OPEN CASTING CALL

We all have been feeling the loss of our Apron Stage habit, and while we know that nothing could fill the void created by our daily doses of Lisa, Louise, Rebecca and Sarah, we are unwilling to see this community fade away.  Since the neighborhood of commenters was often as much of the attraction as the posts themselves, we would like to propose a new forum for our “small stories,” as they were termed on the Facebook fanpage.

We, Journey Beyond Survival and nakiru, are starting the ball rolling on a new blog. We are looking for other hardy souls interesting in posting, whether it be regularly or just on occasion, giving us a chance to get to know you and comment like mad, just like in the old days.

We’re hoping for is a diverse community, a smorgasbord of personalities.  What we would like to see is not an Apron Stage 2.0, since that’s not a void we could fill, but instead a blog that we all have a piece of ownership in, a vested interest, not just in the publishing, but in the support of everyone else’s “small stories.”

If you have an interest in being a part of this as a poster, please send an email and if at all possible, a potential post to Journey Beyond Survival (journey.beyond.survival at gmail dot com) or nakiru (nakiru at live dot com). If you don’t have a post waiting in the wings, don’t let that stop you from letting us know your interest. We are hoping to start this ball rolling as early as July 1.

Readers, we don’t know when/if we’ll ever be back in this format. So, we’re leaving you with a sentence and a visual to remember us by as you imagine/follow us on our adventures.*

Before we do, there is someone we need to acknowledge. Without this woman, we would not have made it this far. This woman was our second wind, our end-of-week lifeline. Sharon Harris has been our guest blog coordinator for the last who-knows-how-long. She’s the one who’s helped to bring you all the fabulous Friday posts. Sharon, thank you, thank you. When I finally meet you in New York in a few months, I’m taking you out for the NYC version of a Biggie Frosty–a frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity.

Sarah and Manfriend are happily dating. Sarah found something to remind her of him while she’s living in the desert.

Lisa and Tagg are moving 2 blocks away from her favorite bread bakery in Manhattan. (This makes her about as happy as the time they went to Disneyland together…)

Rebecca and Levi are having a girl.

Louise and Tom are in Vienna, where Louise has realized that she and her fake British accent are able to convince tourists that she’s Julie Andrews’s younger sister. She’s making enough money to drown the students who annoy her in Sacher Tortes.

*Follow us on our personal blogs. Here for Sarah, here for Rebecca and here for Louise. I don’t have one yet. Tagg and I are considering getting a new he said/she said blog together. If we do, I’ll post an announcement on this site before the end of June. Check back July 1. Also, please join the Facebook group, “The Apron Stage.” Thanks again to Liz for setting it up!

I have spent the last twenty minutes going over some of my Apron Stage regrets.

• I never wrote that post about what it was like to not be a LOST fan but still be a normal person.
• My cousin Jeff never actually guested.
• We never started the “best comments” side bar.
• I always had to go after Lisa and before Louise. (Not that I’d have loved a slot by Sarah either.)
• I used too many em dashes, too many parentheticals, and started every other sentence with And or But.

Of course right now, as I sit down to write my very last post, the big regret is that we ever decided to stop. I’m going to miss a lot about this place.

Moving on seems to be a theme in my life right now.  I’m not thrilled about it.  I didn’t want to move to Virginia and I don’t really want to move to Africa. But every sunday school lesson lately seems to be the one where the children of Israel are complaining about all the good things they had to leave behind in Egypt. And then they complain so much that they never make it Canaan.

So I’ve been trying to look at things I’m going to miss (like America or The Apron Stage) and instead of being upset about them, be glad I got them at all. Cheer up Charlie.

Reasons I’m glad we did this.

• The comments.
• Getting to interact with Sarah, Lisa, and Lousie on a regular basis.
• That post where Louise accurately describes Tagg as “some guy who dresses like the uni-bomber but doesn’t like explosions” or even better, the one where she says her goldfish is like a “glob of mucous with a little blood in it…spit with fins.” Louise sent her posts to me to put up, so I always had the first read. I’d read them to Levi before I put them up and we’d laugh and laugh. Spit with fins? Brilliant.
• Sarah producing what was quite possibly the best critique of The New Moon ever written (and a lot were written.) Could this amount of witticism have come from the same pen that spoke so openly and honestly about body and real appetites and then personally responded to all 150+ comments?
• It got Lisa and Tagg married. Say what they will about the real reasons they got together (so what if they’d already dated for two years…), I knew it would take a little something extra to get our Amish Lisa married to Tagg the astronaut.  It was the sheer genius in posts like this one, or this one. And of course, of course, this one.
• Not to dwell on Lisa getting married (you have to agree though, it’s the single greatest success of the Apron Stage) but one of my all-time favorite AS moments was probably when Lisa (already engaged, but not publicly) wrote a message to her future husband (and he responded).
• All that fantastic Tom and Louise-ness. This, or this, or this, or this.
• Wanting to be a part of Sarah Olson’s Family.
• Wonderful, insightful, funny guest posts.

There is a lot to miss (always–Sarah already covered that).  But onward and upward: I’m going to work on new writing projects, maybe start updating my personal blog with some regularity. Oh yeah, and I’m going to learn French, and have a baby and move to Africa.  As I type this, Adelaide is marching around the living room with a cardboard box on her head, waving the Senegal flag, chanting, “Let’s go to Senegal! Let’s go to Senegal!”

I wonder which of us is more clueless about what’s up ahead. But  here we go and there you have it.

Back when I was in undergrad, I had a cure-all solution for the blues: I’d drive to Wendy’s with a girlfriend, order a frosty and pretend that frosty was an Academy Award. In the car, we’d improvise speeches. We’d make our voices catch right after we mentioned our parents. We’d say how we never expected this to ever happen to us. We’d giggle and gush and go through every cliché in the book. By the time we got home, we’d always feel better.

Writing a final post for The Apron Stage makes me crave a frosty. For the last year and a half, this little corner of the internet has been my clean, well-lighted place*. And we always need more of those in our lives, don’t we?

I never considered myself much of a writer before Rebecca roped me into being Tuesday’s child. I blame my childhood: When I was five, my older sister and cousin found my first attempt at poetry entitled “Oh! Oh! It’s Spring!” and (rightfully) mocked me. They might have also discovered my acrostic “Fish” which began with the line “Floating when dead” and laughed as they rolled on the floor. Cheryl and Lee, how could you squelch such buds of brilliance? How?!

A redemptive moment found its way into my weekend when I attended a friend’s bridal shower in New York. I hadn’t seen many of the attendees since I left for Phoenix. Their first question was the same: What are you writing right now? Those words did good things for my little soul.

I’ve always wanted to hold an Academy Awards party for my friends.  Not the kind where you guess which movie will win Best Picture—my Wendy’s kind. Everyone could dress up in their fanciest and I could give frosties all around.** I’d announce each winner. We’d all jump up and down and clap as the winner would walk to the podium to receive their frosty.

Last week someone asked how we could have a virtual good-bye party. Well, I vote you all write your acceptance speeches in the comment section below. (And, if you really want to get into it, post a link to what you’re wearing to our virtual party.) Because you just won a virtual frosty for being fabulous. Congratulations.

*I think Hemmingway wrote a short story with this title. But I’ve never read it. I hope it’s not about dead puppies or anything.

**Imagine a slightly less dysfunctional version of the Dundies.

Sarah

Last week my grandmother surprised us all by having a stroke.  She is doing better for the moment—so far, she can swallow again and she can laugh, but she can’t talk—and my mom and aunt flew to be with her.  “If you can come, you’ll be glad you did,” my mother told me yesterday on the phone.  “It is being a very sweet time.”  I bought my ticket the same day.

I am unsure what the future holds for me.  Funny I should feel like saying that now.  When are we ever sure what the future holds for us?  See Grandma’s stroke above.  Somehow routines and relationships give me a feeling of knowingness.  In DC, I can pretend that I know what the future holds for me; for instance, eating chocolate chip cookie dough with Stephanie and dinner with Manfriend.  If I were staying in DC, my money would be on those things.

This next life move is cracking those guesses-posing-as-certainties wide open.  Life in Las Vegas feels unknown.  How will I survive a year with no cherry blossoms, no leafy canopies, no Potomac?  Life after Las Vegas is unknown.  Where will a 30-year-old Sarah find a place to lay her head?

I am raw for comfort.  I find myself singing a lot of Dixie Chicks these days.  Specifically, the song “Wide Open Spaces.” She needs wide open spaces / Room to make her big mistakes.

I sang this to my roommate Steph a couple of weeks ago.  She said, “You’re from New York.  When did you fall in love with wide open spaces?”

This is the only narrative I have found comfort in.  I am leaving a house, a job, a proximity to my parents, a city, a blog I love so much, for what?  For the chance to bust open my heart and rely on God.  Can I build my own Zion in the wilderness?  Find people to love and people to love me?  Can I find a life that is not predominantly loneliness, or a life in which loneliness brings patience, to do a perfect work on my heart?

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.  Probably yes.  As Manfriend says, whatever sends us to our knees is a blessing.  Whatever prompts us to pray is a blessing from God.

I do have faith He will hear us.

And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.  (Isaiah 58:11-12)

Please, oh God, water me with blessings.  I am praying in the desert to thee.

Stephanie works in D.C. and lives in Virginia. Her dad owns a peanut butter company and her mom runs a sweets shop and sells fruitcake in Ohio. Please note the juxtaposition of her photo and the title and content of this post. She is currently single.

When your heart is broken, everything is more real and surreal at the same time. I can suddenly feel my fingertips. How long have they been there? How long have I been able to feel them? Everything besides my own body seems far away, and I feel removed. I am alone.

The days pass and people whisper “she’s doing so well,” “she seems really happy.” The expectations are miraculously low. I am grateful that people tip toe around the issue. My boyfriend and I broke up. Let’s not talk about it.

Let’s talk about my evenings.

I do not have to attend to my usual nightly phone call to recap our days and report on our jobs, our moods, and occasionally, our feelings.

I hung on his every word, wishing and hoping he’d end the conversation this time with “Good night, Stephie. I love you.”

He said it sometimes, but not enough. Can it ever be enough?

I don’t wait anymore. Instead, I climb into bed, not having to worry about who will be making the obligatory trek this weekend to solidify our long-distance relationship for the 1,000 time. Now, I have all the time in the world. Isn’t that what I wanted?

I guess the old adage “never go to bed angry” only applies to relationships that have not been terminated. I never liked that saying anyway.

I pray to God to heal my broken heart. There are so many people hurting for much more real reasons than mine. Should I really be praying for this? Don’t I have something better to say and feel? What about the orphans in Africa? What about Julie?

I have always believed that if things don’t work out, they weren’t meant to and something better is coming my way. Perhaps this is just one of the nice things we tell ourselves when the pillars around us come crumbling down. Something has to keep me motivated. God, please heal my broken heart.

At night, I allow myself to cry. I don’t always cry, but knowing I’m allowed to is comforting. I don’t have to worry about making a scene, messing up my makeup, or drying out my contacts. And no one has to know.

And then, I sleep. My only wish is that I won’t be sad in the morning.

The Apron Stage has given us many reasons to rejoice. We celebrated Lisa’s marriage, delighted as Sarah’s relationship developed, clung to Rebecca’s beautiful memoirs of motherhood, and watched in awe at the depth of Louise and Tom’s love that has weathered so many years. But the Apron Stage is also a place to turn to for strength, where people can empower each other by sharing in each other’s dreams and heartaches.

Today, I am the Friday guest blogger with a broken heart. But I feel some comfort–and sadness–in knowing that you have probably felt this too. God, please heal our broken hearts.

Louise

Last night in Vienna, we met our BYU students at a restaurant called The Gulasch Museum, which as far as I could tell had nothing to do with a museum; although, the menu was a work of art.  It was a large faux leather book with photographs of the fifteen gulasch dishes offered, each page protected in a museum-quality, acid free, plastic binding.

The offerings were labeled not only in German but English, French, Italian, Spanish, Urdu, Pig-Latin and Swahili.

Enter in, foreign suckers.

Rick Steves recommends The Gulasch Museum, but he recommends it in a poor German accent.

I ordered the Kalbsgulasch mit Spinatknoedlen, because just to say it aloud is to clear all the germs from your mouth onto the waitress’s apron.  Veal.  It’s veal.  Some of the female students squealed, “You’re eating veal?”

“Yes, I am.  I’m eating little baby cows with large, dark emotionally thrilling eyes.  I’ve asked to have it butchered right at the table.”

Give me a break.

As it turned out, the entire group ate carnivorously and the gulasch was delicious.  Hats off to the bouncy Rick Steves.

I sat at a table with 8 young women and one young man, Chip.   One of them suggested that we go around the table and tell the others about our relationships with the opposite sex.

Chip rolled his eyes.

So around we went.  One has a missionary in Brazil.  Several had broken up with old high school boyfriends.  A couple had never been in a serious relationship and had never kissed anyone.  Virgin Lips.

When it was Chip’s turn, he said, “No way.”  Chip is cute and all the girls say they’re having a relationship with him, but only one could get him on Facebook.  They’ve also all had their pictures taken with him individually, so they can show people at home how they had a romance during the summer.

“Come on, Chip, tell us about your real girlfriend,”

“It’s me, isn’t it?” One of them blinks her winky winks at him.

Chip blushes,which makes him all the more appealing.  He isn’t going to tell them anything.  Then he says, “Louise knows.”

All the females turn to me.  “How do YOU know?”

“We had Sunday dinner together the first week.  I grilled him on his love life.”

“So what is it?”

“I can’t tell.”

Hyperbolic groans all around.

So we move around to the next young woman and she has the story of the evening.  She broke up with her boyfriend when he was in the hospital having chemotherapy for testicular cancer.

I am wowed.  You can’t make this kind of stuff up.  I want to ask a question.  I really want to ask a question.  So I ask the question:  “Does he still have his testicles?”

She raised one index finger.

Ouch.

So what’s the worst break-up you’ve ever had?

Next week we find out this baby’s gender. As if I need a machine to tell me. On the off-chance that the ultrasound technician says it’s a girl, I’ll tell him to CHECK AGAIN. I am ninety-percent certain that the rock uncomfortably squeezing itself between my pelvic bones is a little boy.

Consider the evidence.

1. This pregnancy is totally different than my first, girl-producing pregnancy.
2. My mother-in-law had a dream three days before we found out we were pregnant that I was pregnant with a boy.
3. I’m carrying low.
4. The baby’s heart rate is above 140.
5. My left breast is slightly larger than my right.
6. When I mixed my urine with Drano, it came out blue.
7. Levi has lost weight this pregnancy.
8. And on the last half moon, with seven pennies in each pocket and four marshmallows in my mouth, I stood under an azalea tree in full bloom and hummed the 1812 Overture whilst dangling a ring on a string above my belly. As you’ve probably already guessed, the ring swung back and forth.

Why only ninety percent certian, you ask? With all of that evidence, why that doubting ten percent?

It goes back to the evening I saw a friend at the church. She’s from Honduras and calls it like it is. I was pregnant with Adelaide at the time.  “You’re having a girl, aren’t you?” she said.  ”I know because girls steal all of their mother’s beauty.”

And let me tell you—what with my pimply face and my straggly hair and the way the allergies are making my eyes puff out and how I can’t wear my contacts so I have to wear my glasses which because my prescription is so heavy make my eyeballs look even smaller—let me tell you, we might very well be having a girl.

(Sorry I’m late today, Readers. I’ve been on a red-eye all night and finally got the chance to sit down at my computer.)

About 2 years ago, I went on a date with a wonderful guy. He was handsome. Intelligent. Hardworking. And get this: He liked me. A lot. There was only one problem… I had a serious case of it’s-not-you-it’s-me. I just wasn’t feeling the zing, Readers.

I called Rebecca after one of our dates, “He’s everything any woman could ever want in a man.  But I’m just not attracted to him.”

“I’m emailing an article that you need to read,” Rebecca said.

That article was Lori Gottlieb’s “Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough”. (An article that was so popular Ms. Gottlieb expanded it into a book.)

As the title suggests, Ms. Gottlieb argues that modern women are too picky and that it’s better to marry someone you respect but don’t have romantic feelings for than to spend your life alone.  She writes:

“I don’t mean to say that settling is ideal. I’m simply saying that it might have gotten an undeservedly bad rap. As the only single woman in my son’s mommy-and-me group, I used to listen each week to a litany of unrelenting complaints about people’s husbands and feel pretty good about my decision to hold out for the right guy, only to realize that these women wouldn’t trade places with me for a second, no matter how dull their marriages might be or how desperately they might long for a different husband. They, like me, would rather feel alone in a marriage than actually be alone, because they, like me, realize that marriage ultimately isn’t about cosmic connection—it’s about how having a teammate, even if he’s not the love of your life, is better than not having one at all.”

The article made me mad. Sick to my stomach. But this wasn’t the first time someone had told me I needed to stop being so picky. And since Rebecca had given me invaluable advice before, I figured I’d go on at least one more date with this guy.

The date confirmed what I’d suspected: I just couldn’t do it. Not to me, not to this guy. Yes, we were older singles, but we deserved romantic love. And I’m happy to report that we both found it. Tagg showed up on my doorstep a year later, and he married one of the loveliest women I’ve ever met. Win-win-win-win.  I was thrilled to have proven Lori Gottlieb wrong.

I didn’t think much about this article until Tagg and I started spending time with one of our unmarried friends. She’s a wonderful woman and has everything going for her. She dates fantastic men, but just hasn’t found The One. As she opened up about her dating life she asked, “Lisa, do you think I’m being too picky?”

I didn’t know what to say. Even if she is too picky, doesn’t she deserve to feel that zing of romantic love?  What if I had taken the “you’re too picky” advice completely to heart and married someone other than Tagg?

I thought about this all week and even through my Sunday school lesson (I teach 9-11 year old boys.) We learned about Jacob’s family. When the lesson was over, we walked down the hall to go to Singing Time and I overheard one of my boys say, “Sucks to be Leah.”

Exactly. I thought. Exactly. This is why all this Lori Gottlieb stuff bugs me. Who wants a marriage devoid of romantic, can’t-live-without-you, I’ll-wait-for-14-years love?

And yet I think there is something beautiful about putting romance aside. Every night I say to Tagg, “I love you; you are my friend” not, “I love you with a passionate flame that will never be quenched.”

So, to my dear friend who has asked me if I think she is too picky, my answer is this: I don’t know. All I can say is that I’ve been the happiest in relationships that found a balance between the romantic and the practical. (You don’t want to be Leah, but you don’t want to be Bathsheba, either.)  Most importantly, I don’t believe we age out of romance. I do believe that our definition of romance will and should evolve as we do.

(And, if that advice doesn’t help, I have no doubt that one of our commenters will say something that does.)

Sarah

In two months, I am moving to Las Vegas.  No Rebecca Smylie/Lisa Piorczynski here.  I’m telling you up front.  I got a new job—a one-year stint (something legal)—and come July, I’ll be leaving DC and moving west.

And before we start talking about if I’m excited, if I’m sad, if I’m going to return to DC afterward, let me also say this: because of my new job and the variety of our other life events, we, the women of the Apron Stage, have decided to give our two weeks’ notice.  We will stop blogging on the Apron Stage at the end of May.

For true.

There are, it turns out, a lot of things I don’t know about this whole situation.  For one: I don’t know where I’ll be living in Las Vegas.  (I’m currently looking for a roommate or two.  Know any late 20s/early 30s cool LDS women in Las Vegas wanting to share a house/apartment?  Send ideas to theapronstage_at_gmaildotcom.)

Also: I’m going to Vegas to look for housing soon.  I don’t know where I’m staying the night of Sunday, May 23.  (Anyone want to host me?  I’m trying to avoid staying at the Golden Nugget.  Have a free couch?  I’d be lovely guest.)  (Note: Since the writing of this post, I have found a place to stay this weekend in Las Vegas.  The AS came through.  Thank you for your generous offers, team.  Thank you!)

And: I don’t know if I’ll return to DC.  I don’t know if I’m more excited or more sad.  And I do not know what will happen with me and Manfriend.  I don’t know any of these things.

But I do know this: I will miss the AS.  I will miss Rebecca, Lisa, Louise, their men, the guest posters—past guesters and those who should have been.  I will miss the Sunday evening powwows with the roommates, hashing out my next day’s post, eating Kim’s kettle corn, and losing to Steph at hearts.

And I will miss you.  I will miss those of you who commented, those of you who lurked, and especially those of you who outed yourselves in conversations with me at parties, at church, at work.  So often, it went like this: “How’re you, Sarah?”  And then before I could answer, “I mean, I confess–I read the Apron Stage.  I stage.  I know everything about how you’re doing.”  You have been so gracious with me, so generous.  I have spent the last nineteen months feeling very much like a Z-list celebrity.

Good goo, there are a million things to miss.

As I write this post, I am listening to the Glenn Close reading of Sarah, Plain and Tall, an audio book my sister Anika and I listened to every night for years, as we fell asleep in the room we shared.  Sarah is a lover of the sea, who moves from Maine to somewhere on the prairie, to be mother to two farm kids and, eventually, wife to their father.  During the month she visits them—before she decides to marry the dad and stay—the children are worried Sarah will not like their fields and their farm, and will choose to return to Maine and the sea she loves.  But Sarah assures them, “There is always something to miss, no matter where you are.”

There is always something to miss, no matter where you are.  I’m not sure why, but that comforts me.