Have some fun and keep on dreamin, 90s child
crying into soup and signing off for the new year
Back in the small town I call home, you can be driving around on any given day and, to an audience of overgrown fields and domestic car dealerships, find yourself singing “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow. The song is never not playing on at least one local radio station, and what kind of person turns it off? The second she says this is LA in that cloying, Vanna-White-unveiling-the-new-car voice, my wood-paneled watering hole with $5 Yuengling pitchers might as well be Chateau Marmont.
I’ve had “All I Wanna Do” stuck in my head for weeks. And I couldn’t play it because I’m never home alone. If you don’t catch that song playing in the car, or in any inoffensive, working class American retailer (Marshall’s, Ace Hardware), you can only listen to it on full blast, home alone. You offer the gods your worst shimmy in your rattiest sweatpants and grab a seltzer from the fridge, maybe make some popcorn. La dolce vita.
The other evening, Andrew went out with a friend, so I had the house to myself. I sat scrolling and before I knew it, an entire hour had passed. He was only supposed to be gone for three or four hours. I freaked out about squandering the solitude, flew off the couch, and got down to business. “All I Wanna Do” came and went. I did the shimmy. I got the seltzer. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Then it hit me: I was starving.
Everyone knows the ultimate solo dinner is grilled cheese and tomato soup. Even if you didn’t actively know it, you’re definitely nodding your head now. It reminds you of those first times you were ever allowed to stay home alone, when you had to fend for yourself for dinner, and you only knew how/could only be trusted to make one thing. Campbell’s. Kraft Singles.
All food whims are honored in this house; I didn’t think twice. Ripping through the cupboards and the lazy Susan, I was hell-bent on finding the tomato soup I just knew we had. Well I was wrong, and just as I was about to run to Rite Aid for a can, a fresh, unopened container of cherry tomatoes caught my eye. These are the moments we do-it-yourselfers live for, when the thing we forgot we had becomes an agent of joy and discovery.
And so I preheated the oven to 425, grabbed a bottle of olive oil, and roasted the cherry tomatoes with whatever melange of garlic and onions I could find. The house smelled special, like an untraceable memory. A string-lit corner of Rome that I never walked. When I blended it all together, my heart stopped. It was perfectly orange, creamy without cream. The best tomato soup I’d ever had in my life, bar none. And that’s saying a lot, because there is a tiny cafe in Philly that I go to just for the tomato soup. I dipped my grilled cheese and took a bite and started crying. Crying! To be someone who cries over tomato soup! Indeed, I was alone and indeed, I was alive. Startlingly, clumsily, thankfully, alive.
Solitude is a gracious host. She sees your impossible workdays, your late night unravelings. And all the while, she’s in the kitchen, cooking up the happy accidents that make you believe in yourself again.
That wasn’t the first time I’d cried that day. I was on an easy 50-minute run when “Change” by Blind Melon came on and Shannon Hoon wailed, and when your deepest thoughts are broken, keep on dreamin’ boy, ‘cause when you stop dreamin’, it’s time to die. I saw the faces of my dead loved ones and wondered, did they stop dreaming? It was there, too, that I was held by solitude, plumbing the depths of mortality along the Schuylkill River. Wondering when love lost and love found might equalize so I can start fresh at zero, and if I’ll know it when it happens. (Maybe I’m not supposed to.)
Any true child of the 90s can recognize the fundamental sameness of “All I Wanna Do” and “Change.” Sure, they champion opposing philosophies. Reject professional conventions to drink at the bar with strangers, or wake up to the ways you’re self-sabotaging (which could, of course, include the former). But both tracks come from the same part of the heart that understands life as a series of very simple choices. Choices that you will make alone, in solitude, and hopefully find kindred spirits along the way.
I’m not in the business of telling you what to do with your 2024. That’ll come to you in an otherwise colorless moment, like while you’re on hold with customer service—their narcotic music, the hymn of your funeral—and you’re trying not to get angry, trying to be a better person. Something like that. But if you need me, I’ll be running. I’ll be cooking. I’m gonna have some fun and I’m gonna keep on dreaming. I’m getting married and I might even try to get pregnant if I’m feeling crazy. Can’t wait to tell you all about it.
Signing off with peace and love. Until next year.
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This was beautiful! Happy new year!
2024 is going to be huge for you. Can’t wait to cheer you on from afar!