welcome to my notebook!
the meaning of life, and other things
Hii, thanks for reading! If you like being here, click the ❤️ button to send some love (and let me know I’m not writing into The Void). This is a community, so please share any thoughts in the comments, and if you’d like to contribute as a guest, I’d be thrilled to hear your ideas.
Hello, friends!
Thank you for clicking and taking the time to read — or skim, you do you — this first-ever newsletter.
You may be wondering what, exactly, it will be about. The truth? I don’t totally know. Probably life, love, growing up, and the beautiful mess that is the human experience. It will also contain travel tips and stories, book and music recommendations, and other pieces of doodles, photos, poems, and essays.
The common thread of this newsletter is that it will be written from my heart. (Cheesy, I know.) As you read, I hope you’ll be able to feel my love — and enthusiasm and silliness and warmth — through the screen.
I’m calling it girlhood to sum up my past (almost) 25 years of existing, but also to acknowledge the never-ending process that is growing up: that we are all figuring it out, all the time. It helps when we share. In sharing our thoughts, feelings, and stories — whether they’re silly or profound — we can live more connected, creative, and meaningful lives.
So here goes nothing! I’ll start from the beginning.
From the very beginning: I was conceived during my parents’ backpacking trip in the Himalayas. They were hippies. And at 22 years old, they were young. (When I turned 22, laugh-crying and drunk with my friends, I thought: holy shit.)
When I was born, I lucked out with not only two loving parents, but also a close-knit village of their loving, unruly, barefoot, bohemian college friends who helped raise me. They would take me on morning walks as my parents slept, or paint my nails and give me surf lessons.
We lived in Berkeley for two years, until the reality of fatherhood nudged my dad to set aside his rockstar dreams and pursue a slightly more practical one: a P.H.d. in Environmental Studies at UCLA. And so we moved to Los Angeles.
My childhood there was filled with perennially blue skies and lots of traffic. My mom and I used to take trips to the farmers’ market and Venice Library, leaving with stacks of laminated books. My friends and I would play cops and robbers, shrieking as the sun went down and we crept around the backyard, barely muffling peels of laughter when we found each other crouched behind a sofa or stuffed in a closet. On weekends, we braved the traffic on the 405 to visit my grandparents in the valley. My Savta and I would eat ice cream and people-watch at the Calabasas mall.
I loved being five years old. I loved wearing Mary Janes and skirts (but never turtlenecks!). I loved eating poppyseed muffins and Costco pizza. I loved watching Dragon Tales until my dad dropped me off at preschool, usually dressed in a bright blue leotard, usually backwards, with the tags poking out. Sometimes I’d add a pink tutu for flair. At preschool, I had *very* important things to do, like look after my dolls and rummage through bins of plastic dinosaurs.
One day when I came home from school, my parents sat me down on the couch and told me I was going to be a big sister. They pulled out a black-and-white photograph of an ultrasound, and I bursted with excitement.
That excitement slightly dampened when my mom’s belly rounded so much that I no longer fit on her lap. At bedtime, I began sitting next to her on the couch, head tucked on her tummy, one ear pressed close, listening for a heartbeat.
Two weeks before my sister was due, our house burned down. It was the middle of a weekday.
The wires behind our TV crossed, sparked, and the next thing we knew our green little bungalow — the one where I drew on the walls and piled my stuffed animals in a heap on the bed — became a smoldering pile of ashes.
When orange flames engulfed the walls and doors, our neighbors helped our dog, Jed, escape from a window. My parents were at work and I was at school. My mom picked me up early to break the news. Buckling into my car seat, I chirped, “Is David still coming over for dinner?”
“No, honey.”
“Oh. How come?”
“Well…because our house burned down.”
I stared out the window for a moment, quietly absorbing the unexpected turn of events. Finally, I reasoned, “Okay. Well…can we at least get a soda? As a treat?”
And we did.
We spent a few nights at my grandparents’ before moving into an apartment in Marina Del Rey. I loved that apartment: I used to cartwheel down the carpeted hallways, and ride elevators with shiny buttons down to school.
My sister was born on August 7, 2003. I love her. Her name is Lila Phoenix Claire Marish Roehr. Phoenix for the mythical creature born from ashes, and Claire because I really liked that name when I was five years old.
In kindergarten I fell in love with Dan. That was the beginning of the end. I was convinced I would marry him one day, but so were three of my friends, so we agreed to a sister-wives situation, which seemed to work for everyone.
Dan was the first of a bajillion crushes. I liked boys. I always liked boys. They made me giggle. They did stupid things, like throw tiny pieces of paper at me, but I knew it meant we were definitely secretly in love.
In addition to boys, I also liked reading. Once I learned to read, I would sit quietly for hours, immersed in made-up worlds that existed in a sacred place between the page and my imagination. I grew up on Nancy Drew and Percy Jackson and Harry Potter; my first heartbreak arrived when, on my eleventh birthday, I ran to check the mailbox and instead of a wax-sealed letter from The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, found only dusty cobwebs and my parents’ latest Netflix CD.
When I was twelve, we moved from Los Angeles back to Berkeley. This meant I changed schools enough times to ease into being the New Girl: we moved just after my first year of middle school. Then a different middle school. Then a new high school. Then college. (Ahhh!)
I’ve never been very good at staying in place. In college, I attended three different universities in four years. Since graduating, I’ve lived in three different houses and have spent most of the past two years hopping around overseas, staying in friends’ apartments and Airbnbs and hostels in Thailand and Portugal and Costa Rica. I’m currently writing from Vietnam (xin chào)!
Through all of this — growing up and middle school and braces and first loves and heartbreak and first jobs and moves abroad and hard times and haircuts — I have written. (Ever since I was that five-year-old in a tutu!) Writing lets me map out inner and outer worlds. It helps me make sense of everything. This newsletter is a creative endeavor — but it’s also a sort of portal window between my heart and soul any lovely person who chooses to read it. (If that’s you, THANK YOU! I’m so happy you are here.)
All my love,
Eden
Love this and you!