Borrowing Sunglasses

On friendship, swinging bridges, and need

My little sister and I stood in a line at a waterpark behind another pair of sisters a few years older than we were. This older sister, maybe ten or eleven, cool in her two-piece, sparked a candle of desire in me. I wanted her for myself. I wanted her arm gingerly around me, nudging me to move up in the line. I wanted her to show me what to do.

I often felt timid facing the gushing flow of the world, and as the oldest child, I learned to override my anxiety in order to be an example for my sisters and cousins. I wanted this big sister to hold me and my fear. The line kept moving. She started to climb the metal steps. I tried to find something to say, some way to interact. Soon rushing water would woosh her down the slide, and I’d be on my own, making sure my little sister made it to the top.

//

The year Meghann and I met, I was twenty-two years old, a senior in college, working part-time for a photography studio in Durham, North Carolina. I’d traveled to Tanzania, East Africa the previous two summers through a documentary studies class called Literacy Through Photography and was planning to return to Tanzania for six weeks after graduation. Meghann didn’t know any of this when she called the photo studio.

Meghann founded The Foundation For Tomorrow (TFFT), an education focused NGO based in Tanzania, three years prior. There was a fundraising bike-ride coming up, and she wanted a photographer to document the ride and also photograph TFFT’s work. My boss at the studio shared that one of her associates already had plans to be in Tanzania during the time Meghann needed. The photography assignment was an obvious yes for me. I saw serendipity, a good cause, and the chance to see Tanzania from new vantage points. And then I met Meghann.

Meghann drove stick-shift on Tanzania’s dusty roads. One evening we rode back to Arusha together after an afternoon photographing the TFFT Scholars at school. Traffic swerved. Small buses packed with people and chickens darted between lanes and stopped often. Motorbikes towed the road’s center dividing line. Top-heavy cargo loads swayed. Goats meandered. The sun sunk behind Mt. Meru, casting a golden glow.

Our conversation paused into comfortable stillness. The motor rattled and wind buffeted through the open windows. Meghann’s scarf fluttered up to her aviators.

She turned to me and said, “You know the feeling you got as a kid riding your bike? The feeling that you were flying, invincible, like anything was possible?” I knew. I knew exactly. Our eyes met. She continued, “That’s the feeling I get when I’m here.”

My friends were preparing to start law school and med school. Some were buying suits to work at investment banks or consulting firms. Others were in classrooms for Teach For America’s summer institute. My plan was to work at the photography studio and then to build my own photography business. I wanted to do work I loved with people I loved. I wanted to think big with creative freedom. I wanted to give something back to the world.

Meghann spoke Swahili with confidence, cursed unapologetically, and flirted with her laugh. The volume of her hair defied gravity, bouncing up before falling down in a pony-tail so thick she could barely wrap her hand around it. She cared about kids and educational equity. She drove herself where she was going.

There I was, in line at the waterpark. I wanted Meghann to teach me to climb. I wanted her to dare me to jump. I wanted her to catch me.

//

Even in elementary school, I was always looking out for the new kid and scanning to see who was left out. Maybe growing up as the oldest child trained me to suss out other people’s needs. Maybe my wiring attuned me. Maybe my own preferences, which felt different from what the world readily gave, made me especially interested in detecting the hidden and unique longings of others. Maybe the affirmation I received for compassion and generosity reinforced my ability. Maybe granting wishes became a way I secured belonging. Maybe all of the above coalesced.

As I sharpened my ability to meet others’ desires, I also learned to hide my own. I morphed from a kindergartener, dilated wide open, screaming and flailing, into a zipped up third grader on a mission to meet the needs of everyone around me while publicly denying any need of my own. Oh, whatever you want is fine with me. I’m happy with anything.

My needs didn’t disappear, though, of course they didn’t. Nor did they go unmet. The key to my strategic, subconscious approach was to find people who met my unspoken needs for me, without me having to ask.

//

I sat in the dark of my apartment in Arusha, journaling my desire to work for TFFT. Meghann was the only U.S. employee. Maybe she could use more hands in the Charlotte office? Someone made of sticky glue to help her hold everything together?

Around Thanksgiving, Meghann came to Durham, and we went to dinner. I’d returned to the photo studio a few months prior, and TFFT still had a hold on my heart. At dinner, I delivered my proposition to come work for TFFT. I’d keep doing photo sessions on the side. My parents would bridge my financial needs for a time. I didn’t need anything from Meghann, not even pay, except the willingness to bring me aboard. By the end of the meal, it was settled. Six months later, I moved to Charlotte.

Early in our time working together, Meghann and I attended TedX Charlotte. One presentation involved outer space. Meghann leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I want to go there.”

I stared back with blank curiosity, “Where?”

“Space.”

//

The blurred background of a portrait is called bokeh, and during this time, everything except Meghann and TFFT was bokeh. I called my youngest sister and told her I was so excited for work the next day I couldn’t fall asleep at night.

I lived with one of my best friends from college and her Teach For America friends. Our house was crowded with bodies, and the sink was full of crusty dishes. Two of the five tenants were dating each other, and they showered together in the downstairs bathroom and then shimmied upstairs, dripping, wrapped in towels. I averted my eyes to offer the privacy I would want, a form of shyness stemming from my very selective comfort with being bare. This house was not the sanctuary I needed in a home, but working for TFFT was.

Meghann and I flew around the U.S. for fundraising events, donor meetings, and speaking engagements. I wrote our speeches, and we rehearsed in our hotel room. We led 10-day, 400-mile fundraising mountain bike rides from Mt. Kilimanjaro to the Indian Ocean. We knew each other’s parents and danced at each other’s weddings. We launched a capital campaign for a learning centre that would expand TFFT’s reach. We carpooled to and from the Charlotte office every day for years, until my husband, Marc, and I moved to Chicago to be near my family. Then we worked remotely and flew to each other monthly, staying at each other’s homes. 

I couldn’t help but wonder what were the odds? That Meghann called the one photo studio where I worked? That I was already connected to the exact far-off place she wanted a photographer to go? That I had flights for the very dates she needed? That she and her ponytail charged me in such a specific way? That I was, in her words, the yin to her yang?

Really, what were the odds?

//

Watching The Sound of Music as a kid, I looked up to Maria, but the role I most coveted was little Gretl, the baby of the family. The scene where the children perform “So Long, Farewell” on the stairs in front of a crowd of party guests ignited an acute longing in me. Gretl curls up, and Liesl, the oldest sibling, comes back down the steps to lift her. I wanted a chance to be the little one.

I think, in different ways, this is why Meghann and I clicked. We each had a unique way of carrying the other. Meghann is a force of strength. She says I showed her the quiet power of listening, reflection, and handwritten notes. I was a soft space where she could fall apart if she needed. Meghann wrapped her bold energy around me like a cape of permission to bring out my own bigness and bravery. She showed me the fire of authenticity, of standing out, of belonging to yourself.

//

After seven years, a seed of change sprouted within me. TFFT had grown from a toddler into a preteen, and this stage was largely about systems and scale. I felt that TFFT and I were no longer meeting each other’s needs.

It was 2017, and the 45th President of the United States was revealing and emboldening a foundation of injustice that has always been America’s truth. I needed to direct my focus to the city where I physically lived. I wanted to write. The same gut feeling that led me to TFFT, led me away.

Leaving was like sticking my fingers in an electrical socket and then walking around fried and numb. Those months were closer to a drawn-out breakup than a departure from a job, mostly because my work with TFFT had never been just a job. Meghann and I both tried hard to do something we didn’t know how to do. Near the end, I went to a yoga class, and the teacher said something about exiting a pose gracefully. I struggled, landing with a thud. My last day was October 10, 2017, two days before my thirtieth birthday. Meghann and I didn’t speak that day.

//

I once trapped my youngest sister in a kayak because I felt tension between us and needed to talk. I crave resolution and understanding. A hug.

Meghann and I withstood the frigid winter after my departure, and we walked back towards each other. Our friendship grew in a new way over six more years of phone calls and texts, visits, and cards. We went on a road trip. We held each other’s babies. She ran another Chicago marathon; I cheered. When Meghann felt the nudge to leave her role as Executive Director, after 15 years, she called me from her car. I never trapped her in a kayak, but we surely hugged.

//

This past spring, I received an email invitation to the dedication ceremony for TFFT’s Learning Centre in Tanzania. The structure we’d dreamed of and fundraised for was standing. I called Meghann from spring break vacation, walking on the beach. My feet avoided sharp shells as I told Meghann I wanted to make the trip but that I wanted to come separate from the dedication. What if we went back together in the fall with our daughters? Salt water washed my toes.

Spring became summer, and another invitation arrived in my mailbox, a paper wedding invitation for a dear friend we’d made through TFFT. “Let’s have Marc and Jason stay home with the kids and be each other’s dates,” Meghann suggested. Another fall trip was set in motion. Late September, packing for the wedding, I texted Meghann photos of dress options.

My stride stretched long at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, carrying me through the airport’s automatic doors. The heel of my black loafers clicked on the pavement. Familiar air filled my lungs. Meghann’s car approached. I spread my arms and then clasped my hands to my heart and bent at the waist and the knees, curling into a ball of glee. She popped the trunk. 

“Heeeeey!” she beamed, looking back from the driver seat before stepping out of the car. We rocked back and forth as we hugged curbside. The scene tasted like nostalgia. From the passenger seat, I kept squeezing her wrist. Here we were. Together again, heading into a wedding weekend in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

I’d been looking forward to this time together and to our friend’s wedding. I’d also been thinking about this big-sister longing that I feel, this desire for someone to swoop in and be in charge. I don’t want to be the passenger in just anyone’s car. I need to trust the driver’s motives and taste. Until recently, I relied on my chosen people to draw my needs and desires out of me.

No wonder I felt anxious. I was either dependent on mind readers or on my stamina to suffocate my needs until I was home again. Marc was my lifeboat. I always told him that I was hungry and for what, but after becoming a mother, my public act felt like holding my breath under water. Now I’m building trust to speak up for myself more widely, and that is setting me free.

The sun bounced off Meghann’s dashboard, which was one enormous, arced sheet of glass. I squinted because I’d left my sunglasses at home. Old Me would have determined that squinting was the price to pay for my mistake. Old Me would have let the anxiety of burdening my friend with an ask overshadow the triviality of the ask itself. Old Me would have waited for my friend to notice that I didn’t have sunglasses and offer up a solution. I was ready to try something new.

In my head, I rehearsed, I forgot my sunglasses, so I either need to buy new ones or borrow a pair from you.

If a friend forgot their sunglasses, I would offer them the sunglasses off my face. But thrusting a request out into the open feels uncomfortably bold to me. There’s rarely a segue; you just have to break in. Then the statement hangs. Clunky and vulnerable.

We chatted about my flight, how much Charlotte’s airport has grown, and the weekend ahead. I stood at the top of the waterslide looking down. My throat constricted. Finally, I let go.

“I forgot my sunglasses,” I said, trying hard to come across casual and no-big-deal, “so I either need to buy new ones or borrow a pair from you.”

Wheeeeeee, went my heart into a trust fall.

//

Years ago, when Marc and I lived in our second floor apartment perched above Wells Street in Old Town, Chicago, I called Maggie, my youngest sister. She was in graduate school for social work. I don’t remember the year or the season. I just remember sitting in the brown leather chair, the chair that felt so adult when Marc and I bought it, talking to Maggie about my inability to go to my friends for help.

I observed aloud that I tended to move through things on my own. I’d read, journal, listen, ponder, pray. Once I’d sorted through whatever it was, I’d bring an explanation to my people. I’d report what I’d walked through and where I’d arrived, but I didn’t often bring the mess of the unknown. Even when I acknowledged the unknown, I hardly ever said, “Can you help me?”

Why is that, I asked Maggie. Am I just so self assured I don’t need input? Or am I so terrified to be vulnerable that I recoil?

Instead of answering me, Maggie reflected back something like, “Huh, you’re right. You don’t really ask for help. I guess I just figured you didn’t ask me because I’m your little sister. I always come to you. I assumed you went to other people.”

And then it occurred to me: I entered most relationships as Big Sister. I created space for people to bring me their feelings. I sat and listened and vibrated in the intimacy, all while keeping myself boxed up. I sometimes informed someone that I was going through something, but I didn’t often invite them into that something with me. Even with the people I chose as my stand-in big sisters, my MO was to shower them in my care. The gift I allowed them to give me was the osmosis of their energy, their direction, their planning. Even though I wanted a big sister, I didn’t know how to be a little sister. I Big Sister-ed my way through life.

Motherhood shook that. I have been working on saying, “no,” when I mean no, letting people who want to help know what would actually feel most helpful, and sharing what I want. I’ve sat out of board games and have gone to bed early on family trips. I have claimed time alone to read, write, and recharge. Recently, I asked my friend Meghann for a pair of sunglasses.

//

We rounded a bend of 485, and Meghann’s response was automatic. Of course I could borrow a pair of sunglasses. The sun warmed my cheeks. Of course I could borrow a pair of sunglasses. The ease and care reverberated through me.

At her house, she handed over the pair that she deemed would look best on me. I slid the round, tortoiseshell sunglasses on and smiled at myself in the mirror. They were better than my own.

Meghann led me to her closet, which is akin to the wardrobe department on a movie set. Even though I had packed my own dresses, she started pulling options. Hangers clinked as she rifled through fabric of every color.

“This would be amazing on you.”

“Oooh you have to try this. Trust me. It’s great on.”

“Wait, belt it. The belt makes it.”

She packed the pile of winners into a hanging bag. The next day, she drove us into the mountains. My ears popped in the passenger seat. An hour and a half into the drive, she asked if the EDM music pulsing through the speakers was too much for me. I admitted it absolutely was. She toned down the playlist. In our hotel room, we sat under the covers and passed Meghann’s phone back and forth, writing a shared rehearsal dinner toast in the notes app. We practiced as we got dressed and exchanged our familiar we’ve-got-this look of confidence.

The morning of the wedding, Meghann found us a coffee shop and a national park. She’d packed me workout clothes and sneakers in case I hadn’t factored in a hike, which I definitely hadn't. We climbed Grandfather Mountain and crossed the Mile High Swinging Bridge. Wind came at us, strong. We stretched our arms out and asked fellow hikers to take our picture. Circumstances no longer tethered us. We still chose each other.

Back at the hotel, Meghann played getting-ready music from the speaker she brought. She tossed me a supplement that’s supposed to help prevent hangovers. My eyes closed as she did my makeup. I stripped off my bra, adhered sticky boobs, and slid on my slate gray sheath dress with a loose tie in the front. 

“It’s beautiful,” she said, “but you’ve worn it before. Wouldn’t it be more fun to wear something new?”

The other contender, one of her dresses, was short and fitted and red. I put it on and looked in the mirror, smoothing the fabric, twisting at the waist, and popping up onto the balls of my bare feet. Then I put my own dress back on.

“See, this feels more distinguished,” I said.

“Is distinguished what you’re going for?”

Something in this question lasered straight to the core of my longing. I want the people I trust to playfully challenge me to take a risk, to tell me I can be more than distinguished, to make me feel safe being something other than safe.

“Wear whatever makes you feel most comfortable,” she said, “but the red looks amazing.”

The red it was. My smile shined all night. We danced and danced and danced.

Meghann, our Maggie, and me, sweaty from the dance floor, in different pairs of sunglasses.

//

At home, all I kept telling Marc was how much fun the weekend was. Usually weekend trips, especially social weekend trips, leave me curled up in the fetal position to recharge.

“I just had So. Much. Fun,” I told Marc over and over, shocked at how much fun I had, delighted by how fun I felt.

“Think about the energy it takes trying to not need anything,” my therapist told me. “You let go of control. You let Meghann take care of you, and you had so much more energy to just be.”