About a month ago, I managed to somehow knock over an entire mug of hot peppermint tea onto my open laptop. I let out a cry for help and Aleksa quickly grabbed some towels. But it was no use. My screen faded into what the tech savvy dub “the black screen of death.” It is the point of no return … the point, in which, I knew me and my blog were about to experience some turbulence.
I did what any rational person does when faced with a problem: I went to Reddit. And when Reddit, Quora and Apple Forums from 2011 failed to deliver me an answer, I turned to Aleksa. He gave me one of those “what are we going to do with you?” looks. Which can be comforting and humorous, but not when your pajama pants are soaked with tea.
“Well, why don’t you take it to the repair shop in our neighborhood?” he suggested soundly and rationally. But I waited three days — I was convinced that somehow, my laptop may turn back on. I set it upside down like a tent on the dining room table. I blew on it like a Nintendo cartridge. It didn’t turn back on.
Defeated, I finally brought it to a repair shop. They put some USB device into the port and showed me that my laptop still had life left. But they’d need to replace the motherboard. And it could take a while to get the part in the mail. (And it did. It took three weeks for that bloody part to arrive.)
It was a slow, boring, and frustrating experience. Mostly because everytime I called the repair shop, they didn’t know who I was. So I’d tell them my name and my number … and then they’d still not know. So then I’d have to remind them “I came in with the big hat?” because I wear a big hat in the summer. And that felt somewhat humiliating — not because I burn in the sun, but because I don’t know how I feel about being known for wearing a large hat.
They’d finally find my order number: they’d tell me that the motherboard never arrived, and there’s no tracking number, and they have no idea what’s going on. And this was my reality for three weeks.
I was actually fairly mad with myself. The school year ended mid-May, which meant I was finally free of creating lessons and grading essays. It meant I could frolic throughout my neighborhood … with my hat and my laptop. This was my time to stowaway in the coffee shops of the city and click-clack away on Word.
I know summer is the time of year where people lounge on the beach and grow zucchini in their yard. Point blank, I know summer is the favorite time of year for many people. But it’s always been my least favorite time of the year. Yeah, I’m not a big fan of the sun or warm weather (I’m as pale as they come) but it brings me back to the summers of my youth. Which always felt lonely and sad.
My parents went to work in the summers. Sometimes, I was dropped off at my great grandmother’s house. She had me grate pecorino romano cheese for what felt like hours. We would watch church on TV and I would always get bored and find myself eating whatever she had in the house, which was mostly overripe bananas since she was elderly and could never eat the bananas in time. I’d make myself sick on those bananas.
She didn’t live in a particularly safe neighborhood, so I didn’t have the option to go out and play. It was just me and her beige carpet; her wicker-giraffe planter next to the TV playing church service; the overripe bananas and smelly cheese.
When I was a little older, there were fun days when Lolly (my great grandma’s daughter … my grandma) would make plans. She’d take me and my brother to lunch and then the public library. That was my ideal day — taking out a stack of books from the library. I loved to read, and moreover, I loved to write my own stories. Lolly would buy me a few spiral notebooks from the dollar store and I would fill them cover to cover. The summer going into fourth grade, I wrote a story about two cousins who discover they have magical powers. And the summer going into fifth grade, I wrote all about the struggles of being a fourth grade girl in my “tell-all” memoir.
Overshadowing all the fun, though, were the very real anxieties I had during childhood. One of which was watching out for my little brother who has Type 1 Diabetes. As some of you reading this blog may know, America experienced a pretty epic recession in 2008 — it was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Money was tight and babysitting is expensive … especially when one of your children has a chronic illness.
So the responsibility fell onto me, the older sister. There was a level-headedness I was expected to maintain at all times — an acute awareness of his health. I learned how to give meal boluses and corrections on his insulin pump. I learned how to take his blood sugar on a glucose monitor. I don’t want to sound dramatic, but the reality was that his life was in my hands.
If you’re reading this and think this is a lot for a child, you’re right. It was a lot. I know we don’t like to hear “it was a different time” but it sort of was a different time. Research and awareness on Type 1 Diabetes has made leaps and bounds since the early 2000s. There was one time at school when the principal called me down to the office because the nurse was having trouble with my brother’s insulin pump. And they had me correct it. I was nine.
There was another time at school when there was an assembly to raise awareness on diabetes and they asked me and my brother to lead a Q&A. This was all before 2010, by the way. We answered questions and talked about my brother’s diagnosis. But I can still remember this moment with odd clarity … this moment where I am twirling the black, rubber wire of the microphone in front of the assembly of students … and thinking to myself, “I’m so sad.”
I know now that there are people who went through similar experiences — people who have a family member with an illness, people who took on mature roles as a child to help out their families. But I met those people in college. Not in third, fourth, or fifth grade.
Anyway, this is all to say that summer has always been complicated for me. In my mind, it’s linked to a steady baseline of anxiety and sadness and escapism through writing. And without access to my digital journals on my laptop, the anxiety and sadness really took over.
I’ve had so many worries. Rational and irrational. And I’ve experienced some sadness, too. The summer without my laptop is a lot like the summer without my hat: a loss in identity. Who am I without either of those key ingredients?!
But now that I have my laptop back, things are starting to fall into place again. I have an up and coming blog, Bridezilla, coming soon. And I’m traveling to Belgrade this summer, so you can count on new commentary there, too.
I guess what I want to say, reader, is that escapism is only as good as your grip on reality. And if spilling peppermint tea on your laptop is going to make you revisit the last twenty-five years of your life, then it’s either time to question everything or take another trip to Serbia.
Or both.
That American Girl
That American Girl 
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