Not Tri- as in triangle or tricycle, but Tri- as in Tree. Tree as in that family tree project I made in the third grade, still a novice to glue that came in sticks instead of bottles. The tree whose oldest branches spread far back to Spain, and in some cases, to Italy or France. The tree from which later branches grew in Argentina, a place where many branches still remain. Until, this newest, fledgling branch ended up on new American soil, taking up roots as it keeps trying to grow.
My parents put in uncommon efforts to raise my brother and me completely bilingual. Our mother (a Frenchwoman from Normandy) spoke only French to us, ever, our father (a New Yorker by way of Romania and Tunisia) only English. To build a wall of separation within us between French and English, they pretended not to understand when we addressed them in the wrong language.
As we approach the Sunrise Senior Living Home in Farmington Hills, Michigan, my grandmother explains that it houses two separate programs. The primary one is for the elderly who cannot fully care for themselves. The second, called “Reminiscence,” is for those who also have severe memory problems. That’s where my grandfather has lived for the past six months.
I have always thought that knowing how old you are is an important part of who you are. Your age lets you know what kinds of things you should be doing, and what is expected of you by wider society. My birthday has always been an unshakeable fact, as it is for most people I know.
When I visited the Woody Allen papers before winter break, the allegations against Mr. Allen of sexual abuse had not yet resurfaced. Those accusations, presented by his daughter Dylan Farrow in the New York Times on February 1, have reignited an age-old debate about the relationship between an artist’s personal life and the content of his artwork.
Two nights before my nineteenth birthday, I was studying for my last final exam, which was supposed to take place the following evening, spooning peanut butter into my mouth. Suddenly my tongue started to tingle and swell, my chest and neck began to itch, and my throat started to close. I soon found myself at the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro (PMC) with an epi-pen in my arm.
I was seventeen. A senior second semester saturated with drugs, alcohol and bad decisions written off as “youth” had ended in a hospital bed on prom night, and, subsequently, in daily, forced AA meetings. I’d thought I was on top of the world: going to an Ivy League school, surrounded by friends, graduating top of my class.
Monday evening at ten of seven, I finish my dinner at Rocky dining hall, walk down Witherspoon Street to the Arts Council of Princeton, and make my way to the theater on the second floor. Minutes later I stand in the center of the room on a podium, naked, with the eyes of a dozen middle-aged strangers trained on me.
I’ve missed out on a lot of things due to lack of money. As bad as that sounds, I often forget about it. But there are times I am reminded. This will be about those moments I am reminded, not in a melancholy sort of way, not a boo-hoo story about being the pauper of the town, but instead as an account of how I curiously grew into a frugal lifestyle; how I couldn’t afford things, and how that resulted in me not wanting them.
Watch the balloons sway in the center of the slick dance floor. You are here and you are not here, swaying yourself on too-thin heels and much too much mixed drink. Tie your hair back. You’re hopped up on hoping the ending of your night will deliver what the beginning has promised since you fished your junior prom dress out of the dorm closet you’re sure has moths.
I didn’t think much about what it would be like to participate in 7×9 until about thirty seconds before I started my shift. There was a grungy looking twenty-something year old man sitting on the ground, facing the girl I was to replace in what seemed to be an expression of solidarity. The situation would not have felt much less uncomfortable had she been an actual prisoner and not a Princeton student sitting outside of Frist.
As of last year, I have lost my status as a permanent resident of New York City. I have in many ways become a stranger to the concrete jungle that taught me that the world contained more than my five-person family and two-bedroom apartment located in the scenic neighborhood of Parkchester, centered in the middle of the Bronx, a borough known for little more than its poverty and baseball team.
