The Sallie Mae Pay-Off Cake (This Year's Best Accomplishment)

After sixteen and a half years making payments toward one of my student loans, I finally paid it off last Friday morning.  

And made myself a celebration cake to beat all prior celebration cakes.  :)  A glittering rainbow,  some shiny coins, a goodbye scroll, a few smiley faces, a bluebird of happiness?  OHHH YEAAAH, it's got it all.  :)

I first took out this student loan in the summer of 2000, a month or so before starting grad school at New York University.  That is so many lifetimes ago now, it seems, so all the better to have all the payments for it finally completed.  

Even with jobs, grants, and scholarships, the student loans were also always necessary for me throughout college and grad school, but the debt is quite a burden to carry, and as with everyone after a certain age, if I knew then what I know now and could redo it all, who's to say. . . .And I still have an insane amount of student loan debt, but let us celebrate today what we can, right.  Never again having to pen into my journal my new-and-improved Sallie Mae balance is an accomplishment. 

I have been keeping diaries and journals since I was nine, and while looking through some of my old ones late this summer, I soon grew tired of seeing how many times I'd written "My Sallie Mae balance is now down to $[whatever-amount]" or "Another payment today.  New balance:  $[whatever-new-amount]."  Blah blah blah, entry after entry, year after year. . . .When I was twenty-three. . .Thirty-three. . .Thirty-nine. . .Until I got sick of it late this summer and sat down with pen and paper to figure out how much I'd have to work to pay it off by the end of this year.  THIS year, finally.

I calculated my wages, my usual number of hours/week and hours/month, what overtime would maybe be available throughout the fall, and how much extra I'd need to do in order to make the final payment on this loan by New Year's Eve.  I came up with the number of extra hours I guessed I'd need to work--and I worked them.  And worked them, and worked them. . .days and nights, going back to work after just a few hours of sleep from the shift before, giving up days off to get a few more hours. . .the past three months. . . .And I ended up working only one hour more than I'd estimated that I'd need to and actually paying it off two weeks early, so all my estimates were spot-on.

I gave up what was to be my second visit to Boston, in October, for this.  I had already booked the flight and gotten the days off work but decided to be a grown up and do this instead.  'The  right thing to do, but I so wanted to be there in the fall. . . .It was to have been the weekend of David Ortiz's final game with the Red Sox and of an Oktoberfest-themed 5K race I'd intended to run.  My designated "Boston days" found me back at work here instead.  Life goes on, and I'll get back to Boston sometime, and now the loan is paid off. . . but the trip would have made for some sweet autumn memories. 

I made the final payment last Friday morning, hours after returning from a week of "merry early Christmas" with my family and set out for the grocery store for cake-baking and cake-decorating supplies soon after.  ♥  The cake was the classic Hershey Celebration Cake but with hot coffee and buttermilk replacing the hot water and milk per an Ina Garten recipe.  Candy-tape made the rainbow, I dolled up a few yellow gumballs for the smiley faces, the coins were easy to find with Hanukkah candy this time of year, and I crafted the bluebird and scroll out of homemade marshmallow fondant.  It is not the most prettily-frosted cake, but I was too tickled by the cause for celebration to care.  :)

And I called my dad--who had warned me in summer 2000 not to take out this loan in the first place, but I had just turned twenty-three so knew everything and didn't listen to him, of course--to tell him the good news. ♥ 

Stuffed was unimpressed and remained on his warm radiator-perch all afternoon.

I should have followed his lead, as it turns out, for I came down with the flu Friday evening and was sicker all weekend than I'd been since early 2012.  But until then:  happiness and cake!  :)

Even if fatigue ultimately caught up with me, I reached my goal and have kissed this debt goodbye.  And the fresh new journal I begin next month will be the first in almost seventeen years that won't mention it.  And the flu has now mellowed into a cold, and there are still two slices of cake in the fridge.  :)

♥

I Fell in Love Last Wednesday

First there was the mid-1980s fascination with the Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers rivalry, then the learning about Boston in the late 1980s because the members of New Kids on the Block all hail from there and so much was written about their hometown in the articles I tacked to my walls and pasted into scrapbooks in junior high, and then my crush on fictional former-Boston-Red Sox-pitcher-turned-"Cheers"-bartender Sam Malone, and on and on over the years, but last week, I finally got to visit for the first time what I've always somehow known would someday become my beloved Boston, and I've been so giddy ever since, it almost feels like I've fallen in love with a person and not a place.  Seconds after landing in Boston and walking from the plane into the terminal, I saw the heart below and knew that any trip that began this way would be as beautiful as I expecting, and I was right.

As soon as I had learned this January that the Tom Stoppard play Arcadia (Lisa, don't read past the synopsis or it'll be ruined for you) was going to be performed in Boston this spring, I booked a flight--I studied this play in college in the fall of 1997 and have wanted to see a production of it ever since--and emailed Lisa and Cheryl to see if it would be possible for them to make the trip up from their homes a few hours away for a visit.   "That will be great!" wrote back Lisa.  "That would be wonderful to meet you in person!!!" wrote Cheryl.   :)  Minutes after running into these guys--

 --outside my subway stop at Boston's Old State House Wednesday, then, I found myself hugging Lisa and Cheryl and telling them that having had this trip to look forward to this spring had made the last few months of winter so much easier. 

I love that picture.  ♥  We had lunch in the North End, where I chose the menu's hardest thing to eat while trying to carry on a conversation meatball sandwich, toured Paul Revere's house, walked around Faneuil Hall and the Harbor--the salt water!  the sea gulls!--found desserts (and my first tiramisu and first cannoli, neither of which thrilled me but I has happy to have saved them for Boston), admired the architecture--ahhhhhh, the architecture!--and explored the neighborhood. 

After Lisa and Cheryl headed back to Haymarket Station to catch their train around 3:30 that afternoon, I walked--and I mean walked, until about 6:30 pm, only stopping to take a few pictures, since I became spectacularly--but blissfully--turned-around on my walk to my hotel.  It was the prettiest walk.  I don't know if the city workers were just out in full-force during my visit or if the wind blew it away right before I turned every corner, but the only litter I ever saw on the ground there was cigarette butts and hardened gum.  It was so CLEAN, I was so impressed.  I pick up more trash in a fifteen-minute walk here in my own city than I saw in Boston in two and a half days.  

Gorgeous. 

A friend from high school has completed the Boston Marathon three times so far--Go, Michelle!--so finally seeing Boylston Street, the last leg of the race, and imagining her joy upon reaching its finish line each time, made that part of my visit even sweeter.  

Boston, like any new love--or any love worth its salt, I suppose--makes me want to be an even better version of myself:  Smarter and stronger and more athletic and kinder and more helpful to tourists here at home.  I came back wanting to be a better woman, and maybe it is the effect of the city or maybe it is more "me," but I've lived in New York City, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and outside Milwaukee and didn't walk away from any of those places as inspired as I felt while in Boston.  I connected with something in this place, and I'm still on a high from it.  

A sweet moment from inside Fenway Park Thursday:  Before the game began, a guy probably my younger brother's age in the next section over held the seat beside him steady so his maybe-four-year-old son could climb up onto it.  Once they got settled, an older man leaned forward and said to the young dad--all in endearing stereotypical Boston accent--"If this is yuh son's fuhst time heeuh and he can't see past that bah, I'll switch seats with him so he can see bettuh."  The dad thanked him but declined his kind offer, since his son was too young to pay much attention to the game anyway and likely wouldn't care at all about the obstructed view the "bah" (i.e. bar [i.e. one of the poles that support the upper-deck seats above our grandstand section seats]) caused.  The kindness, though!  ♥

And another sweet Fenway Park moment that continues to make me laugh:  Two guys my age or a little older who were sitting together were talking, and one of them suddenly said to the other, "Don't cuss here."  :)  Except it sounded like "Don't cuss heeuh," making it even more charming.  :)  Love!  

And as I reported to my parents and brothers immediately upon checking in with them: Everyone was SO over-the-top nice and helpful while I was there.  I encountered this kind of I'll-give-up-my-seat-for-your-kid/Don't-cuss-here goodness so many times in my two days there.  I asked someone on Beacon Street the quickest way to such-and-such, and she not only answered, but also pulled out her phone, looked up the destination on a map, then--over my thanks and protests, since she'd helped so much already--patiently read me street-by-street directions too.  Another woman took the extra time to explain which local bus was heading toward my destination and how often it would pass along a certain street, and she pointed out the nearest stop for it too.  When I called the theater needing to switch something with my ticket-order for the play, I told the man on the phone I had my card ready and could read off the numbers to pay the fee as soon as he was ready, and he laughed and waived the fee, saying, "I'm not charging you five dollars after you traveled six-hundred miles to see this."  My soft-spoken cab driver kindly answered a bunch of my questions about Fenway Park on the way back to the airport at the end of my visit.  So many kindnesses.  And Cheryl gifted me with a rainbow-striped pen for my writing.  :)  And Lisa paid my admission to the Paul Revere House.  :)  It felt like the entire city--all the people in it, all the pretty and well-kept grounds, and even the perfect weather--knew what this trip meant to me and sweetly conspired to make my visit as beautiful as possible.  

And just when one would think I couldn't be more charmed--and before the Red Sox game had even begun Thursday afternoon--the sweet "Cheers" theme song was played in the stadium, leading me to text my younger brother and simultaneously catch it on video. 

Love!  ♥

And the play was beautiful, and I cried watching it as I do while reading it.  I eventually mailed my former English professor a postcard from the airport to let him know I'd finally seen it.  :)

Much too soon, I was again flying over ocean and islands on my way home.  I don't know what part Boston is destined to play in my life, but it's captured my heart.  I'd only been home about twenty-six hours before I'd booked a flight to return this fall.  ♥  (Most of this trip's budget was still unspent when I got home and thus went to the start of visit #2's.)  Until October, Boston, my love! 

♥

With Lisa and Cheryl in Boston Wednesday

Until I have time to write a proper love letter to Boston, let me just say how sweet it was to meet Lisa and Cheryl there this week.  After years of reading each other's blogs and emails and exchanging Christmas cards and handmade gloves and fudge and care packages, to meet "for real" and enjoy lunch, dessert(s), and a walk around a beautiful city together was such fun.  ♥

As I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things. ~ Martin Scorsese

A day or so after my grandfather died in 2001, my dad and I were at home stumbling through the motions of making breakfast or something when he mentioned that upon stepping outside that morning, he'd found two homemade pies that his coworker Buddy had left on our front porch.  Immediately, and repeatedly over the next couple days, it wasn't Papa's death or Grandma's loss of her husband of almost sixty-two years or the knowledge of other family members' pain that made me cry, but instead those damned pies.  I cried over the pies even while agreeing with Dad how good it had been of his coworker to offer them.  The mental picture of those disposable foil pans left without fanfare on our porch made me cry awhile later as I dressed for the viewing.  A stretch of time would then pass in which I'd be calm, in that rubbed-raw weariness that grief brings on, and then the pies would return to mind and I would feel my face crumpling up again.  Soon enough, the full weight of Papa's death hit me, of course, but until the initial shock wore off, my tears were for the kindness that leads a person to buy the pans and the ingredients, to take the time out of one's own life to follow a recipe and to wait for pies to bake and then for them to cool, to wrap them up, and finally, to drive them across town--all to acknowledge and console another's hurting heart.  

Similarly, this past week, with our world news seemingly fuller than usual with stories of trauma and terror, it is a show of compassion, and not one of grief or gore, to which my mind keeps returning.  Soon after the Boston Marathon bombings last Monday, Boston.com created Google Documents to help locals who could offer housing reach those who had been displaced by the attacks.  In just a couple of days, almost 6,000 people posted to the spreadsheet offering everything from guest room beds and pull-out couches to hot showers, cupcakes, and snuggles with pets.  In honor of these Bostonians' kindness and goodwill, the list of housing offers has been kept online.  As with Papa's death and the front porch pies in 2001, it is this story this past week that has made me cry more than any other.  If you need to be reassured of human beings' capacity for compassion and goodness, this simple spreadsheet glows with both.  "I just made soup. . .and have a friendly cat," one offer reads.  Another:  "We have lots of coffee and floor space."  Yet another:  "Futon, showers, and two doggies ready to comfort you."  One more:  "We have lots of food, beer and cookies!  :)" (The smiley emoticon is the poster's, not mine, and even seeing THAT touches me.  People are amazing.)  "My wife might even spring for Chinese food tonight," reads another listing.  Some are from local college students who live in dorm rooms but are willing to give up their beds.  Some helpfully mention all foreign languages spoken in the households.  Many offer transportation.  At least one offers his YMCA guest-pass so someone can shower or sauna there and/or just get away for awhile.  Imagine:  Nearly 6,000 people reached out to help like this.  Constantly refreshing both Boston.com and the Boston Globe's Twitter feed last Monday, I read some of  these housing entries aloud to Mike as they began pouring in and exclaimed to him, "Honestly, can you even imagine!?  In a major city--And these people don't even KNOW who-all is reading this--And they're posting their phone numbers and email addresses and everything?!"  I was astounded by it.  It is one of the things I will remember most about the events of last week, all that kindness.  It is only now, eight days after the attacks, that I can even think about the housing offers list, let alone skim through it, without beginning to choke-up again.  ". . .Pullout couch.  Excellent brownies."  Well, honestly.  

I believe that good outweighs evil.  I believe that most people are good and are actively trying every day to be good.  I believe, like Mr. Rogers believed, that "you will always find people who are helping."   Here we all are, stumbling around the planet together, sometimes the ones falling and being helped up and dusted off, and other times the ones with hands outstretched to lift or carry.  We share our stories, we sing songs, and we try to make both sense and something good--there's that word again--come from it all.  We offer what we can, and if we pay attention, we see how the love we pass back and forth saves the day every day, one pie on a porch-front and sofa-bed-offer at a time.  ♥