Is It Me You're Looking For?

Mistaken identity and the joy of being known

So, Mom, were you emo¹ in high school?” One of my daughters—Skyler, I think—asked me this last summer after I had played some of the songs I liked in high school in a desperate attempt to shake up the Harry Styles/ Taylor Swift playlist that accompanied the entire summer. Both of them are fine, but sometimes you just really need to listen to something different.

“Emo?” I repeated. “I don’t know… maybe a little? We didn’t call it that, though.”

The truth is that for a year-and-a-half of high school, I was sort of a drama geek. It was the 90’s, and the class uniform was Doc Martens, heavy eye makeup, and hair in a rainbow of colors. Our class was right after lunch, and everyone but me and maybe four others regularly showed up smelling like pot. One day, somebody had been smoking in the bathroom attached to the drama room, and as my teacher walked in, she closed her eyes and wafted the air toward her face making big circles with her arms.

“Mmmm, smell that!” she said, dreamily.

I dropped into this interesting world halfway through my freshman year from a Christian boarding school in Malaysia where I had gotten into massive trouble because I owned the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing. (My dorm dad had gone through my underwear drawer to find the tape, which is a story for another day). So I was very much the proverbial fish out of water in drama class, and I can’t say I ever went all in. I did develop an enduring affection for grunge rock and alternative music. But I wore the cheap Doc Marten knock-offs from Payless Shoe Source while waving off the frequently proffered pot, my eye make-up was minimal or non-existent, and my hair remained brown.

A few notable things happened in the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school. 1) I quit drama (but did not stop wearing my fake Doc Martens). 2) I went to Australia for six weeks and became a tiny bit cooler.

PLEASE NOTE: this is not just because I went to Australia , but because my friends there were so cool and immensely kind, and I took lots of notes. 3) I decided that I’d had quite enough of high school, walked into the counselor’s office the first week of school and asked, “What do I need to do to graduate this year?” I started college a year later, the week after my seventeenth birthday, attending the local community college followed by the state university with a satellite campus in our town.

There was a coffee shop called Safari, one of two coffee shops in town at the time, so I often saw people I’d gone to high school with. One night, I spotted Katie, my sort-of-friend from drama class. She had a fun, bubbly personality, so by default, she was usually kind toward me despite all my awkwardness in 9th and 10th grade. But we had never been what I would call “close.” That night, I made eye contact and gave a little smile as I sat across the table from Matt, clasping a warm mug of coffee. I just didn’t see a point in going over and actually talking to her.

“JOY!! Seriously?!” Suddenly Katie was at my elbow. “You weren’t going to say hi?! What the hell?!?!” I jumped to my feet, mumbling something about how she was with other people and I didn’t want to bother her as she opened her arms wide for a hug. “Never assume I’m too busy for my Joy!!” she said, embracing me.

I left Safari with warm fuzzy feelings in my heart, questioning everything I’d thought about high school. Maybe I hadn’t been such a nerd? Maybe Katie and I were besties? Anyway, next time I saw her, I would definitely talk to her.

My opportunity came one night about a month later in the parking lot of Safari. It was pretty dark, but I could see that her hair, always bobbed at about the same length, was a different color than it had been last time. That wasn’t unusual for Katie, though. Her hair had been platinum blond, jet black, orchid pink, and smurf blue during our drama days. Not about to commit the same faux pas as last time, I beelined toward her, gave my most enthusiastic “KAAAATIIIEEEE!!” by way of a greeting, and hugged her tight.

Something was different this time. She gave me gentle pats on the back, like a mother comforting an upset child, and as I drew back, she said just about the worst possible words Katie could have said just then.

“Ummm, I’m not Katie.”

WHAAAATT?!?! My hands lifted to my face in horror. Now that I was actually looking at her in the dim light, I realized my mistake. This would have been the perfect moment for a meteorite to strike the parking lot and put me out of my misery. Kindly, though, Not Katie added, “But thanks for the hug.”

And now a montage through the next few years: I married Matt and we had Jayna. It was her first Christmas, and my sister Jenny and her husband came up to visit. Matt was at work on Christmas Eve, so he missed the part of the day where Jenny and I discovered we had the exact same sweater. Our hair was just about the same length and, as always, very close in color, and we made some comment about how this might be the most similar we had ever looked.

I was in the bedroom, putting Jayna down for a nap when Matt came home, while Jenny stood at the stove wearing that sweater and stirring something, her back toward him.

“Dang, your butt looks good in those jeans!” Matt said. And then Jenny turned around.

Matt came running into the bedroom.

“I’m actually going to die,” he told me before falling face-first onto the bed. There he lay for a very long time as I laughed till I could barely breathe.

Another montage, one of those with a map and a plane flying around with a line behind it. Matt joined the Navy, and we moved from California to Florida, to Texas, back to Florida, then to Spain for three years (where we added another daughter, Skyler, to our family), and back to California, where Matt attended the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. Oh and also, we got an Australian Shepherd puppy.

TimTam, the Australian Shepherd

Every morning once Jayna was at school but before I showered and put on makeup, I wrestled the very independent and energetic Skyler into her stroller, leashed TimTam, the Aussie, and went for a two-mile walk around base housing. Every morning, at exactly the same time in roughly the same place, I met a woman walking a large yellow lab. Every morning, we talked for a few minutes about this and that, and then smiled and waved goodbye. Every. Morning.

Our kids went to the same school, so after a few weeks of meeting like this, I saw her waiting outside her son’s classroom which was, coincidentally, right next to Jayna’s.

“HIII!!!” I said, giving an energetic wave and launching into a conversation based on things we had said that very morning. The woman smiled back, but as I talked, I realized it was one of those placating smiles you give people who are clearly off in the head and might start attacking you at any minute, the kind that sort of slides into a grimace. Finally, she shook her head and said, “I’m sorry, but do I know you?”

I stared at her in shock. Was this another Katie moment? No, it was definitely the same woman. How should I even answer that? Did she know my favorite color or my middle name? No. But we talked EVERY MORNING! Yes, YES, she did know me, at least a little!! Sure I had showered, done my hair, put on “real clothes” and makeup—but I never wore that much makeup, even on my wedding day. But now it seemed that a little lipstick and a curling iron had rendered me unrecognizable.

Yet another montage. Matt and I moved to Virginia, Florida, Washington (the state), Hawaii, and South Korea. We added three kids to our crew, Lilly, Wyatt, and Annalee. I played the keyboard for the base chapel’s musical worship team, and one day at practice, I play the introduction to one of the new songs.

“This is like another song…” I said, my fingers running over the keys again. “What is it?” I played the notes I was thinking of. “Oh, I know!! It’s ‘Today’ by the Smashing Pumpkins.”

The worship leader raised his eyebrows in shock and stepped backwards. “You listened to the Smashing Pumpkins?!?!”

I looked at him, and I could tell he was doing quick and slightly panicked recalculations regarding everything he knew about me—a mother of five, a minivan driver, the wearer of only one poorly chosen tattoo. “I still do. They’re great, and ‘Today’ is my favorite of their songs.”

Sometimes I wonder if maybe we aren’t a little too concerned with fitting ourselves and the people around us into categories we can recognize easily.  When I was little, my mother read a book called The Birth Order Book. It made all kinds of grand, sweeping statements about birth order and personality, but as I thought about our family, I could only see the caveats. There were Jenny and me, pretty straightforward biological sisters, two years and eight months apart. But when I was six-and-a-half when my parents adopted my little sister, who was three years younger than me. How did all that work? Did the “rules” really still apply?

There are countless personality tests, the enneagram, ancestries, and horoscopes, all meant to explain who we are and where we belong. We paint with broad strokes, declaring, “This is who I am, and that is who you are.” But isn’t it always just a little more complicated, a little messier than that? There’s something wonderful in letting people not fit neatly into boxes, recognizing the beauty in complicated details and using them to connect.

One night, when we still lived in Korea, I went to pick up Indian food from our favorite restaurant. I called in the same order I had always had, except for one dish because one of our kids was out that night. As I paid, the restaurant owner leaned forward, opening the bag of boxes that contained our food.

“You didn’t order aloo gobi tonight,” he said, “so I give to you service. No charge.” I beamed at him, deeply grateful not just for the tasty dish he’d thrown in free, but for the honor of being known well enough to have a “usual order”. Then I climbed into my minivan to drive home as the Smashing Pumpkins blasted through the speakers.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Hello"

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1. Oxford Dictionary’s definition of emo: noun

1. a style of rock music resembling punk but having more complex arrangements and lyrics that deal with more emotional subjects.

adjective

denoting or relating to emo and its associated subculture.

1. "an emo band"