My Yap Year: happy thanksgiving, back.

You’ve Got Mail is one of my all-time favorite movies. Not just because I’m obsessed with e-mail (it’s my favorite method of communication) or because the Hanks/Ryan combo sets my soul ablaze. No, no. It’s a great movie because it’s funny and real and an all-around solid holiday flick. And suuuuuper quotable.

Every Thanksgiving, I think about one particular scene in this movie. It’s so beyond obscure, but I’m an Ackels. Dad and I quote this one all the time.

Kathleen Kelly (head shake) is at the register in a cash-only line at the grocery store, but she only has a credit card. She’s holding up the line, and who comes to the rescue? None other than her nemesis, Joe “Just-Call-Me-Joe” Fox.

He asks the cashier, Rose (“ah, that is a great name”) to just “zip, zip” Meg Ryan’s credit card through the machine. And due to that undeniable charm that only Tom Hanks has, she gives in. He wishes her a Happy Thanksgiving, and when Rose doesn’t respond, he tells her to say Happy Thanksgiving back. She replies,

“Happy Thanksgiving .. back.”

Aaaaaaaand, scene.

This year, I kept forgetting about Thanksgiving. Probably because my life has been moving a hundred miles per hour and it doesn’t make sense that Thanksgiving has come and gone because the weather is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But regardless of the fact that it’s an American holiday, my Thanksgiving celebration in Yap was full of food and laughter and conversation and, of course, gratitude.

We got to celebrate Thanksgiving more than once. On Thursday evening, we went to the Jesuit’s house and had dinner with them and some people from the community. It was so lovely. At school, a few of our students’ mothers and aunts came to drop off several baskets of fruit and other food for us. Getting fruit baskets are the best for several reasons. 1) fruit is #1, 2) the baskets themselves are hand-woven with local leaves and they’re so cool, and 3) it’s just a really thoughtful and generous gift. So that’s always fun. We also got SEVEN more baskets of food from the parish/school community of the Catholic elementary school down the road from our house. We had like nine million bananas so I made several loaves of chocolate chip banana bread over the weekend. It’s quickly becoming my new specialty.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, our friend Tim Bigelow (mentioned a few posts back) and his wife Lucy hosted another Thanksgiving celebration. It was so wonderful! We met new people and ate great food and got to see Tim’s INSANE CD collection. It’s organized by genre and time period and it’s seriously too cool. The evening finished with Tim and a couple of his buds playing guitar and singing. I joined in singing a few of the songs and it just made me realize how glad I am to have grown up listening to 98.7 FM, even though that made middle school hard because everyone was listening to Fergie and The Fray and I didn’t know any of their songs and I felt like an outcast. It doesn’t even matter anymore, all of those oldies are just too good.

Some notable things over the past week:

We ran into a bunch of our students at a basketball game over the weekend and one of them did my hair. I think it made me look cooler than I actually am. Like, I WISH I was cool enough to regularly pull off this look. Maybe I’ll become super edgy someday and it’ll work out.

Abby (1/5 the volunteer posse) got a go pro, and we haven’t done anything too thrilling or adventurous yet but we used it to get some footage of us cleaning out our pantry in search for rats. I, personally, have not seen a rat in the house yet. But there is evidence of their presence all over the place. “Poop is raining from the ceilings. Poop.”

sweepin' da shelves.

New thing I’m obsessed with: coconut cream. It’s like, THE BEST baking ingredient of all time. I wanted to make a banana cream pie but the only cream I could find was coconut cream, so I used that and the combination was glorious, to say the least. This concoction, combined with the many loaves of bread I baked over the weekend, makes me feel like I’m reliving senior year of high school all over again, where I blew off homework and watched movies while I baked something 5 nights a week. Those were the DAYS. #occupyprecal, anyone?

Last Friday, two birds flew into the classroom as I was teaching literature. One immediately flew back out the way it came, but the other couldn't quite figure out how to leave. Long story short, the bird died in the classroom over the weekend. But before that happened, I told my students the story of that one bird that died in our house (anyone, anyone?) because it kept flying into the windows in the game room and the impact proved to be too much. Monday morning, some of the boys put the bird on a leaf and floated it in the pond behind the classroom. But then they also started throwing rocks at it. I was ANNOYED that they didn't invite me to the Viking funeral, but I told them about the episode of The Office when the bird dies from flying into the window and Dwight tries to shove it into a soda can and the beak comes off and then he plays "On the Wings of Love" on his recorder and Pam gives a eulogy and then they light the tissue box on fire. Then one of my students drew this on the back of his quiz:

Bird Funeral. Oil on Canvas. 2016.

I don’t quite know how to be funny tonight as I write. This post will probably rank last in terms of comedic value, but whatever.

I’ve been thinking about something a lot lately, so I’ll share:

Lots of people will argue that college is the time to “find yourself,” but like, no.

I found myself in high school. I can pin down a few significant turning points where I, teenage Madeleine, was like, “Yo, this is ME. This is who I AM. I figured it OUT.”

And then I went to college. And though that transition was fairly easy, my vision of myself changed drastically in the four years I spent at Spring Hill. I was shaped by new people, different circumstances and experiences and opportunities. Y’all, the OPPORTUNITIES that college presented me with are unreal! By the time I graduated, I knew EXACTLY who I was. I was confident in that. I was absolutely certain of who I was as an individual, what I stood for, what I wanted out of life. Sure, there were things I was uncertain about, but for the most part, I knew myself. I loved myself. I was excited about being me.

Now I’m here and I don’t know who I am. It’s weird to lose yourself like that, but I’m realizing now that I’m not really lost. I’m just in a new major phase of this discovery. The one they call “post-grad”. The one that seems scariest from both the outside and the inside.

Kids, if you’re reading this, DON’T GRADUATE FROM COLLEGE. I know that people say this every day. My uncles all told me I had a 4 year membership to a country club, and that it’d go by faster than I could imagine and I’d be sad when it was gone. But I couldn’t WAIT to graduate. I wanted to get out so badly, to be a part of the world, to see things and do things!!! HOW EXCITING!!!!! LIVING! LIFE ON THE OUTSIDE!!!!!

But here I am, a little far beyond just being on the outside, and nothing makes sense anymore. But you know, there’s something wonderful about that. It’s a new opportunity to rediscover myself. To remember who I know myself to be, but also to grow into a truer version of the person I am called to become. I had a sour attitude about this whole idea for a while, but now it excites me. I just didn’t realize before that I’d spend my whole life figuring out who I am. I think that’s cool.

Hannah Hooper, one of my favorite musical artists ever, once said, “there’s something terrifyingly boring about knowing exactly who you are,” and I think she’s right. The thought of being one person forever and always staying in exactly the same place sounds TERRIBLE. I would never want that for myself. I don’t think any of us really want to just settle as one very specific person that fits perfectly and exactly into a little mold.

This reminds me of that scene in Bridesmaids when Annie (Kristen Wiig) and Helen (Rose Byrne) are debating whether people are who they are and always stay that way or if they grow and change all the time. Watch here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-4o5QStVuY

Every day I think of something else I could do with my life, someone else I could be. Sometimes I come up with things that excite me, sometimes things that scare me, sometimes things that bore or offend me. But the thing is, as this Yap year continues, I will come up with fifty options for my return. I will choose one, pursue it, and potentially end up pursuing 49 other things down the line. Life is long. It’s short, but it’s long, you know?

And on this note can I just say — we just read The Catcher in the Rye in literature and I cannot express how much I love Holden Caulfield. In many ways, I feel like I am him, though in many ways not. Promise me this, no matter who I become, make sure it’s not a phony.

Anyway. Life is good out here these days. I like being here. I like being outside and watching the golden sunsets and slowly becoming brave enough to do more than just meet local people but actually push myself to get to know them. Knowing people is life’s greatest gift, and I’m trying to embrace that.

As the semester comes to a close, keep my students close to your heart. We have another two weeks of class, a few days of exams, and a two week break. One final push before I’m halfway through this experience. Talk. About. WILD.

One last thing - HOW. BOUT. THEM. COWBOYS.

I facetimed my family after Thanksgiving and y’all, everyone was was repping some kind of Cowboys gear. Jeff’s phone case and computer decal. Greg’s shirt and hat. Jennifer’s shirt. I said, “dang, you guys are all wearing Cowboys stuff,” and Greg responded, “you have to.” And that’s the thing. You do have to. I can’t believe we’re finally good. I can’t wait for something amazing to happen and for us to be the non-bandwaggoners. For real, Jeff once ran into a BURNING BUILDING to rescue his Tony Romo Jerseys. This love is good. This love is real. And God bless Twitter for their RANDOM Thursday Night Football streaming deal because I can finally watch the game this week.

But the best part of that facetime is that I caught everyone at home, all 5 of ‘em + Riley, just as they were about to start decorating our Christmas tree. It was just as difficult of a process as it always is, but it was really nice to get to still be a part of that. Look out for our Christmas card this year. It’s not on the same level as last year’s, but it’s a good one, that’s for sure.