097. Storytelling

tldr: in which I blog for the first time in two months

Okay let’s check in. I finished the spring semester strong– only using one of my flexible PNRs (two down, two to go). I finished applying to math graduate school, and am frankly still thinking about where I want to end up in 20 years but that’s besides the point. I haven’t heard back from many (in fact most) graduate schools, but once I have I am certain there will be a blogpost about that too. I went and presented (twice!) at the JMM for the first time, meeting lots of cool mathematicians in my field and exploring the San Francisco area. I even got to meet Matt Parker at a math art show! There is certainly going to be a blogpost about that once the up-goer five period on MITAdmissions is done. (I really like the concept of up-goer five, I just am really busy this IAP).

Why am I busy this IAP? I’m glad you asked.

I am taking 8.20: Special Relativity to finish of my final graduation requirement. I might put this class on PNR, we shall see. The class is kind of mind blowing, but frankly it’s mostly a lot of work (rather than basking in the mind-fuckery that is “what happens if we move at a speed close to the speed of light?”). I have also been taking part in a storytelling workshop which is a part of the Flipping Failure series at MIT. This experience will also be a blogpost on MITAdmissions at some point in February. [I know I am signing myself up to write a lot of blogposts, and I really hope I follow through on some of them.]

In any case, this storytelling workshop has been very interesting to say the least. During the workshop, I learned about a storytelling organization known as The Moth. From my loose recollection of the background of this organization: it started when someone decided they wanted to get their friends together to tell true stories from their lives in their living room, like moths drawn to a flame. Long story short, badda bing badda boom: it’s now an international storytelling organization, with people holding The Moth events in Philadelphia, Birmingham, Boston, etc.

After I had found out about The Moth during this workshop, I went looking for events in Boston. I went to one last week on the topic “Wonders” just to see what it was like. It was quite wonderful hearing true (verbal) stories from other people. And it made me all the more excited to finish preparing a story for the next event in Boston with the topic “Love Hurts”.

I’m thinking about telling a story about my sisters; a variant of this blogpost. There was another story that I was debating telling at the event that I haven’t written it down. And it definitely isn’t for MITAdmissions.

Long introduction short: here is that story.

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Musty White Cars

I used to love car rides with my dad. I loved that he listened to the radio (well, at least before iHeartRadio became popular), and I loved the way you’d leave the car with some dumb commercial jingle stuck in your head. (K-A-R-S Kars4Kids, K-A-R-S Kars4…) I liked the coffee stain on the tan roof of his musty white car; the type of car that when you sat in your seat, you could visibly see the dust particles poof up from the cushion. But most of all, I used to love the 10 minute drive back home after school.

These were often the briefest of moments where it was just me and him. In the car, moving forward, together.

I remember hearing in some TV show that “if you have to break news to someone, you should tell them in a car. The forward momentum of the car gives you a feeling of being in control of the situation.” Perhaps this is moreso true if you’re the one in the driver’s seat, but regardless I took it to heart.

Whenever I had big news to share– the type of news I’d want to tell my parents– I’d tell them in the car.

The first time I came out was in this exact setup. It was me and my parent in the van. We had just dropped my siblings off at home, when I asked if we could go grab Starbucks or something, and we drove off. About halfway through the drive, I said “I have to tell you something.” Which of course means you have to tell them. There’s no escaping this now. And I said: “I think I’m an atheist.” And the car kept moving forward. But it felt like my parent wasn’t in the car anymore– they were a mile and a half down the road with a deadpan stare. And it’s around this time that the silence is broken:

“Y’know… it’d be real sad to go to heaven, and for you to not be there because you didn’t believe in God.”

We finished our car trip, and went back home.

This was around the time that I started to become less close with my dad. Maybe it was because of the whole religion thing. Maybe it was just because I was getting older. When I got older, I became more self-sufficient. Instead of being picked up after school, I’d catch the bus– the 35 to the 22. This route would take an hour on a good day, and two hours otherwise, and it certainly didn’t compare with the 10 minute car drive in my dad’s musty white car.

So my dad and I grew apart, and I grew older. Though the car rides alone with my dad had essentially stopped, the nostalgia behind these trips didn’t die down. Some part of my younger self had always hoped to get back to those moments, but it never happened.

Then, around my first year of high school, my dad had come out as a transwoman. And around this time, I was also beginning to question my own gender identity. Also around this time, was when I watched Fun Home with my family.

Fun Home is a broadway musical based on an autobiography by Alison Bechdel (yes, the same Bechdel as the Bechdel test), in which Alison is dealing with her complicated relationship between sexuality and her father. And there’s this one moment in the musical, which takes place during the song Telephone Wire, where Alison and her dad are going for a car ride. At this point in the musical, they both know that each other is gay. Alison wants to share everything with her dad– how she knew she was gay, how he knew he was, etc. But that,,,, doesn’t happen. The drive is uneventful, and that was the last time she got to talk to him.

Now, keep in mind that I was watching this musical as a queer-as-fuck high schooler who identified way too hard with this car scene and (at the time) didn’t really know why. What I did know, was that I didn’t want the same experience as Alison with her dad: not sharing something important and regretting it.

So one day– I think after school– on a (rare) car ride with my since-transitioned parent, in a new (used) musty white car, I said “I have to tell you something.” Which, of course, means I have to share it now. The car is moving forward. Then, I say: “I’m trans.” And there’s this moment of perfect ambiguity. Where I’ve said something, and soon she’s going to say something, but before she does anything can happen.

This could be the moment we became closer. That feeling of loss ever since I came out as an atheist? Could finally all go away. This could be the moment where we finally see eye-to-eye. Where I can finally go back to picturing inviting her to my college graduation, or showing her her grandkids.

And I take a breath. And she takes a breath. There’s a fork in the road up ahead, and the way I see it, we are either going to go left, or right, but either way we will make it to the other side of this together. And she, still staring out at the road, says:

“Y’know,,, you can be both Christian and trans.”

The car keeps moving forward. Closer and closer to that fork in the road. Until suddenly, the car splits in half. She’s driving left, and I’m left in the passenger side going to the right. No wheel, alone, and with a new understanding of how my relationship with my mom is going to look for the rest of my life.

But you know what sucks? Her side of the car got the goddamn radio.

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Y’know what? Fuck it– here’s a draft of what I would plan to say if I were to tell the story about my sisters at the StorySlam.

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I have to tell my mom something.

It’s the summer after my sophomore year, and I’m talking to Kip; a man who sits outside of campus with a sign that says “free listening”, which is a service I used a lot that year. I telling him

I need to tell my mom something,
but I don’t know if she’s ready to hear it,
and I don’t know how to ask if she’s ready
because if I ask then she’ll know and–

And I’m going on and on, when Kip says: “If you have to tell your mom, you have to tell your mom”.

So, I go around the corner, and call her. She’s in some dinner meeting with her colleagues but she picks up the phone anyways. She says she can call back in an hour, but is everything alright? And I say 

No.
Everything is not alright.
I need to talk to you about my sisters.

And she knows what I mean. And I know she has to go back to her dinner meeting. So we agreed to call in an hour, and hang up the phone. I went back to my room, sat on my bed, and start crying, waiting for her to be ready to pick up the phone.

—

A few days earlier, and I am on a red eye from LA to Boston– ready to take the best nap of the summer yet– when a family sits next to me. It’s me against the window, a six year old girl next to me, her 8 year old older sister sitting next to her, and their parents across the aisle. And I’m thinking to myself

This flight is gonna suuccckkkkkkk.
These kids are going to be on their iPads
and their switches
and eating airplane snacks galore–

But that doesn’t happen. Instead, after an hour the lights dim on the plane, and the girls fall asleep. And the youngest, rather than falling asleep on the tray table in front of her or her sister to her right, falls asleep on my arm. And I start thinking to myself: I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t wake her– because if I wake her, I will break her– which I know isn’t the case but it feels like if I wake her up then someone is going to break–

So I sit deathly still. And it’s around this time that I am looking at the girls, and think

My sisters would be around their age
if they were still here.

—

Around seven years earlier, I’m in middle school, when my mom seats my siblings and I on the couch and tells us that she is pregnant. And– you never really know how you’re going to respond in these sort of scenarios– but I got up, went to the dining room, and grabbed the whiteboard that was filled with my math homework from earlier that evening and I say

We should start a list of baby names.

So we jot some down, like Emi and Piper. And we continue to add some to the list over the next month, when my mom is taken to the hospital. Being 13, I wasn’t exactly invited to come with– neither were my siblings. I was left in charge of the house. And, I don’t remember exactly who told us, but while my mom is in the hospital we find out that she has had a miscarriage. And I’m standing in the dining room– staring at this stupid list of baby names I suggested we make, and I’m thinking

She can’t be the one to erase this.
Hell, she won’t erase it.
If I leave this here then it will stay here for months,
until one day we can’t stand to look at it anymore,
and we have to get rid of the whiteboard altogether
because the whiteboard marker ink
has taken up permanent residence in our house
in the form of this stupid list.

So, I grab a dish rag, and silently erase the board. Sometimes, I wish I had taken a photo.

—

So it’s seven years later, and I am sobbing telling my mom this story for the first time, and now she’s crying– looking up flights for me to come right back to California, but that’s not what I need right now.

What I need is to grieve people who aren’t here– who were never here. And I’m reminded of the girls back on the plane. These girls are here– right now, right here– sleeping silently on the plane. My sisters, before this flight, were just concepts to me. I could never really picture them before this moment. But seeing these kids, I am reminded that when I was 6 I started to develop a personality. I fell in love with math, and writing, and watched House MD too young, and I got to do that. And I think

How do I deal with the fact that my sisters won’t get this?
I know how to grieve those I’ve known
but I never got the chance to get to know them.
This grief doesn’t feel like that.
Instead, I feel like I’m left with nothing.
This booming silence,
like a dog trying to dig a hole in the carpet;
wanting to get somewhere further,
but with nowhere left to go.

And hell, I’m obviously not going to tell these little girls about my tragic backstory, so instead I’m sitting here deathly still on the plane. I keep thinking about what I should do but I don’t know.

After a couple of hours, the girl seated next to me moves from sleeping on my arm to the tray table in front of her. The plane begins its descent. I tap the girl on the shoulder and say

The tray table needs to go up.
It keeps you safe.

The plane lands. I grab my carry-on, and I leave. I may never see the sisters again. And it’s around this time that I realize I need to tell my mom something.