Sliding doors

“I haven’t been doing the work,” my mentee admitted to me over dinner.

Confused, I asked him what work. “Figuring out what to do with the rest of my life,” he answered.

I kept waiting for him to laugh and admit the joke. But he didn’t, it was meant as a serious confession to me. Keep in mind he’d just graduated from undergrad the month before.

“Oh sweetie,” I assured him, “you don’t need to know. And even if you did know, it is subject to change.” Then we had a conversation about the beauty of being 22. “Twenty-two is an age when the whole world is filled with possibilities and even mistakes are viewed as lessons rather than cataclysmic problems or personal defects you can’t come back from,” I told him.

Not like 42 for example. 

At 22, people backpack across Southeast Asia, WWOOF through Europe, or try out three different careers in 18 months. Sometimes they do all three!

“The beauty of your 20s,” I assured him, “is that you can explore everything and not be boxed in to a path.”

Technically, that freedom is everyone’s all the time. We can all have the right to shake things up. I met a friend when we were both journalists 20 years ago, a few years after we met she went to law school and clerked for a year. 

Then she quit. Law school be damned.

She’d always had a side hustle selling vintage clothing online and after getting a taste of the lawyer life she realized it wasn’t for her and she’d rather sell clothes. So she’s building an empire. She decided she wanted a different life than the one she’d been building for herself, a life different from the one everyone expected her to inhabit. I talked to her the other day…she doesn’t regret the change.

Still, most people, the older we get the less likely we are to shift. It feels scarier somehow even though we are equipped with more experience and often more money. It feels like there is more to lose; and in some ways there is.

In midlife, the sliding doors options for life are starker, the sacrifices more pronounced. For some there are spouses and children, for others there are career ladders with so many more steps to climb. And there is always money…and time. Usually too little of both. 

Fresh out of undergrad, before I joined the Peace Corps, I temped at a big maritime company. They liked me and my work and offered me a full time position- salary and benefits. My mother couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to take that solid paying gig instead of gallivanting all over Africa.

I didn’t hesitate; that sliding door option was easy for me to ignore. I didn’t want to be the communications person at some company I’d never heard of. I didn’t know enough about a 401k nor did I give a moment’s thought to retirement. Plus, I was certain that if I got offered one profitable gig at 23 then surely I’d be offered others later; so why not gallivant? And if I’m really being honest…I was sure that I was destined for bigger or at least more interesting things. 

I wasn’t wrong. I traveled quite a bit, worked in a zigzag rather than a linear career trajectory. And then, at some point in adulthood it finally felt urgent to make more substantial decisions. Choices that connected to each other. Plans that included retirement.

So I straightened my zigzagging line. 

There were a few hiccups. A few side excursions where life threw curve-balls I had to adapt to; but I finally hunkered down and started building my adult life. My “adult life”. The one my mentee thinks he’s supposed to have figured out at 22, the one I’m still  uncertain about 20 years his senior. 

The sliding doors don’t go away. Sometimes we learn to ignore them but they remain, tempting or terrifying depending on your perspective. 

About two years ago I began to lose my taste for the door I’d walked through. The “adulting” door with pre-tax deductions, life insurance, and reasonable paths to better paying jobs with fancier titles.

Now I stand with my toes peeking over the side of the unknown and I wonder what the hell I’m doing. Wondering if this sliding door is the stop I should be making. Wouldn’t accepting the next career marker that demonstrates my expertise in my field be the wiser move? 

Too late for uncertainty, I finally gave notice and selected another door to try out.

Noodles from heaven...or Xian

I whined. Just a little. But I definitely whined. 

We dove in before the picture...couldn't wait!

Yuji wanted to try a new noodle spot and I had my mouth set on Indian (my last bout with Indian was less than stellar and I was intent on scrubbing the experience from my palate).

Somehow, in mid-whine, I had a change of heart. I love food and he was so excited. Why the heck not. 

Except we pulled up into a strip mall and the sign read, “OKNoodle”.

The strip mall part was fine. Living in Oakland for a while I still haven’t forgotten all the mom and pop shops the line the strip malls of Houston. Cookie cutter layout and often cheap interior but who cares if the food is good. So I took a deep breath and walked in ahead of Yuji.

By the time he’d followed me in my head was turned toward him and I reached out to thump him on the arm with a huge grin on my face. The place looked promising. Almost full to capacity with people immersed in their plates, the waiter and maybe owner waived us to a far corner and handed us menus. 

I skimmed with little registering. 

While there are English translations under the Chinese, the descriptions weren’t always clear enough to paint a picture of what to expect. Meanwhile, Yuji studied the menu, reading random kanji that overlap with Japanese and cross-referencing his selections with some site he’d found online- the site I think that led us to this place to begin with. 

When the waiter finally returned, tea unasked for but provided none the less, Yuji pointed at a picture on his phone instead of the menu. The man nodded and disappeared. 

the gluten up close

We gazed at steaming bowls and plates as they paraded past. Thick flat noodles on silver platters the size of hubcaps, long round noodles submerged in soup bobbing next to meat and veggies. We tried to reconcile each dish with a description we read but that proved futile, so instead we just leered hungrily as we waited for our meal. 

It didn’t take long.

We hadn’t realized our noodles were cold. 

My mind floated immediately to Mul Naengmyun (물냉면), a Korean cold noodle soup that I adore after a few hours at a Korean spa- emerging parched and hot, the broth cools and the Asian pear’s sweetness snaps in my mouth so pleasurably. 

This wasn’t Mul Naengmyun.

This was Liang Pita, my new love.

These sweet and sour cucumbers were amazing

While Mul Naengmyun is smooth in its flavor execution and the noodles thing and chewy, Liang Pita is a bit of a roller-coaster. There is a tinge of sweet, a lot of sour, a touch of heat. The chili oil floats on top of what I presume was vinegar, cilantro, and whatever heaven tastes like, and coats the wide flat noodles. And a spongy item we mistook for a type of tofu that, when I asked, was explained as “a Chinese thing made from starch.” A little research and I figured out that spongy thing that has deep crannies and nooks to soak up the sauce is called mianjin, homemade Chinese wheat gluten. 

The plate, smaller than I’d imagined since we’d been watching platters bigger than my face grace tables for a while, disappointed me. Yuji and I politely scooped noodles and sauce into our individual bowls, reaching back to pick up tiny pieces of torn noodle or strips of cucumber. And then it was gone.

Yuji asked the waiter for a bowl of rice to soak up the reaming sauce, a desire I could relate to even as I urged him not to ask for it.

“This is a noodle house,” the waiter looked a cross between amused and offended. As he turned to walk away I assured him, “That’s what I told him!”

Still, we had piece of cucumber so Yuji, ever determined to sop up whatever remained, swirled them about and delicately swept them, dripping with sauce, into his waiting mouth.

Yuji, ever the good sport and unending appetite!

Back in the car, barely able to restrain ourselves from ordering another bowl to take with us, I googled the name of the dish to no avail. It because a circular game of clicking on OK Noodle’s website, the only relevant entry for Liang Pita. And then I realized the trick was removing the “ita” from Pita. The common name is Liang Pi, or cold skin noodles, and they originate from Xian.

Now the world opens up for me. I found a myriad of recipes, variations in ingredients and execution. And my  hope is to try making them myself because…in a few weeks I won’t be here anymore and I won’t have a place to run down to when I’m in the mood to taste a little bit of heaven.

Of course, I plan to dip my toes back into China. I wasn’t planning to stick to the eastern coast but for a good bowl of noodles I might be persuaded to go inland!

I quit!

In the middle of life. A crisis. Some would call it a midlife crisis. By the purest of definitions it was

that. Someone marching through life, maybe skating, maybe barely sliding by…but getting to some mid-point and maybe expecting something. Anything. Anything more than what they brought with them.

I find myself at that point. The general milestones of career checked off the list. Kind of. The more personal ones, less so but not abhorrently so. It isn’t a matter of “if only…” except, “if only I knew what the point is.” 

I don’t.

Years ago my head went through the back window of a car. There are skid marks where skin clung to pavement and the constant irritating reminder that I was lucky. Lucky to only have 33 stitches. Lucky to have been taken to a hospital- no matter how scary the hospital was. Lucky to not lose my eye.

“You’ll shoot your eye out kid.”

And in the aftermath of that accident I was sick on antiretroviral medications because there was too much uncertainty about where the needles that sewed me up came from. I lost 15 pounds in a month, a patch of hair larger than my hand, and the symmetry of my face that I’d taken for granted.

I vaguely remember a change in perspective on the world. But at 25 my perspective was relatively new so how much change could there have been.

Now, in my 40s, I question my perspective and contemplate crafting a new one. 

The thing no one really tells you about bucking convention is that it pays to be brilliant at something if you take that route. Straying from the well-worn path is amazing when you have vision and purpose. I have frustration and disinterest- not really things you can forge a path with. 

Still, I stand with my toes peeking over the edge of some unknown decision. Some path not yet taken, and keep taunting myself. “Do it. Do it. Do it.” I dare myself. I say it out loud to people so their knowledge of my plans might shame me, inadvertently into making it happen. 

I texted my sister a few weeks ago, “if I leave the country I’ll have to ditch my phone”. “If?!” she responded, “when” she corrected me. And I need that because otherwise the lack of an alternate plan to my current distress falls away as easily as tentative brunch plans. A last minute cancellation with the promise of a reschedule that may never come. 

Fear and laziness are at the core of so many lives that wanted more but didn’t manage to get it. I suffer more from the laziness than the fear – though the fear of retirement and unemployment and returning to exactly this same feeling do persist. But the laziness. 

Just write. Just plan. Just imagine.

It is paralyzing.

Maybe it is fear masquerading as laziness. Fear donning a different face to keep me off balance and uncertain. Whatever it is…today I ignored it. Today I walked into my boss’s office and gave notice of my resignation.

Come January I’ll fold my uncertainty and angst into the battered travel pack I’ve had since 2001. The one that has been with me to every country I’ve visited except Japan. I do not know what this jump into the unknown will offer up…only that the fear that grips me is reason enough to jump.