A shark smile in a yellow van

Two days ago I got this sweet message: I do so hope you are alright.  I miss you. Please come back.

I owe the writer such thanks.

Because I couldn’t have said what I needed to start writing again—because I missed this place, but didn't know where to start—but it was exactly what I needed.

In the summer in DC, when our doors swell with humidity, we have to give them an extra push or pull to open them.

I’m so grateful for that kind and gentle check-in. The lovely sentiment. 

I just realized that I’ve been sad, like desperately, scraped-raw sad, for coming up on a year. I’ve been some level of scared for nearly that long.

I haven’t been alright, though I look like it from the outside.

I just needed some help recognizing it.

I've said before that I so badly wanted to be back to normal.

Normal. Ha. But you know what I mean.

I only started really processing the magnitude of all of the everything quite recently.

Somehow the time between the night of May 2, when my mom fell, and this February was just so, I don’t know, frenzied is maybe the word.

Betty left us on May 15. Her days in the hospital were brutal. And I'm dreading Mother's Day. I don't think I'll celebrate it again.

Weeks after her death, I had a high school reunion to host. I couldn't cancel. Friends had bought international plane tickets. And it would feel so good to see everyone.

Which it did, of course it did. We remembered Betty and cried together. And laughed. And danced.

I had a houseful of friends staying. (Those same friends would return in September to surround me with love.)

And then a couple weeks later I drove the kids to Maine. And drove home. And got on a plane.

And flew for 25 hours to Bali, where I spent all day in yoga teacher training and also went out and sobbed in the rice paddy at least once a day.

Sometimes people noticed me leaving class, and someone would escort me, or quietly come sit with me. Sometimes talking, sometimes just sitting.

One lovely, lovely woman told me on the last day that she’d avoided me for much of the course because I just had so much strong emotion.

She didn’t say it was overwhelming, but I imagine it was. 

I imagine I was.

I remember not knowing I was intense until I was in my 30s, and someone told me and I was surprised.

So whatever I am in the moment, I think I am very much of it.

I went to Bali to escape. 

Yes, I was already signed up to do yoga teacher training. But mainly in that time, I desperately wanted to be away from our house. Away from the place my mom fell. Away from home where, everywhere I turned, there she used to be.

Grief streamed from my eyes. My mouth. My pores. I sweated grief. 

Grief surely swirled and crackled around me like static electricity.

If grief had a smell, I think it would be lightening. Apparently the smell is ozone, which is way less poetic but probably easier to rhyme.

Even when I was laughing—and we laughed a lot—the base note was grief.

I’ve said before that uproarious laughter and hysterical sobbing are millimeters, instants apart.

Two sides of the same coin. Maybe closer, even. The warp and weft of fabric.

I learned on the last day of training, and was embarrassed to know, that my classmates heard me sobbing in the rice paddy.

I cried so hard it physically hurt. I was so desperately sad, it didn’t even occur to me.

And then I came home. And then we got the kids, and went to family camp.

And then I had my biopsy, surely nothing, let’s just check.

And then I had cancer.

Suddenly, I went from I just have to get through my mom’s memorial service before I can breathe—before I can make plans, before I can resume life—to getting through her service, and then my operation, and then my recovery.

And then I’d be able to breathe. Plan. Resume.

Nicole, my god what would I have done without Nicole, came for two weeks to take care of me, as you know.

Nicole is a force of nature. Nicole is an event.

Then suddenly it was Thanksgiving. Then our family went to England for Christmas, to avoid the memories we hang on the tree and the sticky buns Betty is no longer here to make. The perfectly wrapped packages she’ll never wrap again. The stockings she was always excited to fill.

It was better, but grief still found us in Hyde Park. India and I hugged and cried while Nick and Jordan looked at the ducks.

But nothing stops. And I kept moving. 

And then Nicole came back, so Nick and I could go to the fancy event in Oxford. I’d never been in my life, then twice in a month.

So fun! So extravagant! So lovely!

Nick asked, and Nicole said she’d come take care of the kids if she could stay two weeks. And then Maude said, well, if Nicole’s coming, then I want to as well.

It was as wonderful as one might think. We chatted and we laughed and we wept. Maude brought starter from Denver and taught me how to make sourdough.

And then.

Then they left. And the house was very quiet.

Valentine’s Day, I think, is when I really started falling apart. But inwardly.

Inwardly apart. Apartedly inward.

Imploding?

We once went to a carefully orchestrated demolition. All these explosions were placed and timed such that the building would cave in on itself. It didn’t even seem violent. 

Emotionally like that.

Not that I didn’t cry regularly before then, because I did. But like a shark, I kept moving, moving, moving.

Water over the gills to keep breathing.

Apparently, this isn't every type of shark. I looked it up. So, hashtag notallsharks. The ones that need to do this are called obligate ram ventilators.

ANYway.

You can’t outrun yourself. I guess this is one of those lessons I seem to have to learn over and over.

I wasn’t seeing my therapist, because though I love her, it just felt too hard.

One of my yoga friends noticed. She looked me in the eye after class one day and said, “How are you?”

I started to explain about the physical, and she said, “No. You. How are you?”

I started to cry, right there in the gym. I was not fine. I was not remotely OK. In fact, I was barely even breathing. 

On the outside, I look strong. Healthy. Healed.

I’d been cut open and sewn up by world-class experts. At this point I have delicate scars. I’ve got high grade silicon implants that are my personal forever science experiment.

I think about how the rest of my body seems to be degrading at an accelerated pace, but these are fairly static. 

Like, one day I'll die, and my body will hollow, which I know firsthand happens. And still, barring previous calamity, I'll have these two youthful silicone shapes, pretending to be part of me.

You know me. I’ve long had anxieties about a whole lot of things. Mainly like plane crashes and raccoons and rabies and sink holes.

Somehow breast cancer was not on my fear list.

Also: the more I learn about neurodivergence, the more it explains my life. Not ever human picks one topic to obsess about endlessly until the next topic catches their eye.

But I digress. Because when do I not?

Suddenly there it was, top of my fear list, its own circle in the Venn diagram of my life. The bold heading of one of the now-myriad clubs to which I never wanted to belong. 

I picture my Venn diagram more like a chrysanthemum, because I like them. I don't care about the factuality.

So, I just had my six-month oncology checkup. I have my surgery checkup next week.

I thought they’d take blood, analyze the results, and be like, yep, you’re good, see ya in three months.

But it doesn’t work like that. They don’t know.

You just have to keep living and hoping for the best. There are no for sure answers.

Although I guess that’s really all of life.

The day of my checkup, I also had an infusion for my bones, because the medication I’m on can cause osteoporosis.

A common (78%, I googled) side effect of the infusion is feeling like you have the flu.

I taught a yoga class the next morning and thought maybe I was in the lucky 22%.

By that afternoon, I could barely walk.

And for a day and a half, I felt like hell. I knew I wasn’t sick, but I also couldn’t get out of bed.

It was reminiscent of post-surgery, which I’ve kind of forgotten, but which wasn’t that long ago, after all.

It’s surreal, honestly. For two weeks I had tubes coming out of my body, attached to silicone bags I had to empty every day. I know this is true. But I don’t remember it.

I couldn’t take care of my family. I couldn’t fully take care of myself.

In bed with the not-flu, I read a Louise Penny book. I intend to start using “tabarnac” as a swear.

But then, I also intend to swear less, and I can’t say that’s going well.

Tabarnac!

At this juncture, it feels like it’s been cold and rainy my entire life, though I know that’s a factual impossibility.

I took the photo above about a month ago. My hair was clean. I was wearing makeup. I liked my outfit. 

Ever since Nicole visited, donning something fabulous daily, if only to hang out and walk to CVS, I’ve had the goal of wearing real, non-gym friendly clothes every day.

I probably accomplish this about 50% of the time. Or maybe 25%? I am, after all, a person who asked for something to be mixed 60-30.

Not most of the past week, but today I'm wearing jeans. Jeans count as real.

Anyway, I’m here.

I’m not very alright, but probably more so than not. 60-30. Anyway, I believe I will be.

Love and hugs,

Lisa

That Love is all there is, Is all we know of Love

Today caught me off guard. Not the fact that it's Valentine's Day. India had already had a class party and a Galentine's party. I knew the date.

What sneakily walloped me was grief.

In the media and in the greeting card aisle, the focus of Valentine's Day is hearts and roses and chocolates and romance.

Once I was out of grade school, where if you gave a Valentine to one person, you had to give one to everyone, Valentine's Day was stressful.

Either I was dating someone, and there was so much pressure, or—more often—I wasn't dating anyone, and Valentine's Day was proof that I was a big lonesome loser.

When honestly, I've always, always been surrounded by a tremendous amount of love. 

I just didn't recognize it.

What I realized today was that my mom showered us all with Valentine love. 

I was talking to Maude, who was here last week. She was out getting chocolates for her family. I said I never did that. And then I realized I never did it because I didn't have to.

My mom had it covered. 

She was with us from my first baby on. And she loved getting fun stuff for the holidays. Valentine's heart chocolates. Easter baskets. Christmas stockings.

She was all about it.

Me, I sent the kids to school with cards or candy or cookies for the class. 

But Nana was the one who bought the family sweet cards and boxes of heart-shaped candy.

India and I just had a big cry about this. She said she thought Nana would at least be with us until Jordan graduated from high school, or maybe even when she did.

His 8th grade graduation gutted me.

But back to the matter at hand. Although all of it is about love.

I was, if I'm being honest, pretty terrible at romantic relationships until around the time I met Nick.

Which is not to say that Nick was the magic ticket, or whatever the phrase might be.

I mean, OF COURSE he was the magic ticket. I fell in love with him. And we suit each other in many, many ways. 

One of the most important being that we make each other laugh really hard.

But also: I'd had enough therapy to be able to behave like a person who both merited love and kindness and was able to reciprocate for more than a short time. I was finally healthy enough to remain in a long-term commitment.

This ability was and was not about love.

I now understand that my behavior was mainly about insecurity and fear of abandonment. 

It truly felt like betrayal when I got to the point in therapy where I was like, my parents' behavior was not necessarily helpful to me, and was sometimes downright unhelpful. They loved me, but I don't think they were always taking my well-being into account.

It felt awful to admit this. They're your parents, after all. 

But as we all contain multitudes, these things can be true. And it is also true that they loved me, and I loved them.

 And I still love them.

They were human and they were flawed, as are we all. The more I know about where they came from, the more compassion I have.

Anyway, for a long time, and this was before I started blogging, I exploded my romantic relationships. You couldn't leave me, because I was going to leave you first.

I did this over and over, and then I wondered, aloud, in therapy, why nobody loved me. My therapist, to her credit, never rolled her eyes.

Even after marriage, this big commitment I'd ostensibly been seeking, for years, every time Nick and I had a big fight, I was sure it meant divorce. And then, we got past it.

Just like I did in my friendships.

Huh.

Because non-romantic love? Platonic love?

That kind I was good at. 

Nick has said before that it seems like I feel so much more than he does. My highs are higher and my lows are lower.

What he didn't include, but what I know about myself, is that I love immensely. As vastly and as deeply as I can.

When I was a little kid, and the biggest number I knew was 5, I would tell my mom I loved her FIVE.

And this is how I've always been. 

When I'm in, I'm all in.

If I love you, I will do pretty much anything for you. I've never had to do this, but I'm pretty sure I could help justify murder. I have a car big enough to transport a body.

Goodbye, Earl? Yes.

I cannot do this for everyone. But I could definitely do this for some.

So on some level, I believed I could get married and sustain a relationship, despite the detritus of myriad failed romantic relationships, because I'd been friends with Maude my entire life.

We'd lived together twice. She'd taught me to drive, a little in DC, and mostly on our way cross-country.

She believed in me and I trusted her.

Which is not to say we didn't fight. Or go through periods where we could barely stand each other.

While still living together.

Together, though not always physically, we lived through: moving to a new place where we had no friends (and we got super sick of each other until we found some); unemployment; depression and its accompanying bad behavior; poor choices in boyfriends; romantic heartbreak; one person in love and the other feeling abandoned; terrible haircuts, sometimes done by each other; unfortunate hair colors; and the like. Pregnancies, miscarriages, infertility, babies. Loss of my dad. Loss of her mom. Loss of my mom. 

And still, we were and always, always will be friends.

This, for me, is how love is. Love is patient, love is kind.

Because I wasn't raised attending church, I will admit to you that I used to think I Corinthians was I as in me, Corinthians.

Like I, Claudius.

Anyway.

I often say that I hate people, and my daughter always corrects me. "You have so many people you love. So many."

And this is true. I get overpeopled, and I need to sit at home alone. I get disheartened with how terrible humans can be, and I need to pull back.

But I do love so many people. So many.

And because our hearts expand, I just keep adding people. I don't have to delete one to add a new one.

I carry the ones who are gone.

Though somewhere in the multiverse, we're still together.

This is not to say that I'm not petty or begrudging, because ooh, I am. I don't judge people I like. But I can judge the pants off people I don't.

Is that an expression? For a linguist, I'm shockingly terrible at those kinds of expressions.

But I feel like all that matters in this life is the people you love who love you.

And I guess this is a long, meandering way to say that on this day of such tremendous focus on love, I hope you are well. I hope you're happy. I hope you feel how loved you are.

I'm wishing you generosity and kindness and an immense eternity of love.

Hugs,

Lisa

Packed, anxietied, ready to fly!

Isn’t this dress sooo cool?

It’s made of Crimplene, which was a space-age fabric in the 50s. Crimplene, if you don’t know, is basically very thick polyester. 

It’s amazing for structured clothing like this dress. Apparently not so great for anything humans needed to wear when it was at all hot out. 

Not a current concern. 

Even when I have days and days to pack, I’m frantically packing down to the last minute. 

I think the problem is I somehow can’t get dressed until I’m packed because what if I pack something I decide I would rather wear?

Sometimes I add last-minute laundry to my tasks because I guess I like to complicate everything. 

And then I inevitably run around the house in my underwear all WHERE IS MY BLACK TEE SHIRT?

I make lists. I make piles. I even list what I’m planning on wearing on the plane.

But still I run around the house like a lunatic.

Thus it has always been, and despite my best intentions, this it likely shall always be. 

My entire carry-on is only my dress, boots, shawl, purse.

Nick is checking his tuxedo, which is a bold (ahem foolish) move, in my opinion.

We have 52 minutes to change planes in NY. This amount of time gives me hives.

Nicole is in charge. Will the kids be delighted with a break from us?

I don’t know. It was really hard for me to say goodbye. 

The only time Nick and I have left them was for a memorial service when India was one and Jordan was four. We left them with Nana Betty.

I’ve been ridiculously excited about this trip. And equally excited about getting all dressed up.

We board in a few minutes. 

On our flight to NY we’re apart, same row but window seats. I hate window seats. 

In true adhd fashion, I like to be able to get up 500 times if I want to.

Also, you know, what if you get sucked out the window?

New item on flight fear list. 

Anyway, with any luck, we alight in the land of Percy Pigs tomorrow morning London time.

Seriously. That’s what both kids have requested. 

Hugs and more hugs!

I have of late—but wherefore I know...

Oh, let's be honest, Rosencrantz. I know wherefore one million percent.

It's January 853rd. 

I didn't even make that up. It's a known fact, at least in the Northern hemisphere: January lasts approximately 3-500 times longer than any other month.

This January has been going on for about eight years.

I don't care how the math adds up.

Which is why I did so poorly in Mr. Gupta's class in high school. (But it was Nicole's math that broke him.)

We went away for Christmas, as you know, and it was absolutely the right thing to do.

But we went the direction of MORE winter. Shorter, grey days. Less light. More darkness.

I'm not built for this.

I just read about this woman who spent 500 days in a cave 70 meters underground. On purpose. Voluntarily. 

This, like the dark void of outer space, is a nightmare scenario for me. It's not just math and engineering abilities that kept me from NASA or spelunking.

And I don't know if you're like this, but having been depressed before, I'm always wondering: am I depressed, or just sad?

Am I depressed, or is this grief?

I think I'm sad and grieving.

Not every minute of every day. But I cry a lot. But not, I think, an unreasonable amount.

Whatever that means.

January for me has been a month of self-care. And by that I don't mean scented baths and candles.

I mean self-protection.

One of the things that last year did for me that was positive was to impose limits on what I do.

Normally, I'd just pile things on, one after the other. Things I felt obligated to do, or things that sounded fun, or tasks that needed doing, but not critically this minute.

One after the other.

I meet the needs of a bunch of people. One fewer, now, but still.

You need me? OK. I'll do it. 

And now, when I can't, I just don't.

Whereas before, I'd push so I could, and I didn't recognize the cost.

Now I feel the cost. So I stop.

Since surgery, I can do one big thing, and then I'm tired. It could be a big physical thing, or a big emotional thing like an event.

We went to two Christmas parties, both of which I was happy to attend. I was so excited to see people I hadn't seen in actual years.

And then that was my limit. Maybe I'll go to three next year.

Anyway, in some cases, I can do the big thing, something that used to be totally normal for me, and for now it's too much.

I learned this returning to yoga. Ooh, I was so excited to be back to really challenging Saturday yoga.

No, I couldn't do all I could before. But I posted photos of getting back to side crow! Handstand! It felt so good. So good.

Cancer hadn't taken me down! Look where I was already!

And then, hand to god, I was incapacitated for five days. I didn't even go to regular yoga classes. I was too wiped out.

So now I have to be deliberate about where I put my energies and efforts. 

Physical and emotional.

Jordan has needed a lot of academic support, with this start to 9th grade. This translates to time and energy.

India hasn't needed support in the same way. But she's still raw about my mom.

On Christmas Day, I forced my family to walk from our Airbnb through Hyde Park to get to Westminster Abbey, where I wanted to attend evensong.

Nick had bought a Christmas cake, but honestly, that was it. Nobody wanted to go to a Christmas service, which I understood, because we don't have any kind of church tradition.

But this, this I really wanted to do. Even though initially my people were like, no than you. So I was going to go alone.

How many opportunities does one have to attend evensong at Westminster Abbey?

And then Nick said he wanted to go. So it became a family event, which is what I'd wanted from the get-go, but hadn't had the energy to fight for.

So we were walking through the park, nearing a duck pond. 

And I was getting sadder and sadder, because we used to always stop in London on our way home from whatever country we lived in. I have concrete memories of wearing hoodies in English summer, because we'd just come from Bangladesh and we were freezing in English summer, feeding the ducks in Hyde Park.

My dad loved London. We'd always go to shows. We'd shop. I was excited to take India to Topshop, which turns out to have closed! 

On a side bar, one summer of high school, my friend Claudia and I met up in New York (our dads took us, and we met at the airport), and flew to London together.

Our dads had organized for us to spend a week with friends of Claudia's family in London, on our way back to Delhi. I was 15 and she was 17, and this was insanely exciting.

Look how grown up and responsible we were!

We went to a midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. We ran into high school friends who were no longer living in Delhi, because that was the kind of thing we just took for granted. "Oh! You're here, too?" We went to Madame Tussaud's.

And we bought music tapes unavailable in India (Nik Kershaw, whose song "Wouldn't It Be Good" I love to this day.)

And we bought trendy, trendy clothing at Topshop. My gosh, I loved Topshop. And I know India would've as well.

So our last day, without enough cash to buy more clothing, we spent our last pounds on chocolate. Like down to the final pence.

All of it.

Her family friends had to give us money to take the bus to Heathrow.

Yes.

So anyway.

I have a lot of excellent London memories. It was just normal. It was on the way home.

"Home" ha. I didn't have home. But my parents did, and they referred to the US as home for us. So "home" one direction and home the other. Or maybe they should both be in quotes.

Anyway, right around the duck pond, India started to cry. This was an awful Christmas. She didn't want to be there.

She wanted to be home (because my kids do have a concrete sense of home as a physical place), having real Christmas, eating sticky buns and opening presents with Nana.

At which point all those tears I'd been sucking in came pouring out. I started to sob. Because really, that was what I wanted as well. 

So we stood there, hugging and crying in the thin winter light of London, surrounded by greenery.

And then we continued along, and got in a long line, and did get into Westminster Abbey, and it was glorious.

It was absolutely pouring the day we left England. "Bucketing down" is the phrase Fiona uses.

She'll exaggerate the Northern pronunciation for us, too. Like, booketing down. 

I love this.

Not to dwell on the weather, because it's the boringest small talk topic, but I'm kind of obsessed with it.

Our January has been relentlessly grim.

Cold, like actual coldcold, and dementor grey. 

I don't enjoy the cold, but it's the grey that sucks the joy and motivation out of me. I've got that freckly Irish skin that burns and wrinkles, but my gosh, I love the sun.

I mean, now I wear a hat and sunglasses and SPF and long sleeves. But I love the feel of sunshine. I love the quality of light. I love the heat.

I love getting into a hot car. Truly. That intense, confined heat, like a sauna, except in DC it's more like a steam room, which I don't enjoy as much but I'd take over being cold any day.

Except that I decided this year I'm going to try ice baths.

Nicole (who is back, thank goodness for like 8 million reasons) insists what I want is cryotherapy, because it's only three minutes.

I was worried about my silicone boobs but she said I could add a sports bra if I was worried. You have to cover your hands and feet to protect them. And men  have to cover their dangly bits, apparently. 

So I looked it up and this is accurate.

I was worried after my favorite NP told me that I couldn't ever use a heating pad on my torso, because I could super-heat my boobs but not know it, and severely burn myself inside.

But in the same way that it's different from a sauna, because I'd feel my whole body overheating, a whole body cooling is fine.

Also, the freezing point of silicone is much, much lower than the freezing point of my body, so I guess I'd be a block of ice before they froze?

Now I'm picturing my chest filled with two very large ice cubes. Which would be...awkward?

A friend told me that she really likes my stream-of-consciousness writing, and I feel lucky about that because, well, ha. Look where we are now.

I've had periods of my life where I was sad every minute of every day. Where I would sit at my desk at work and drip huge tears onto my keyboard, and sneak off to the bathroom to really cry.

Where I would go for runs in the evening because I couldn't cry while I was running, and I needed the fucking break from sitting on my floor sobbing.

And it's not like that. 

I have a lot of theories that have to do with nutrition and emotional regulation and I think these are accurate.

And I have joy here, and joy on the horizon. Yesterday I chopped salad vegetables for nearly two hours, and Nicole and I laughed the entire time.

It was an elaborate salad. I made ginger lime garlic dressing.

I won't bore you with the details because look how long this post is already, and I could totally be a food blogger because I like to tell my life stories, but I couldn't be a food blogger because I'm a fairly lame, indifferent cook.

But this was a great salad.

But Nicole is back because...

Next week Nick and I return to the UK because we've been invited to this fancy party, which was not only an honor but also an incredible opportunity to do something fun just the two of us.

Nicole will be the adult in charge while we're gone, which India has been excited about every day for the month we've had this plan.

And I've got this vintage Pierre Cardin dress, which I found on Marketplace and which my dear friend altered for me, because it fit but she wanted the line to be more flattering.

As soon as I get it back from the cleaners, I'll post about it, because it's truly fabulous.

This whole thing is made more exciting by the fact that while I could talk about clothes all day, and if I were wealthy, I'd dress almost exclusively in vintage Pucci, the fact is that I wear yoga clothes or sweats almost every day.

Yesterday I wore jeans, and I got compliments. My hair was also pretty clean, so that helped.

I think it's the whole contrast thing. 

January is always a hard month for me, and this one has weighed significantly more than prior Januaries. 

We fly the last day of the month, which turns out to be the 31st and not the 927th, and that will bring this January to an exciting close.

I've been waffling—new British word—so thanks for sticking with me. 

And I guess that's all I really have to say about that.

The FP

When I was a little kid in Dhaka, I had a friend named Sharon who lived down the road. 

She was British. She spent a lot of time at our house. 

We visited them in London the summer after they moved back to the UK. Sharon's mom told us Sharon got teased by classmates for using American words.

For example, instead of saying biscuits, she said cookies.

We always had cookies at our house. So many cookies.

We must've visited their family on a Sunday, because everyone was home. It was the first time I'd seen a dumbwaiter. We kids took turns hauling each other up and down in their walls.

British school went later into the summer than our school in Dhaka, and her parents wouldn't let her take the Monday off for us to hang out. I remember sobbing, absolutely sobbing, and it was clear her parents thought my manners were appalling.

Now, as an adult and a mom, looking back at this shameful memory, I think I was seven, maybe eight years old. I imagine we were still jet lagged and us kids were overtired and probably had been eating tons of sugar, and it's hardly surprising I melted down.

This is nice to write out, so I can let go of  that cringey memory.

Anyway, by the time I met Fiona last summer, I knew of some important differences beyond biscuit and cookie in our varieties of English.

So.

One of India's friends gave her a fanny pack for her birthday a couple years ago.

Prior to this, I was unaware of the Return of the Fanny Pack. They've come back with a vengeance.

India's is pale pink, from Lululemon, and honestly, it's kind of perfect. 

I started using it on errands, and last summer India very generously said I could take it on my travels. It was amazing from the start, holding my passport and my boarding pass, phone, lip balm, phone charger, and hydration packets or a little snack.

I'm telling you.

I wore it throughout my time in Bali.

I became a fanny pack enthusiast. Or re-became. Or re-enthusiast, perhaps, since I'd embraced them wholeheartedly in the 90s.

I'd forgotten how incredibly useful they are. I asked for one for my birthday last year, knowing India wanted hers back.

Much like my love of all things neon in the 80s, I had multiple fanny packs in the 90s. I even had a textile one and a leather one that my mom bought me in Ecuador.

Anyway.

So in my mid-20s I spent six months traveling in India and Nepal. I had two backpacks (one parked at the house of friends) and my fanny pack.

What I didn't know then was that "fanny" in British English has a very different meaning than "fanny" in American English.

Growing up, we used the word butt or bottom, but my grandmother used to use the word fanny. 

(She also used the words homely and davenport.)

So I'd been backpacking for months, meeting a variety of fellow travelers, many of whom were from the UK. Sometimes we'd be in the same hostel overnight, or sometimes our agendas coincided and we'd travel together for days or weeks.

My new American friends and I wound up walking most of the Everest trek with two British guys.

We sometimes had private rooms, but were most often sleeping in dormitories, and as such, I kept important stuff in my very convenient fanny pack. I didn't always wear it, but it was always handy.

I imagine I mentioned my fanny pack at least a couple of times over my travels, with nobody saying anything. 

Until one day I think one of the guys asked me to hold something—a document or passport or some such—and I said something along the lines of, "Sure—I'll just stick it in my fanny pack."

Which was met with stunned silence.

Because fanny! Fanny in British English is slang for vulva.

I'm not sure how vulgar it is. Like, I don't think it's tantamount to saying c*nt.

I think it's more like lady bits? But stronger?

So maybe "fanny pack" is more like "beaver bag" or "cooter pouch"?

In any case, surprising, if you're telling someone you're just going to pop their trekking permit into your VAGINAL CONTAINER for safekeeping.

Yes.

Was I mortified?

Yes. 

But not enough to not find it hilarious.

Anyway, when I met Fiona and she complimented my fanny pack—although not by that name—I told her that I was well aware that we called this particular container of convenience by different names in our respective countries.

I knew, I said, that Brits call it a "bum bag" rather than a (and here I whispered, like I might be talking about prison) "fanny pack".

I explained how I learned this.

Since I hadn't thought about the bag or the term in years, I hadn't shifted my nomenclature. Fanny pack it was.

Except that now it sounded kind of naughty.

Even better.

And then Fiona went home and she asked for one for her birthday. Because they are ridiculously convenient.

Much like Sharon and the cookies, but with the awareness that comes with adulthood, Fiona calls hers an FP. So now I call mine an FP.

I got an ad for a fleecy one before Christmas, and I sent her the link. Maybe she needed a furry FP to keep her warm in the cold English winter? 

She's got a regular one. We discovered when we met that we have practically the same bag. Turns out our respective daughters were incredibly excited to buy them for us.

Lululemon, however, avoids the fraught term. They call it an "everywhere belt bag"—which seems a safe approach to me. You don't have the dorky visual baggage of the 90s and you avoid shocking a swath of the English-speaking globe.

Whereas me, I'm not trying to sell anything. And I'm fine with 90s dorkiness and with horrifying the occasional human.

Sometimes, Sharon, that's just the way the biscuit crumbles.