When I lost my first tooth, I sobbed. Not because I was scared of the Tooth Fairy’s imminent arrival or of the blood leaking from my gum, but because, as I told my parents, I wasn’t ready to grow up. If only my 7-year-old self knew she had some real time on her hands; I wish I could tell her not to sound the alarms quite yet. But that’s not who she was — someone able to remain calm at the signals of change. And that’s still not who I am, now, with a full set of adult teeth and only one month left of college.
I am, and evidently always have been, an anticipator. I’m consistently expecting, preparing for what’s to come. The next two weeks are always mapped out in my assignment notebook; the full semester reliably mapped out in my mind.
At the end of every summer, the oldest girls at my overnight camp would give closing speeches. “I can’t believe I’m standing up here,” they’d say through tears. “I have no idea where the time went.” Years later, I gave my own speech, just as sad but not nearly as confused as those who’d come before me; I’d been bracing myself for the end of my camper era since I was 9 and first heard the warnings of blindsiding passage of time.
I began preparing for my grandfather’s death about 15 years before it occurred, giving him a hug and searing a possibly last image of his smiling face into my memory every time I left his house, just in case something bad happened in the interim. He passed away just last year. About that same time, I lost my childhood dog, Pickles. I’d started hugging him tighter and videoing him extensively, in case he got put down, about four years before he actually left us as well.
My way of thinking sounds morbid as it emerges on the page, but I believe my subconscious has kind intentions; I can’t be as hurt by something I’m prepared for than by something I don’t see coming. While the bigger losses, endings and changes in my life have been heartbreaking, my forward-thinking nature has certainly eliminated some of the shock value. For better or for worse, by the time events occur in real time, I’ve already processed them most of the way.
This is why graduation presents a problem, a real caveat to my process-before-experiencing operating style: How can I anticipate and prepare for something when I have no idea what’s coming?
The packing up of my senior-year room, the dwindling days spent laughing on our porch in the Ann Arbor spring sun, that one day in the Big House with too many parents and reservations and hellish traffic and heightened emotions — I’ve got that chunk under control. Processing underway, if not nearly finished. But it’s the part that follows, the blurry details of my life outside of Ann Arbor, dangling around the horizon and missing their cue to emerge clearer, that I am unable to prepare for.
I’ve been trying for a while. In my sophomore-year screenwriting class, I elected to write about a soul-searching postgrad who meets a fortune teller able to see a vision illuminating exactly where the main character is supposed to end up in life. At the time, I regarded this story as nothing more than a fun rom-com concept for my assignment. I titled it “Crystal Clear” and wrote “My Way” by Frank Sinatra into the script. It’s one of my favorite songs, as it reminds me of my grandfather. (Frank is his favorite; the two beings are essentially synonymous in my mind.) Plus, the song’s theme was supposed to mirror my main character’s big lesson: If you stay true to yourself, you’ll live a life without regret.
“Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all, and I stood tall
And did it my way
…
Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way”
Frank Sinatra, “My Way”
Four semesters later, after working through the same script for various rewrite classes, I realize that my sophomore self, in her sorority-house-living, date-party-going “golden age” of her college experience, had been anticipating, preprocessing the phase of life that’s since closed in from the horizon. Now, as I finalize my script, about to graduate, I wish I was my main character. I wish I could digest her learning lesson. Even more, I wish I had a fortune teller to illuminate the future and tell me where to go from here.
After Ann Arbor, I don’t know whom I’ll live with or where I’ll call home. All year, I’ve been struggling to determine which side of the country — New York or Los Angeles — fits me best. Whether “My Way” means shipping out to Hollywood to get my foot in any writer’s room door that opens or seizing the opportunities the Big Apple has to offer in the way of friends, journalism and more.
If not a fortune teller, I wish I had a clear, grandiose dream, like Sinatra, that I wanted to chase come hell or high water, to see “through without exemption.” I don’t. To my disappointment, I’m unable to map out a “Crystal Clear” life trajectory that clarifies the next four years and beyond in the way I historically rely on and desire.
I’ve been searching hard for clues, nonetheless. My mother believes that a penny on the ground is a sign of a loved one communicating from beyond with the person who happens upon it. Thus, now that my grandfather has passed away, a penny found on the sidewalk is Pops saying hello. Naturally, I keep my eyes wide, anticipating coins. As I walk the Ann Arbor streets, consumed in thought, trying to think hard enough that coal combusts into diamond and my future illuminates out of thin air, I keep my head down. Maybe Pops has answers for me. I want him to so badly that I often pick up half-buried, rancid pennies that a normal person would never touch, let alone identify as a penny.
But, despite my growing coin collection, I haven’t garnered any wisdom. In fact, the fogginess surrounding my future now infiltrates my present. I’m usually one to know myself; I have a solid record of being either surefire in or out of plans. I know when a trip with my friends to Nashville sounds like a time and a half and when a day spent in the Law Library or a weekend at home in Chicago with family is exactly what I desire.
As a second-semester senior, with one foot in and one foot out of my college experience, I’m frequently second guessing. One foot is attached to a girl who wants to savor all the going-out nights, laugh the hardest in morning debriefs and squeeze next to as many people on the couch during dreary weeknights as possible. The other foot is attached to someone who has zero desire to bear the cold in exchange for a night at the same college bar, who wants to cook meals at home, get in bed early and put full effort into the final draft of her screenplay.
Perhaps the latter someone is the person my 7-year-old self was preparing to become. I feel lame and sad that she’s upon me, and so I teeter between both personas, sometimes pushing myself to squeeze the remaining juice from a nectarine once bursting with four hopeful college years, and other nights surrendering to the comfort of my bed. Either way, lately, I wonder if I’m choosing the right path or if I should be taking a different approach.
My second-guessing temporarily evaporated, though, the other night. My friends had solidified a tri-legged plan to pregame with friends before going to a St. Patty’s-themed bar night, possibly culminating in a later run to the holiday’s frat parties. The night was shaping up to be a real top-notch success story. Before I could participate, I had to attend a speaker event for my major. I thought I’d do my makeup before the event so I could smoothly transition from the speaker to the overlapping pregame. Maybe I’d leave the seminar early. But sitting in the auditorium, listening with pure enthrallment to the director of “The Big Bang Theory,” “Wizards of Waverly Place” and “Hannah Montana” talk about his career, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere — except for Michigan Creamery, which my legs carried me toward without any doubt or wavering once the event was over. A TV speaker followed by a scoop of cookie dough ice cream: no trajectory had ever been more crystal clear or enticing.
I entered Michigan Creamery reeling about the details of Mark Cendrowski’s time on comedy sets, abundantly content in my aloneness, excited about my potential future in his industry and about the dessert that was soon to be mine. As I settled into line and the jingle of the door subsided, a new song began playing over the parlor’s speakers. I looked up, in immediate recognition of the slow hum above me. Sinatra’s gentle voice lulled over the shop.
I knew, as I stared up at the speakers and “My Way” drifted down, that it was Pops. He was saying hi, happy that I was getting ice cream, for sure — something he consumed and tried to share, without fail, after every meal. But he was also rewarding my night, done “My Way.” “Atta girl,” he might’ve been saying.
I chuckled to myself as I waited for my turn: I scanned for pennies with my head pointed at the ground, in search of answers or Pop’s wisdom, yet Sinatra now detailed his regretless past from no greater opposite of the ground than the ceiling above me. I think my grandfather was telling me to pick my head up. He didn’t have any grand answers for me, and he’d say hi when he wanted, in whatever way he pleased: No need to go searching.
Originally, it felt stupid to congratulate myself for my splendid little night. But then, maybe it wasn’t — knowing and doing what felt right to me, if only in the smallest of capacities, was a step in the right direction and perhaps the new normal.
Because, as much as I’ve fought against accepting it, there’s no anticipating my post-graduate version of life. It’s too blurry, too massive of a blank abyss to process before experiencing. I don’t know my way in terms of anything — my career, desired places to live, et cetera, and I won’t for a while. Instead, there may just be smaller pieces that illuminate in front of my face, not on the cue of a changing semester, but just exactly when they please. Amid the blurriness, I’ll stumble upon more pennies, more versions of TV directors followed by ice cream runs. If I latch on to those — those little wins, those sure-fire, not-a-question choices and experiences where I have no doubt in my mind this feels ideal — then, I can only hope, the rest will unfold; they’ll add up to a bigger picture. No fortune teller, no answer key provided, I’ll have done it “My Way.”
So now, I don’t cry because I’ve lost a tooth, but because I fear I’ve reached the moment my 7-year-old self began preparing for all those years ago. I’m not shocked it’s arrived — I have her to thank for that. But I’m sad and scared of the unknown before me. I know there’s no sense in racking my brain for answers because there are none, and there’s no sense in searching for pennies, because I’ll happen upon a shiny one when I’m meant to. So I’ll keep my chin up and march into the blurry abyss, because, well, that’s all I can do. Sinatra told me so. So did Pops. “Stick to your guns, and you’ll figure it out,” he’d say. My chin is up, I’m standing tall. It’s time to face the music.
Statement Contributor and former Statement Managing Editor Lilly Dickman can be reached at ldickman@umich.edu.