My next participant is an immensely talented fellow substacker (subscribe to Grandma Training!) (just realized that this interviewee has been revealed but it is worth it for the plug) and former bookstore employee, which is where we met! We went to the same middle school, and lived in the same neighborhood for pretty much our entire childhoods, but didn’t meet until we both got hired at a local bookstore. The rest is history, as they like to say.
We spent the first 10-15 seconds of the interview laughing about something (unclear) and then began our talk, which lasted about forty minutes. This interviewee is a very active sleeper, and invested in a weighted blanket to “smash her like an anvil.” Top sheets always seemed to strangle her, so she now sleeps on top of a fitted sheet, and under a comforter. She is content with this life.
The first word she thought of was green. Possibly because it was one syllable? We were eating gummy worms while talking, so I sort of thought it would be worm, but she’s way too creative for such an obvious answer. She is currently watching The Bear, which is different for her, as she hasn’t felt like she has had a show for a while, and isn’t usually someone who consistently sticks to one show. As of lately, she has been struck with the need to watch The Bear, as it seems everyone is watching it. When she’s out in the world, she can return to her room and open her laptop, which has become a device meant for fun rather than just work. Thanks to Jeremy Allen White, the way she looks at her computer has changed. Her dad compared Jeremy Allen White to her grandnana, saying they had the same eyes, and her mom agreed, saying not only did they have the same eyes but the same face. She seems to be a nepo baby in disguise…
She has just started reading “Gift From the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, first published in 1955. She has learned a lot from this woman, who goes to a cottage to be by herself for several weeks, and imparts a lot of wisdom.
She is happy to be back home, on break from school at UC Berkeley. In her college life, the idea of playing basketball (not actually playing) has been exciting. Her roommates and her were all going through a sort of funk and hard time, and one by one started watching basketball highlights independently. They all made a basketball playlist and tried to InstaCart a basketball (unsuccessful). Her roommate got them all a ball, and they all played, and it was beautiful. The first time they tried to play, they spent longer finding the court than playing. Her roommate and her embarked on another journey to the court, but she says there was a sort of Great British Baking Show tent over the court, and they got scared and decided it wasn’t their moment to play. She says she has never been very into watching sports, but watching basketball felt kind of mindless and since it isn’t intuitive for her, she has to think very hard if she wants to understand what is happening. She has also been eating frozen blueberries and honey with yogurt, as well as Vitamin C tablets, which are the best things she eats. She wakes up earlier than all of her roommates, so can’t open the windows. Now that she’s home, she can throw open the curtains and air out the room right when she wakes up.
She says she loved growing up in Sacramento, and didn’t realize until she went to other places how much of an anomaly and how rare it is to be here. “We moved here in 2010, and then we moved again, but we have always been revolving around this park. Every place in this park has some memory attached to it.”
She lived in Rhode Island before moving to Sacramento, but doesn’t quite remember because she was five when they left. She learned to love running at this park (we are sitting in the park while talking), and some of her favorite runs have been here.
She talks about having a fraught relationship with her Girl Scout troop leader’s daughter, and having to carpool to elementary school with her, arguing all the time, and quitting the debate team because of her. After a long period of seeing each other almost every day and going to each other's houses for Girl Scouts, they decided to bike to Old Sac on a Saturday at 9 in the morning. Almost every week since, they have done the same, or something similar to that. She loves to see Sacramento through a tourist’s eyes.
She talks about liking Berkeley, but not loving it more than her life in Sacramento. She loves the comfort of being here. She talks about the weird aspects of living in a college town surrounded by people who all are your age. You never see any children, and children are so wise! They are smart, and have investigative ways. We are so withered and jaded now, she says. One of her first memories in this park was when her family came here right after they first moved, and she was wearing a little striped knit dress. She was swinging around a pole, and proceeded to fall into some goose poop.
Her favorite thing at college right now is her philosophy class. She says her professor was born to be a professor and really cares about what students have to say, and if someone has a question, she will always make an effort to answer articulately. The class is called individual morality and social justice, so they talk about what people owe to each other, and what we can do to live morally, asking how we are obligated to one another. There is a paper she enjoyed called “Happiness and Meaning” by Susan Wolf, which is about the elements of a good life, Wolf’s catch phrase being “active engagement in projects of worth.”
“If you’re a brain surgeon but you don’t really care about it, you’re doing meaningful work but you’re not happy. And if you’re picking blades of grass passionately, you’re not happy. It’s about being passionately engaged in something that is also helping the world,” she says.
She thinks being a professor would be really wonderful, because then you get to keep a finger on the pulse of young ideas, and stay young! She knows she wants to write in the future, and is also interested in urban planning, and the way we live in cities which seem detrimental to our health. She is also interested in researching public transportation. She plans on majoring in English and political science. She was doing a good amount of writing, but fell off. It is still incredibly evident, however, that she is deeply passionate about writing and literature.
At this point in our talk, she presented me with a gummy ring.
She talks about the concept of intergenerational housing and how intriguing it is, but reminds me this may just be her way of saying she wants to come home and move back in with her parents. She wants to live in nature in the future, but does not want to be a hermit. Ideally, she would have a nice house, but easy access to bodies of water and forest and all of the natural things. She can see herself staying in California because there are so many different climates here. Somewhere she can hang from a tree branch or plunge into the water, none of this gross city stuff! She also mentions how she has started taking cold showers in the mornings. She saw a girl say her dad takes cold showers and has never gotten sick, and since of course everyone should believe everything on the internet, she has been doing it for one whole week. I am happy to report that she has not gotten sick!
She would really like to go on a backpacking trip, and mentions the Pacific Crest Trail, knowing she wants to do more camping and outdoor stuff in general. She participated in a Belgian exchange program the summer before her senior year of high school. Her eighth grade teacher, who she loves and has taught her many life skills, her wife leads the program. Over spring break, Belgians come here, and over the summer, they go to Belgium. She says a lot of the Belgians were very boisterous and party-inclined, but her Belgian was the total antithesis of that, very polite, prim, and proper. The experience of being in Belgium was interesting because the neighborhood felt like it lacked character– all of the houses were similar, they all had the same sculpted bushes, and it was always cloudy. But, being with friends in a foreign place was special, and the day they all went to Paris was one of the best days she can remember. Somehow while they were in Paris, she got separated from her friends, and ended up hanging out with three guys she didn’t really know. They all went to lunch, and she got some beautiful strawberries she thinks about all of the time. Then, they gave her covid, and she had to quarantine forever in her Belgian prison. Regardless, she expresses much gratitude, as many people never get to go to those places, much less at such a young age.
She says she has some “micro regrets,” things she could have done or said differently, but more than being a regretful person, she is very nostalgic. She says all the time that she’s scared she’s not funny anymore. She told one of her closest friends this the other day, who reminded her she said the same thing every three months. She worries sometimes that she has lost her spark, that she peaked at 16. She no longer has freckles, which feels oddly emblematic to her, as if she has turned away from the sun. But, her hair is curly again, she is back in Sacramento, she found her old glasses, and things are looking up.
She is proud of the things she was able to do through Girl Scouts, as she received mentorship and care she never would have otherwise. Growing up with people so close to you, including her old nemesis who she made snickerdoodle cookies with this morning, is a uniquely special thing. She also participated in leading a mental health group, and was able to talk to people that way, too. She thinks the experience of being a very bookish kid was also formative, the way she always carried a book with her (and still tries to). She wants to read more, but feels like everyone says that, since you can’t really read too much.
The new word on her mind is barf. Maybe green barf from the green earlier on? One-syllable words are her savior today.
PS. Thank you for reading all the way to the end! I am grateful for each and every one of you and hope your weekend is restful, forgiving, and everything else you want it to be.
Love,
Let’s go backpacking on the PCT Brooke!! Loved getting to know you more here.
LOVED DOING THIS TIMES A MILLION!!!! You are an awesome interviewer and I just love talking to you 💖