So these two poems seem appropriate to share today. The first was inspired by Thanksgiving travel during my college era, and the second by the woman who took me in for Thanksgiving all four of those years…and then some. Her 89th birthday would have been on Tuesday, and this is my first Thanksgiving without her.

(Oh, and a note: The first poem is a form known as a pantoum, in which the repetition is part of the design.)

Stand-By

I know my turn is yet to come –
Waiting for the almighty loudspeaker
As I’m held here in limbo
Gagging on this stale coffee smell.

Waiting for the almighty loudspeaker,
We all squirm in these fake leather chairs;
Gagging on this stale coffee smell,
Sneaking sideways glances at each other.

We all squirm in these fake leather chairs
As a couple argue over their son’s head,
Sneaking sideways glances at each other,
Still bickering over what “family vacation” means.

As a couple argue over their son’s head,
An older woman thumbs a magazine –
Still bickering over what “family vacation” means!
Overachievers concentrate on their calculators

And an older woman thumbs a magazine.
In front of a Thanksgiving reunion,
Overachievers concentrate on their calculators
As weary travelers are welcomed home.

In front of a Thanksgiving reunion,
I yearn to hear my own name called
As weary travelers are welcomed home
With hugs and tears freely flowing.

I yearn to hear my own name called
As I’m held here in limbo –
With hugs and tears freely flowing,
I know my turn is yet to come.

***

Grandmother, 1941

Your crackling knees and papery skin belie
this youthful figure carelessly jitterbugging
the afternoon away as attack planes sit idling
across an ocean. Your hips, slim before they bore
five children, shimmy and shake as I flip
through these black pages. Your bright eyes
adore the photographer, your future husband,
who had to go perform his patriotic duty before
you could actually marry. Your curly brown hair
and toothy smile reflect me like a mirror,
our faces echoing across the decades as we sit
laughing together, reliving the life that led to me.

This year, I celebrated my 25^th birthday. I can almost hear what’s running through your head when you take in that statement—she’s a member of a lazy, coddled generation, glued to her cell phone and computer, updating her MySpace page five times a day instead of working at an actual job. Believe me, I’ve heard a number of your kind tell me so. And while some of that is true—I’m writing this essay on my laptop at a local café—the rest gives me a headache on a daily basis.

My parents—my mother especially—raised me to think for myself. After all, they were the same way. They graduated from high school in 1967, at the beginning of the Summer of Love. They weren’t hippies or protesters; they went to school and worked hard to make the world and their families better in their own way. My mother has spent the majority of the last 30 years as a resource specialist, a teacher who helps special needs and second-language students.

It was their mindset that prompted me to get started on my own story early. I worked semi-professional jobs as early as high school, when I was a gopher for a local architectural firm. That phase passed pretty quickly, and I ended up writing and interning for magazines while I was out of college for the summer. While my peers were happy partying every weekend, it was my responsibility to earn my own spending money, so I worked hard for it—and was loath to spend it.

While I now support myself, I did live with my parents for a few years after I graduated from college, but I did it to build up my own savings and start planning for retirement before I truly set out into the real world. And now, I have an IRA, and I just bought my first new car. When I went to Rome for the first time, it was on my own dime. Not only that, but I’ve won several awards and honors in my chosen profession, and I’ve written articles on topics that will be hard to top as I grow older—and as I’m told, wiser.

I’ve never been one who enjoys having someone tell them who or what they’re supposed to be. In college, a roommate of mine was so sure that I was going to be so enthralled with my first midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show that he predicted I would soon be dressing up as Magenta and streaking my way across the stage. I never did. What he said made me that much more determined not to like it.

Perhaps it’s the same way with societal expectations, and once I enter an age where I am supposed to be responsible, that’s when I’ll go against the norm. It worries me that there’s such a dim view of the generation that’s supposed to be spending its time sowing wild oats and generally being stupid, when we’re the ones who are going to inherit all the problems the U.S. and the world is experiencing now. People may not think we’re ready to make a difference yet, but maybe that’s another expectation I’ll have to shatter.

For now, if you see a woman in her 20s waiting to cross the street, listening to her iPod, realize that she may not have been formed from a cookie-cutter. She might wear at least semi-fashionable clothing, but she also reads several newspapers a day (even if they’re online). She might like going to museums as much as she goes to concerts, and the first dial on her car radio might be NPR—but just before the indie rock station, of course.

***

It’s evident, of course, from the mention of my 25^th birthday and MySpace as the website du jour that I wrote this several years ago. What may also be obvious from the first line is that I initially wrote this piece as a potential entry in This I Believe, the now-defunct project from NPR that detailed various contributors’ religious and spiritual beliefs…in all of the forms those could take. Of course, I never actually sent it in.

But honestly, that’s OK. Because taking up this cause of defying ageism against the young is something I’ve done in writing since I was about 13. I sent letters to the editors of Time and the San Jose Mercury News, protesting unfair coverage of teenagers in the media. The latter actually awarded me a Silver Pen Award for my words on the matter when I was 16. I’ve just always been so irritated about being lumped in with the bad stereotypes of my generation that I’ve had to express it multiple times.

Is this piece the best example of that writing? Maybe not, but it’s definitely the most recent…and the most coherent! I could find some angrier examples, but it’s best to let those languish in obscurity.

When my friend and I announced our plans to take a two-week trip to Rome and Cairo, the concerned voices of friends and family across the country all chimed in with opinions.

“You’re two young women traveling by yourselves. Two young American women,” they would say. “How on earth will you be safe over there?”

We weren’t worried. The friends we would be staying with in both locales were young American women themselves, each of whom had been studying in their respective cities for at least nine months. They knew how to conduct themselves; we figured we’d just follow their cues.

“But the Italian men will prey on you, and the Egyptians will just hate you,” the voices continued to say. We were instructed to learn the phrase “No, I will not marry you, and please take your hands off my behind” in Italian, and “I am a Canadian” in Arabic.

In the end, the reverse seemed to be true. Identifying our national origins in Cairo proved not to be a problem, but it was when our gender encountered the odd balance of power between the sexes in Egypt’s Muslim society that things took a wrong turn.

After weeks of careful planning, our plane happened to drop us off in Rome two days before the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Millions of pilgrims from all over Europe and the rest of the world were flooding into the city at the same time. On the train from the airport into the city, other passengers assumed that we were there for the same purpose and chatted us up on recent events.

We had to tell them that not only were we there simply to sightsee, but that we weren’t even Catholic. On the day of the funeral, we made an effort to walk in the opposite direction of St. Peter’s Basilica.

The young Italian men of the city, whose loudly amorous attentions we were thoroughly warned about, seemed to be in mourning for their Padre Santo and kept their observations on our physiques to themselves. Only on our last day there did one slip, telling my friend he wished to be the cone of gelato she held in her hands. Like our hostess had demonstrated, we simply walked on without giving the admirer any acknowledgement.

But to our surprise, sentiments like these permeated the dusty air of Cairo for the entire week we were there. Even with the anti-American attitudes of the Middle East, we felt free to tell those who asked where we were from. One merchant in the Khan al-Khalili, a popular bazaar that had been targeted by a bomber the week before our arrival, even apologized for the actions of another Muslim who shares his first name—Osama.

Our gender proved to be much more of a sticking point. In Cairo, women freely walk the streets, though many don’t do it alone. And while Western wear is popular, most of a woman’s body, including the head, is covered. Only the occasional Egyptian woman wore a full burqa, where only her eyes were visible.

As our hostess there had instructed, we only brought conservative clothing. Our sleeves were always at least three-quarter length, and nothing was too tight. As the weather got warmer, our resolve slipped—but with borrowed shawls, we still passed the conservative dress test as we walked around town.

It was easy to resent fellow tourists who disembarked from air-conditioned tour buses in shorts and t-shirts.

But even with the utmost attention paid to proper Cairo etiquette for women, we still felt the weight of our gender pressing down on us. Our guidebooks told us that thanks to the importing of Western movies and television shows, Muslim men often expect Western women to be loose with their morals. And our interactions indicated as much.

Everywhere we went, there was the sense that someone was watching you. Even Muslim women with head coverings passing by gave us once-overs. Cabbies and vendors tried to get our attention by calling out names that sexual harassment manuals have made scarce in this country. And while visiting an American-style nightclub with our hostess and some of her friends, the stares of the waiters made the prospect of dancing to the familiar American music daunting.

On a day trip to Alexandria, our anxiety reached a fever pitch. The cool glances we attracted in Cairo became downright hostile there—men shouted at us and tried to get our attention as we walked down the street. Children came up to us to say hello and ran away giggling, as though they’d just completed a dare.

The most disturbing incident happened while navigating a taxi ride, which was always an interesting Egyptian experience. When I attempted to hand a cabbie five pounds for a five-minute ride—already more than was customary—he grabbed my arm to demand more money. I shook him free and we walked off, but the cabbie did a U-turn in the middle of the road. I whispered to my friend under my breath: “He’s coming after us!” The folks in that district of Alexandria had little sympathy for us, just watching us power by.

The city did have its moments, including the Egyptian ex-pat who was back in town to visit his parents and told us about his time living in the United States. We talked with him while taking refuge in a tea room, and he sympathized with us for the difficulties we’d encountered that day.

But by that point, we were ready to cut our day short and hop on a train back to Cairo. If we could have, we would have hopped a plane back to the U.S. that very day.

All we wanted was for the staring and catcalls to stop. The nagging questions of our relatives were whispers by comparison.

***

This is a piece I wrote on spec for the Los Angeles Times in 2005, the same year that my friend Meredith and I took this trip. There was a possibility of getting this in the Travel section, though I soon learned that going to Italy and Egypt is so common that it really doesn’t catch the attention of any editors who cover that beat. That’s fine, because we had a great and—as you can see—educational time.

Oddly enough, this may have been the only piece I wrote about that trip. Which is odd, because it was epic.

And yes, I took the pictures. Along with a ton more, which you can see on my Flickr page.