines mean different things to different people. There is the sense of accomplishment and the pride that comes with it. There is relief for those who regret signing up for such a strenuous activity. There is joy that comes with being reunited with those that helped you make it to this point. There should never be terror, fear or sadness. Yesterday, tragedy struck the final stretch of the famous Boston Marathon. On a day and moment that should be marked with celebration, someone chose to overshadow that with evil. Once again, this country mourns the loss of human life at the hands of a coward. I struggle to understand this world that I live in where a non-threatening event like a marathon is now a place to be feared.

With any tragedy whether natural or man-made, the outpouring of love, support and help is overwhelming. When faced with the unthinkable evil of a terrorist attack, people don't resort to more evil, instead they exhibit every form of love and compassion. Sadly, hate and the heinous acts it brings about will forever be a part of this world, but my hope is that we as Americans and humans will always have the same benevolent reaction to it.

Two Faces of Mental Illness

In an event that is becoming all too frequent but never any easier to understand, our nation again mourns the innocent lives taken at the hands of a madman who decided to make a statement with senseless violence. Once again, public places are feared, gun control is a hot button issue and mental illness is looked to as a possible scapegoat.

Not much is known about James Holmes, the 24-year-old who opened fire on a sold out movie theater at the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, last Friday. He killed 12 and wounded 58 more during the rampage that seems without motive. Although it has yet to be confirmed by a trained medical professional, it is being speculated that the current most-hated-man-in-America must be suffering from some form of mental illness or be experiencing a psychotic break. It doesn't take a medical degree to realize someone must be very sick to resort to such violence on innocent strangers. No one in their right mind performs such a heinous act never exhibiting one iota of remorse.

Just like Harvey Dent's Two Face character in the Batman comics, mental illness has two faces - one is polished and poised, the other is ugly, scary and makes others squirm to look at. While one suffers in silence, the other makes headlines. I have suffered from mental illness for over half of my 29 years. At thirteen years old, a deep depression took hold over me and has never let go. Relief has come in the form of medication, talk therapy and the never-ending love and support of my family and friends. As bad as things would be (and at times they were very bad), I never looked the part. I took showers, I dressed nicely, and I didn't feel comfortable telling others about my inner turmoil. People never guessed the truth, and they are still shocked now when I admit to my personal suffering. Mental illness doesn't always look as ugly and painful as it is; it can look 'normal'.

Throughout all my years of pain and darkness, I have never once wanted to harm another person. Those violent acts baffle me as much as the next person, but the need to be heard, that desire for people to take notice is completely relate-able. What causes a person to go from a functional member of society to bringing unthinkable chaos to hundreds of lives? We cannot begin to understand his reasonings. His anguish must have been extensive, and his hunger to be heard great. Those of us that are suffering may not show it (we don't all dye our hair red, call ourselves The Joker and wreak havoc on a crowded auditorium), but we long to have a voice that isn't ignored or overlooked. Instead of defending our right to bear arms during this emotional time in our country's history, we should resolve to practice more of our First Amendment rights. Simple conversation has the power to change lives.

Talk. Listen. Prevent.

Rainbows, Slippers and Home

The Wizard of Oz terrified me when I was little. The witch. The munchkins. And most fearful of all, the evil flying monkeys. The tornado part never gave me much trouble since I didn't understand it and it only lasted for a minute or so on the screen. After my own little run in with a tornado, all the references to the Judy Garland classic film have been surprising. It's given a whole new meaning to the fright-fest from my youth.

For as much as I was scared of the movie, I've always loved the song 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'. It's sadly beautiful, during a happier moment in The Wizard of Oz and featured in the end scene of one of my favorite movies, You've Got Mail. I figured the only attachment I would ever have to the song was it putting a smile on my face when it played on my iPod, but in the weeks after the tornado, several companies began selling t-shirts, posters and other items to help with rebuilding of Joplin. The one that spoke to the creative side of me the most was Moosylvania's Show Me Art - Show Me Hope screen printed posters. They were heartfelt, modern and a bit edgy. With the low price of $25 and all the proceeds going to the SW Missouri United Way, I studied all the styles wondering which one would mean the most to me. I kept coming back to the 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' print because it didn't scream 'Tornado' but instead reminded me of a favorite song. It hangs proudly in my kitchen and symbolizes that someday these twister troubles will be far behind me.

The poster had been the first reference to The Wizard of Oz, but it wouldn't be the last.

Living in the hipster-mecca that is Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I should have had a pair of TOMS shoes years ago, but, for some unknown reason, I had never slipped on a pair. For my birthday in April, my sister surprised me with a stylish red pair that I rarely took off in the weeks after I unwrapped them. I was wearing them that fateful May evening. They went through a lot that day - soaked completely, covered in debris and quickly adapting to climbing shoes when I needed to get out (and in) the rubble. I didn't think much of them after the intense relief I felt when I was able to remove them and replace them with dry shoes (albeit two sizes too big shoes from my cousin's girlfriend but dry nonetheless). The red TOMS were thrown in the washer along with all the other clothes and items we salvaged from the house. They came out a little more weathered and worn, but we all were a bit weathered and worn at that point. Two weeks after the tornado, I headed back to New York in my red slip-ons. I wore them to the office that week and bragged about them being my lucky shoes. More than one co-worker deemed them 'my ruby red slippers.' Wizard of Oz reference #2. Love it.

The last and most recent reference is a very personal one. 'I wish I were home.' Of course, I wish I could return to my childhood home, but, more, I wish to be in Missouri with my family. Living so far away from them has always been difficult and heartbreaking, and over the years it hasn't gotten any easier. Throw in a natural disaster that puts things into perspective, and New York City just doesn't have the same luster it did years ago when I first decided to move here. After giving it lots of thought, I've made the painful yet exciting decision to move back closer to my family. In a few short months, I'll be leaving my favorite city for my favorite people, and I'm okay with that. Just wish it was as easy as clicking my heels a few times...

New House, Same Christmas

I just returned from my three-week-long holiday trip to Missouri, and it was better than expected. I had been dreading the holidays for months knowing that the comforts and traditions of holidays past would be gone or at least extremely altered. I had grown accustomed to my Christmases being largely the same and rather uneventful each year. The decorations, music and food hadn't changed much since my first Christmas way back in 1983. (The picture at left is from my second Christmas when I was looking all boyish in my cropped hair and saddle shoes.) Any differences were slight and gradual. The tree's location had moved a few times and it had gotten considerably smaller over the years, but my mom had always kept the large assortment of sentimental and handmade ornaments. For years, I had dreamt of a stylish color-themed tree with large glass bulbs and sparkly garland and this year with all of our ornaments gone, that is exactly what we had. As pretty as it was and being what I had always wanted, it was fine, but I was surprised to be missing the tree with all of its ornaments of memories.

I can still remember the Christmas that my dad unwrapped Home Alone. It must have been in 1991, a year after the film's theatrical release. We took it to my mom's side of the family that day, and we all watched it while my Uncle Zip snickered at the smart little guy the whole time. Twenty years later, that movie is still a Christmas staple for me. Within the first few days I was home, I tossed the DVD into my parent's Target cart and after an hour of trying to figure out how to plug the DVD player into their television, all three of us were watching (and snoring through) Kevin's hi-jinx. Some things will just never change!

My parents moved into their new house in October, and this was the first time I was able to see it with them and their things in it. The house is beautiful and seeing my parents moving on happily put my mind at ease. It is going to take me a bit before I am able to call this house 'home'. Everything is still a bit too shiny, new and foreign to me. After three weeks, I was still lost in the kitchen opening multiple drawers and cabinets in order to find a frying pan. My room is about a third of the size of my old one and, at the moment, devoid of anything that really makes it mine. The bed is fluffy and almost too comfortable helping me believe that this place might be a hotel all the more. In the first couple of days I was home, I broke down crying wishing for our old home. There is really no going back, and I'm still coming to terms with that fact. Shiny and new are nice and exciting, but sometimes you just want to go home to the room and bed and Christmas tree you've always known.

Hoarders: When A Tornado Strikes

It's been over six months since the tornado struck my hometown of Joplin, Missouri, and rarely a day goes by that I don't try to make sense of it. It still seems unbelievable, something you see in the movies and on the news but don't actually live through. As painful of an experience as it was, there has been good that has come out of the tragedy. I've searched for this 'good' so that I can move past the horror and devastation. I'm not at the point yet where the good outweighs the bad, I'm not yet grateful it happened.

In my quest to give the experience purpose, I've actually tried to accept some blame for the force of nature. In the few months leading up to the twister, I had been living on couches in New York City while I searched for a new apartment. Trying to make light of my situation, I kept joking that I was homeless. I was, but not in the sense of the word where I was living on the streets with a box and a blanket. In April, I decided to move into my friend's apartment when she left it in May. Having found my new place, I headed home to Missouri for some stability, comfort and a real bed. Five days before my mom and I were to drive my things back to New York, the tornado hit taking with it my stability, comfort and bed. Homeless now meant something new entirely. God really must have a sense of humor.

My name is Miranda, and I'm a hoarder. I don't deserve to be on a television show...yet, but I could see it for my future. Hoarding is in my genes, passed down from my parents and their parents. When my cousin, Theresa, and I were cleaning what was left of my parent's bathroom, we made a game of finding the oldest and most obscure item. I think I may have won when I found Avon decorative soap from the '70s. Theresa, among others, made the resolution to clean out her closets more regularly. Speaking of cleaning out closets, my parents had been on me for over a year to clean out the walk-in-closet in my bedroom so that my dad could use it to hoard more of his things. It can get nasty when hoarders collide. I kept putting off the closet cleaning because like any good hoarder I just didn't want to face my problem. Shutting the door to it, or never opening the door to it, rather, was much easier. Well, nature and God with his sense of humor took care of that closet, and once again I felt a bit responsible. Clearly full of myself, I have thought that if I had cleaned out that closet and never joked about being homeless maybe the tornado wouldn't have happened because obviously the tornado only occurred to teach me some valuable lessons about what it really means to be homeless and how I should do what my parents ask even if it means encouraging their own hoarding habits.

As bad as my parents' and my hoarding is/was, my dad's parents' ability to hold onto things really put us to shame. Their time on this earth did give them an unfair advantage, but the things they would keep were unbelievable. Though the house had been ripped to shreds, the basement had been mostly spared. My aunt had found a large stack of church bulletins decades old in a cabinet in the basement because you really never know when you will want to look up who sang a solo on that one Sunday back in May of 1991. My cousin Zach had always remembered our grandmother keeping the white Styrofoam meat trays for reasons unknown to any of us. While he was cleaning up the debris of their house, much to his delight, he found a meat tray.

With all this talk of hoarding, I finally can get to a 'good' that has come of the tornado. Heirlooms. So much was lost or destroyed that day. I try not to think about it because just all the pictures that I will never see again leads me to a fit of tears. The sense of loss is always going to be there, but I had not been expecting to find as much as we did. I've seen more pictures of my grandparents, my dad and my uncle in the past six months than I have my whole life. We have realized that my cousin Josh is a dead ringer for his dad when my uncle Tommy was a junior in high school. Uncle Tommy could put on a dress and pass for his mother, Granny Joe. She was quite the looker and poser. So many pictures of her from before she was a mother show us the woman her husband, Papa Leon, fell in love with. Traveling down this memory lane that we had not even realized was in a back closet of their meat-tray-filled house has made the tragedy of the tornado a little bit easier to swallow.

I've always been a fan of vintage. I scour thrift stores, antique malls and vintage boutiques looking for treasures. I had no idea a jackpot of jewelry and other goodies was sitting two doors away my whole life. My Granny was a much larger woman than any of the other ladies in my family so her clothes and extensive collection of panty hose (not kidding!) didn't interest any of us, but her accessories peaked our interest. A month after the tornado, all the Noland women sat around a table in my aunt Debbie's house dividing up the treasure trove of costume jewelry, scarves and gloves. I came away with items that I never knew existed, but they now remind me of a woman so dear to me. The tornado took a great deal from us all that day, but it gave, too.

Champion

I'm one of those people who can eat the same thing for days, weeks, even months and not complain. Ever since I was youngster, I'd get hooked on something, forget any other food existed and emerge sometime later sick of the item and ready for the next obsession. There's been stints of scrambled eggs, tacos, spaghetti, grilled cheese sandwiches, quesadillas, ramen noodles and cheesesticks from Pizza Hut (had those every day for lunch for the last two years of high school). One binge that I've never grown tired of is Wheaties, the Breakfast of Champions. There is just something about those little flakes of wheat that I just cannot get enough of. Maybe it's the promise of becoming a champion or maybe it's how delicious they are with the perfect amount of milk (I know exactly how much milk is needed. If I get too much milk, I add more Wheaties till the milk to cereal ratio is perfect.). My favorite part of a box of Wheaties is the crumbs at the bottom. I tell myself it is going to be a good day when it is the last-of-a-box-of-Wheaties day. My dad has been known to save the crumbs of his boxes for me if he knows I am returning home soon. In my younger and more immature years, I would get a bit upset if he would eat or dare throw out the crumbs. He's been trained now.

All through grade school, it wasn't uncommon for me to go through a box of Wheaties a day. Cereal wasn't just for breakfast, Wheaties were also the lunch and dinner of champions, and maybe even the snack of champions, too. I had grown accustomed to the fact that people were to receive three meals a day, and because I was a stickler for details, I made sure I got my three meals each and every day. I considered it a form of child abuse if my parents tried to pull a fast one on me and let me skip a meal. On occasion, usually on a weekend, we might have a late breakfast which would throw off the whole 3-meal schedule. With bedtime fast approaching, I would recall my missing meal and call my parents out on the injustice. Out would come the iconic orange box, a bowl, spoon and milk. I'd go to sleep with a smile on my face, my belly full of Wheaties knowing the child abusers had once again not won.

Just as my dad has been trained to not eat the last of the box, my mom has also been trained to always have a few boxes waiting for me in the pantry for my visits. During my semesters in London and Greece, she would send care packages with a box or two. It was torture trying to make those boxes last longer than a day - a display of self-control at its finest.

It may not be a common fixation, and I may not be a 'real' champion, but no matter where I am when I pull that box off the shelf with a bowl and spoon in the other hand, I feel at home.