Melody Platz

Finding My Wings

          I always wanted to travel.  Watching beautiful landscapes on TV as a kid, I nearly couldn’t breath.  I had to get to those places.  But how?

             I was a girl growing up in a trailer park in Girard, PA.  It was a big deal when my family once spent a few days in Cleveland.  Telling my family about how I was going to travel the world one day, they would smile and say, “Sure you will.”  No one, including me, could see how this dream could possibly come true.  I didn’t just want to go to Cleveland, I wanted to go everywhere.  And everywhere is expensive.

            My first real opportunity to travel came when I was in college.  I was a junior and the summer trip to Scotland caught my eye.  It was a lot of money, but the two-week adventure could count as credit towards my degree.  I was in a sort of an ecstatic agony.  Every blood cell in my body ached to go, but I couldn’t completely justify it.  I would be broke for a year if I went.

            I almost didn’t pick up an application for the trip.  I was still a girl who had to pay my tuition in small installments.  Even buying shampoo posed a hardship when I only had ten dollars a week to call my own.  Scotland seemed wildly impulsive and maybe a bit crazy.

            I found out about a small scholarship and hesitated.  Could I possibly win it? I scribbled out a messy essay on the travel department’s application and shoved it into the campus mail.  I was totally afraid, but, by taking the plunge, I became unreasonably happy.

            I can still feel the leap of adrenaline I had when I opened my acceptance letter.  I remember crying and laughing and being in awe.  I WOULD go to Scotland.  I would be broke.  I would celebrate and buy a kilt and order a passport and fly on a plane for the first time in my life.

            The trip was all I expected: weird and exhausting and new and pretty.  But, most of all, the trip was a symbol.  I could make my dreams come true.   Since that time, I have been to London, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C, Austin, Texas and Arizona.  I may not have gone everywhere yet, but I’m working on it.

Sharing the Questions

I’ve been reading Michael J. Fox’s new autobiography, “Always Looking Up.”  He talks, quite conversationally, about what it means to keep living a full life and seeing your situation as a gift, even with something as debilitating as Parkinson’s in your life.

It’s the right book for me now.  However happy I may seem, I struggle with late night questions like “what happens next” and “why do things have to be hard”.

I imagined everyone has some question that keeps them up at night.  How is my father feeling?  How much time should I really spend at work?  Was I rude to that guy on the elevator today?

I’ve heard people say they wish they had an off switch for their brain.  A long time ago, I found something of an off switch by putting my experiences in context with other people.  I’m not looking for people who have worse troubles.  Instead, I search for people who have meaningful things to say about what they’ve discovered and what pulled them through.  Then in the middle of the night when I’m so worried that my eyes won’t stay shut, I can think, “Well, Michael J. Fox thought like me once and this is what he said helped him.”

Reading Fox’s book is a rich experience, but one point hit me right away: The only thing he cannot choose is NOT to have Parkinson’s.  That’s similar to my own struggles.  How do I deal, in a healthy way, with realities I cannot change?

I’ve always been a big advocate of choosing your own attitude (preferably a positive one) but Fox is an especially powerful model for me.  He’s still funny.  He’s fighting for his cause when he could be in his pajamas.  His body may never feel “good” again, but he looks at his wife and children and thinks of himself as a lucky man.

Reading his book reminds me that I know I’m lucky too.  I’m grateful for the people in my life, this moment, and these words I get to share with you.

And of course, by writing this, I complete the circle.  Someone helped me, and maybe my words will aid somebody else.  Isn’t it a comfort how, by sharing our experiences, we can make those late night questions a little easier to put up with?

Olives and Individuals

What makes an individual? 

The smell of our cologne?  A social security number?  I think we are what makes us happy and how we spend our time.

There’s a room in my house that embodies who I am.  Recently, my boyfriend and I used it to create a gourmet treat.  We weighed out Kalamata olives (a half-pound) and felt giddy.  Our mission: to make Olive Tapenade.

Afterwards, I spent the whole week telling everyone about the taste.  It gives me such I high, the whole food making process.  Every time someone looks bored with my food stories, I think, “But cooking is so much a part of me.  I have to tell you about it.”

I didn’t have to fall in love with cooking.   My family counted spices as salt, ketchup, maybe pepper and if we were really living it up, a jar of fourteen-year-old onion powder.  That onion powder sat in a rarely used cabinet and I’m surprised it didn’t plot to kill us over the long months while we ignored it.

As I was opening a new tube of anchovy paste, I thought, “So why is cooking so important to me?”  It would be simple to say I love food.  But I love clothes and didn’t become an amateur tailor.

First, I like cooking shows: innocent, filled with personality and scientific.  Scientific?  Yeah, just try to fry some chicken without oil and you will see chemistry in action, burning the white off your bird. 

Second, cooking is so useful.  Whereas with crocheting, I figure I can only make so many gift sweaters, I can always find a reason to cook.  I mean, I’m always hungry. 

Third, cooking satisfies some of my wanderlust.  I can’t often get on a plane, but after a meal of raw tuna and salty edamame, I can almost taste Tokyo.

So when my boyfriend squeezed lemon into our food processor and I added two tablespoons of capers, I wasn’t just making an exotic spread for toast.  I was fulfilling some deep aspects of my personality.

I also got to eat Olive Tapenade on crusty rolls with goat cheese and ripe tomatoes.  Not a bad outlet for self-expression. 

Finally, my love of cooking allows me to spend a happy day in the kitchen with my guy: making memories, stocking our refrigerator and stuffing our faces.  And there’s not much more me than that.

Margo Takes Melody's Face

 

I took this picture to help with a Vlogbrothers project.   The book is Paper Towns by John Green.  The restaurant is Panera.  And that's me behind the book.  Don't I look sad?  At least I have a sandwich.

The Boy Who Would Be Me

From Melody:

            I’ve met my clone.  He’s an eighteen-year-old boy who reminds me of myself when I worked at MacDonald’s fifteen years ago.   I’ll call him Brian.  He works in one of those expensive delis that sell brownies the size of tablecloths. 

I go in there a lot.  Brian rang me up very pleasantly one day.  Then I said something.  I don’t know what.  One of my obscure references that I think everyone will find funny or at least good-natured.  Usually people just smile, nod or laugh.  Not Brian.  He said something just as quirky back to me.  Sweet quirky.  Smart.  He mentions astronomy and something philosophical in the same breath.  I have no doubt he’s thinking deeply and constantly.

            Brian has one of those adorable faces, easy to smile at.  I see him doing those tasks that fall to young adults: making salads, mopping the floor, and ringing up long lines of business men who are in a hurry.  I remember selecting tomatoes for my own batches of salads.  I used to stand in front of those long lines of businessmen and imagine impossible riches falling on my head, finally giving me a perfect life.

            It’s odd to see part of yourself repeated.  Every time I talk to him, he overflows with that positive desire to live a packed life.  I worry about him.  How long will Brian work for eight dollars an hour?  I stayed at MacDonald’s for two years, all that time wondering if I had what it takes to make something of myself.  The world seemed so big and I just didn’t know the rules.

            I’ve given Brian some advice, bugged him to use the resources at the library, and told him a few things about getting a job in the corporate world.  Talking to him feels like I’m mentoring my own eighteen-year-old self.

But Brian isn’t going to listen to much that I have to say.  I know I didn’t listen very well when people tried to help me.  Brian’s so busy: being alive, being ridiculous, thinking he can figure it all out on his own.  Part of me wants to protect him from all the stupid things he’s going to get himself into, and the other part of me stands in the line to his cash register and imagines the impossible riches that may fall on his head in his future.

Sister's Birthday - Poem for Emily

Sister's Birthday

Without her, I'd be lonely,
but that's not it only.
My sister is kind
and she has a great mind.
Yes, she looks a little like me.
We DO share a family tree.

On this day of her birth,
I wish her multitudes of mirth.
With loads of respect
and an urge to protect,
I hope that she knows,
my love for her only grows.

The Turban Incident

Sometimes I just do silly things, like wrap myself up in a turban.

Decorating and Organizing - Got the Bug

With material things, I'm naturally messy. I'm also bad at making a room look pristine and neat. Well, I caught the decorating bug from a Victorian magazine. They didn't believe in sparse. So I'm using the stuff I already have, rearranging a little space at a time, and turning my apartment into an oasis of Victorian inspired peace.

Bon Appetit! Julie & Julia

I loved Julie & Julia for three reasons:

1.  I like to cook.

2.  It's a happy story, but has no lesson to thump you in the head with.

3.  I'm a writer and the triumph of the Julie character made me both fill with incredible joy and wistful envy at the same time.

I am going to own it when it comes out on DVD.

Inappropriate Party Making - The Maid of Honor Plans a Shower

by Melody Platz

Excerpt:

"My best friend is getting married in July. Because I love her, I want her to have the best wedding shower in the history of the world.

The problem? She picked me to throw this party." 

Published on Associated Content. You can read the full article here.