Wishes

We went around in a circle - counterclockwise, not that it matters, but maybe one day it will. There was no hesitation. No blatantly avoiding eye contact and waiting to see who goes first. We took turns. By some unspoken agreement, we went round our three-person circle, in between bites of onion rings and brownies because really what else do you eat at a 24 hour diner on New Year's Day, and we made wishes.

I am a firm believer in the power of wishes. I cried for hours when I realized I'd forgotten to make a wish before blowing out the candles on my seventh ever birthday cake. Because there are only so many moments in this life when you take the time to stop, cross your fingers, and wish for something big. Only so many days that are special, circled on the calendar, glitter-and-gold enough to make you feel like anything is possible.

And the start of a new year has got to be one of them.

So there we were, 11pm, a basket of assorted fried foods already half eaten between the three of us. And we started to make wishes for the new year. Not resolutions, because those sound so negative and serious and like problems to be fixed rather than shooting stars to be blessed with a few magic words.

By the end of the night, our list included big things like honesty, health, understanding, confidence, and the biggest of them all: happiness.

The start of the new year has always felt like a big deal to me. I know it's just another day, that a date on the calendar doesn't make things happen, that wishes and wanting and dreaming are never the same as doing. But some nights, you just need a list of pretty words to keep you moving forward. And I want to move forward, into the days and weeks and months ahead. Into the blank space with nothing but a "2015" scribbled in the margins to be known for sure.

We went home, after tipping the waitress and turning the radio up for one last drive before I left town and we drifted our separate ways into the new year. We fogged up the window with our voices - voices that sound so familiar, sometimes we forget that every word we speak is a promise.

So here's me, curled up inside on a rainy day, wishing you big things for the new year. Wishing you all the wishes you can fit in your heart - birthday candles, eyelashes and shooting stars no longer needed.

Prague Snapshots #3

Well, my plane landed a couple days ago and, as sweet as it is to see old friends and family after six weeks abroad, my heart is aching for Prague. All the beautiful people I met and things I saw - I can't wait to bore my family with a never-ending slideshow. But for now, a couple of snapshots that remind me not only of what I'm missing, but how good life can be, if you just give it a chance. I can't wait to go back, but I'll always carry with me the knowledge that there are other options out there. There's a whole world of ancient cities and bright city lights, just waiting for you to buy a ticket and give it a shot.

Prague is real pretty. I hope we've established that.

I swear I tried to wait to take a picture first, but I couldn't resist velký čokoladový dort (literally 'big chocolate cake').

Rainy day view from the back of the tram. Best seat in the city.

Farmers' Market decisions. 

I hope I'm cool enough to go on ice cream dates when I'm their age.

Woke up at 4am to watch the city come to life. Good morning, Prague.

I am beyond terrified of heights. But sometimes climbing a dozen flights of steep, rickety wooden steps, with shaking legs and a Tesco bag full of Czech chocolate (didn't really think that one through) is worth it. Sometimes everything is worth it.

Dĕkuji za vše - thank you for everything.

Missing this.

Prague Snapshots #2

This time tomorrow, four weeks of summer school and Czech language and new skies will have past. I never dreamed my life could be this beautiful. Well, that's not true - I did dream. And I wished and hoped and regretted and cried about things that had never happened and, I thought, never would. 

But these four weeks have been full of all sorts of realizations. The kind that come to you suddenly, in the shower after walking along the river in the sticky summer heat, or while stirring your ice coffee and watching the way a new friend's eyes crinkle at the corners as he tells a story. 

I want more moments like these. More pictures. More nights when I don't want to sleep because this city and this life and this adventure are just so good that I don't want to miss a thing. But at the same time, more days when I don't feel like I'm missing out. Like whatever I do is exactly that I'm meant to do that everything will be okay.

I've done a whole lot of thinking - and a whole lot of picture-taking. Because the biggest realization of all came the other day while I was digging around in my bag for sunglasses and waiting for my tram to come:

You will only ever live this life once. You only ever get to be you. 

So you'd better give it your best.

Give it your everything. Give it your nine-hour-flights and jet-lag-mornings. Give it your birthday-cake-wishes and favorite rubber boots. Jealousy and regret have no place in this life I want to live, this person I want to be.

Just some thoughts and love from one girl, far, far away from home.

I do love this city at sunset.

Just a lonely bicycle, looking for a friend.

Things I didn't think would become a common sighting: peacocks, tourists carrying ice cream, and human statues.

I will always and forever love taking the train.

Still haven't totally decided whether I love swans, or I'm terrified of them. Still, they look pretty and they like bread so I think we'll get along just fine.

My new shoes smell like lemonade and are making tracks on these old stones.

Went for coffee in a room that looks like a palace. I am always surprised and delighted by this love story we call Prague.

I'm on a strictly ice cream diet, thank you very much.

Just another sunset picture. 

I'm half in love with every busker that I meet (old men with accordions included). But come on - he was cute and he smiled at me when I gave him some coins. The John Lennon wall is the place to be.

The Postcard Game

I just spent the past two hours sitting in the sun, writing postcards to my friends, family and familiar little world back home. I picked out the prettiest pictures, the best sunsets and the oldest buildings. I got out my good pen, the one I use for taking notes in class, blew the ants off of my lap and got started.

And I lied. Because that's what postcards do.

I love getting postcards in the mail. I love seeing where my friends have been, reading their words living vicariously through their precious moments. I hang them above my bed and I'm instantly there. But I know that a postcard is like a Polaroid: it's one second in time. It's edited and concise and has no return address. Because you can't write back to a postcard - you can't go back to that moment in time, but you try to make it as beautiful as possible so that someone, somewhere, can hold it close to their heart and read happiness between the lines.

No one wants to put a bad day in the mail. No one writes a postcard full of worries or fears. We have long, angsty letters for that - the kind where the receiver can sense, by the weight of the envelope and the sender's hurried handwriting, that this is not just a letter, it's an afternoon, a white flag, arms opened wide, desperate for a familiar embrace. We don't put that kind of thing on a postcard.

So my postcards are fragments. Not lies, just half-truths. I include the good: the sunsets, the old buildings, the slippery cobblestones after a freak thunderstorm.

But I leave some things out, too. I don't write to my friends about the blisters, the anxiety, the occasional bouts of loneliness. If I'm putting it into writing, I want it to be good.

Everyone plays the postcard game. On Facebook, on Instagram, in the mail - we all want to appear happy and fulfilled. And maybe we are. Or maybe we're not. But that doesn't really matter - what matters is that we choose the parts of ourselves that we put out into the world. Today I chose my best handwriting, tiny hearts in the margin, and words like "unbelievable" and "true."

And I told the truth. In that moment, on this hot and sticky, never-ending Sunday afternoon, I was happy. I had sand between my toes and the sun on my face. I wrote about challenges and adventures and signed them all "love from Prague" because in the end, that's the truest thing of all: I am here. I am here and what matters most isn't that I smiled despite my sun-burnt cheeks, that I eat lunch alone sometimes or that I always sleep through the alarm in the mornings.

What matters most is what every postcards says but what is rarely written: I am here. I am here and I wish you were too.

Love from Prague.

Prague Snapshots #1

I've been in Prague for two days now. And in that time, I've collected a couple hundred pictures, a huge blister on my left heel and some major realizations: Being here, living this, the smell of sweat-and-sunscreen under the hot July sun is nothing like I imagined it. Because dreams don't come true. What lives in your head and your heart is something secret, something sweet, something too delicate to survive the outside world. But that doesn't make this whole Real Life thing anything less incredible. See exhibit A:

The welcoming committee at Prague Castle.

Oh, the windows. All the windows in this pretty little city are wearing the best summer blooms and I just can't get enough.

Changing of the guard at Prague Castle. Baby blue never looked so serious.

Just John and I at the John Lennon Wall (there was also a portrait of Yoko but no one wanted a picture with her - I got one anyways, because who really knows why the Beatles broke up?).

Everybody wants to get some of that Astronomical Clock (because, to be honest, it is really really cool).

 I needed to share because that? On the right? Best chocolate cake ever. From a posh little place called Cafe Cafe (because all the other names were taken). Ten out of ten.

The original St. Wenceslas (good guy).

Spent my Saturday morning at a market down by the river, checking out the pretty flowers.

Swimming Testing the Vltava with my toes. It was cold. And fabulous, on a hot day, but definitely cold. Next time I'll bring my flippers.

Swans, glaring at me because I don't have anything to feed them (besides my flesh, which I saw a few eyeing up earlier. They're a bloodthirsty breed).

Fingers crossed your summer is full of adventure! More pictures soon (because I take about a million every single day). Take care.

Before

I'm sitting in the International Departures wing of the Vancouver airport (Gate D67 if you must know - nice gate, comfy seats, stylish jet setters reading People magazine, as stylish jet setters do) thinking about how much of life can be divided along the sharp, straight, fold-and-cut-along-the-dotted- lines of Before and After.

Before is the anticipation, the sweaty palms and racing hearts. After is the rush. After is all adrenaline and release. After is sitting back and looking through memories like photo albums in your mind, smiling a little at the tattered corners because you were there and you did something and it mattered. In this world of consequences and results, it's so easy to lose sight of Before.

But - passport tucked safely in my pocket (because I already lost it once today), Starbucks ice tea in the cup holder to my left - I am knee-deep in before. My carry-on bag is stuffed with travel guides, restaurant recommendations, money to be exchanged, plans to be made. Before looks like the departures area of an airport. People twiddling their thumbs, flipping half-heartedly through glossy magazines, replaying top rated songs on their iPods but not really hearing the lyrics because their minds are somewhere else. No matter where we are or what we're doing, it is so easy to get lost in the sweet promise of After.

Afters are the big guns. After the breakup. After school. The morning after. Thinking about them is pulling an Emily Dickinson and dwelling in that pretty little thing we call possibility. After means moving on. Picking up the pieces or sweeping them off to the side. After is the border guards at the edge of the great nation of Getting Stuff Done. But you need a Before to get there.

My Before feels a little bit like getting my stomach repeatedly jumped on by an African elephant. Or like swallowing a bucket of live eels. My Before is not a pleasant thing. And that's because Before is one of the scariest things in the world. Before is the absolute and all-encompassing truth that you don't know what's going to happen next. Your After is still undetermined. And there's nothing you can do about it.

But that's not entirely true - there is something I can do about it. I can sit in the waiting area in front of the door labeled D67 (double and triple checking my boarding pass to make sure I'm in the right place). I can sip my passion fruit ice tea and think about how Starbucks has officially managed to put summer in a glass and shake until it's pink like a sunset and oh so sweet. I can think about how it's a little ridiculous to think so highly of a coffee company. I can think about the books and boarding passes jammed inelegantly into my backpack and how one day - one day real soon - I'll be unpacking them and settling into my new home for the next six weeks.

Today is Before. Today is one of the biggest Befores of my whole life. And nothing makes my chest as tight or my heart as heavy as that one single word.

But Afters, as they have the uncanny knack of doing, will always come. In six weeks, in six months, a lifetime from now. Maybe there are no dotted lines. Maybe there is no black and white. Maybe Before and After are like the blurry lights of dawn or dusk, not quite one thing and not quite the other.

In all your Befores and all your Afters, I wish you beating hearts and smiling faces and fingers shaking as they reach for something that you really truly cannot believe is real.

Dear One Direction

Over the past two months, I've had the pleasure of working with an amazing group of kids at my summer job as a special education tutor. Sure, some of them mumble curse words under their breath when I ask them to get to work or prefer digging in their heels than their pencils - but these kids are brave and kind and true. On my first day, I found myself in a room full of blank faces, not sure where to turn. But as soon the girls discovered that I knew that "One Direction" meant something more than a point on a compass, I knew what I had to do.

Driving to work on my second morning, I was prepared: my iPhone was full of every album One Direction has ever released, my mug full of thick, black coffee and my heart itching to make a difference.

Over the past two months, I've learned so much. I've learned that being a teacher is both the most difficult and most rewarding job I can imagine. I've learned all the lyrics to Story of My Life and how to dance in the driver's seat without running someone over. And I've learned that when you care about something, when something makes your eyes light up and your pen move faster, you have to hold on tight until your whole world is made of that feeling. Even if that something is a British boy band.

Especially if that something is a British boy band.

I asked five students - five girls who are at once precious and determined and made of tougher stuff than I've ever seen - to write a letter to their idols. They looked at me like I was crazy. And then they got to work.

I've never seen these girls care so much about something as small as a sheet of paper. They practiced their handwriting for days. They researched fan-mail addresses and quotes from their favorite songs. They taught me how to spell the names of their heroes (Harry, Liam, Niall, Zayn and Louis, by the way). And they wrote.

Their letters went way beyond "Dear One Direction." Yes, they mentioned their favorite songs. And yes, the words "hot" and "cute" and the more ambiguous "good looking" may have been thrown around on loose-leaf paper and pencil crayon. But they also wrote about themselves.

One wrote about her alcoholic mother, another about her struggles with bullying. Their lives have never been easy and they've never had anyone to share them with - until now. They put their gratitude on the page, thanking complete strangers for making them feel strong and good and beautiful. Their post-scripts were full of promises that five British lads (yes, lads) halfway across the world and busy with their own lives and dreams coming true may never be able to keep:

PS I'd love to see you in concert one day.
PS Please come to Canada soon!
PS Don't ever change.
PS I love you.
PS Please write back.

Today I'm putting these words and more in the mail. The girls decorated a manila envelope with hearts and swirls and the number one. I've included six copies of pictures, self-address envelopes and international postage coupons. I don't expect the girls to hold their breath. I know that when you're eleven or seventeen, your life moves quickly and in a year's time they may have trashed their CDs and moved on. But none of that matters, not really.

Sometimes the most important thing is putting this excitement, this thrill, this love into words and sharing them with the world.

Dear One Direction,

Thank you for these and all your little things.

Love, Erika