"We have no record of you in our system"

I just went to check on what the hell happened to my Michigan tax return, or more importantly, my Michigan tax refund. I sent it on April 15 like the good citizen I'm not (except on an honorary basis, thanks to Sarah, and for tax purposes, thanks to the IRS) but of course I sent it from Germany, so it may still be on a boat somewhere (maybe Kate can go and check at Plymoth harbour). Come on, people, some of us have Visa bills to pay!

The online check-your-tax-return-status thingie told me it had no record of me or my return in the system. This would lend credence to my "my tax return is stuck on the Mayflower (or was it the Santa Maria, the Nina and the Pinta)"-hypothesis. Of course I'm trying not to freak out over whether I will receive my colonial-sounding homestead-credit (which I apparently qualify for even though I didn't build a log-cabin last year, and I also did not make any profit on selling my covered wagon) since, as the system informs me, there are a number of reasons for the absence of a record.

But it did remind me of the time when I was 15 and went to get my first identity card (in Germany this is seen as a rite of passage rather than a big-brother-is-watching-you-type of invasion of your privacy) and we realized that there were two of me. Or, rather, there is one of me and two of my identities. You see, I was born a bastard (though my parents did get hitched a few months later in true 1970s fashion, including red leather cover-alls and big fluffy fur coats: the former on my mother and the latter on my father). At the time, illegitimate children in Germany received their mother's last (maiden) name, and so for the first 3 months of my life, I was Vanessa Katharina Angela Koch. When my parents tied the knot (presumably, in the leash on the big fluffly chow-chow that was their witness), my last name changed to Will to remove the mark of illegitimacy upon my forehead.

Except somehow the record of my first identity never got erased, and must still be available. This may be good in times of trouble (the bureaucratic equivalent of keepings canned food waaaay past its expiration date in your basement, like my grandmother), though I always thought that the ruse would be too easy to uncover. I mean, how many people with my exact three given names and birthdate/place, but different last names can there be?

But really what I wonder about is what happened to the trajectory, so to speak, of that person in that file? Kinda like when in the incredibly inane book I just read, one of the protagonists expounded on the incredibly inane theory that when another person dies they may take your place among the dead so that you can continue to live (even though you were already destined to die, on the looks of it). When Vanessa Will took the place of Vanessa Koch, at least on paper, what possibilities were cut short for both of them? What would have happened to Vanessa Koch that hasn't and won't happen to Vanessa Will?

CLASSIFIEDS

Happy Birthday to Erika on the big 2-8!

Good luck and god speed to Sonia on her very mysterious confession to her brother!

Earth to Jerry: Are you out there? Anywhere? Stop peeing and start writing your blog, man!

Winds of change

I went to my 10-year-high school reunion last night. If you'd forgotten that it's been 10 years since you graduated from high school and are saying "Holy shit" right now, I did the same thing just recently. I was really debating whether I should go, but not for the usual "Everyone else is married and has 2.3 children and a high-paying job and has a successful macrame business on the side" jitters (which I had for my 5-year-college reunion last year).

*Drumroll for the big confession*

You see, contrary to my sweet and charitable constitution (ha!), I was a real ass to some people in high school (or shortly thereafter), and I guess I'm still feeling guilty, so I didn't want to risk a confrontation. I supposed that would actually be good since it'd help me process the guilt, but then again, I'm not that big a glutton for punishment.

Luckily, the organizers had sent around a list of attendees beforehand, and I felt pretty safe. I mean, I had moments were I thought that maybe this was a conspiracy and that exactly those people asked to be kept off the list so they could be sure I could be there, but then I realized that I was being crazy.

So I went.

And it was pretty fun. We had this hole-in-the-wall Asian restaurant to ourselves and people just talked. No big to-do. At some point, the guy who was my very first boyfriend (who turns out to be very nice -isn't it funny how you have to re-acquaint yourself with people?) asked me what had been the biggest surprise during the reunion, and I realized there had been no surprises. Everyone was pretty much the same, down to their haircuts (more or less), just 10 years later.

Don't get me wrong. There were interesting stories, like the girl whose once-shy-and-skinny little brother studied to be a tax advisor and now runs a go-go dancing school that is famous all over Europe. Some people had kids, many are getting married (a whole blog post onto itself).

But overall, I find the lack of change both amusing and scary. I suppose our crazy mandatory-ancient-languages-cum-privileged-atmosphere school experience had already molded us so unmistakably when we graduated after 9 years together, that our trajectories were set. Then again, you really do wish that in 10 years, people would at least experience the excitement of a new haircut and veer drastically off the career path they had listed in the yearbook when we graduated.

When I told my cousin, who's graduating from the same school this summer, about the reunion, her eyes almost fell out of her head over the fact that it's been 10 years, and she wanted to know all the things that happen in 10 years. I guess a lot, and not very much at all.

CLASSIFIEDS

Congrats to my cousin Kathi who recently had her first public singing try-outs and is now well on her way to becoming a big-time opera singer...but go lightly on the Puccini for now, honey. (NB: Holy crap, I thought out family was as musical as a wheel of Swiss cheese)

Welcome home to Erika and Aaron after their big adventure in Nepal! I can't believe one of us is done with the fieldwork thing -way to go!

Happy housewarming to Sonia in her new apt in the capital of bivalency!

Congrats to Sarah and Ed on choosing a tastefully cute wedding announcement (I'm sure that's an achievement given the choices out there). Can't wait to see the rest of the wedding!

Back to the grind

Well, it looks like the proposed philosophical streak has disappeared without a trace. I think I may need to be under duress in order to have deep, existential thoughts. I guess that’s good news for those around me –I don’t know about you, but I tend to find deep and existential people annoying most of the time.

Anyway, I had a great time in Michigan (except for the freak snowstorm but of course that’s MI for you) and was happy to discover that I still felt at home there. It’s amazing how little things can change in 6 months, except for some commercial developments that are taking Washtenaw Avenue from appearing like a piece of 1960’s rural Romania transplanted in the Midwest to seeming kind of hip in that Ann Arbor pinhead way, anchored by the gargantuan Whole Foods (man, I had some vegan chocolate mousse again –YUM!). It was also nice to hang around the department of Anthropology and not have to avoid anyone because I still owed them a paper from 3 years ago. But best of all I got to experience the incredible kindness and generosity of my friends –that was really the best part of things being more or less unchanged.

Unfortunately, any relaxing effect of this vacation wore off pretty much instantaneously when I returned to my mother in the hospital for her routine round of chemo and the much needed, but still overwhelming discovery of the source of the problems with her leg of the past couple of months. After much back-and-forth, the doctors settled on diagnosing two metastases in her spine, one of which is destroying a major nerve leading down the leg. This sort of destroyed the previous good news of no new metastasis in her brain. She’s getting 5 rounds of radiation to the lumbar area of her spine, and will try the second of two available chemotherapies.

There are all kinds of things about the diagnostic process she had to go through to even get to this point which piss me off royally*, but mainly I feel completely thrown back to the drawing board in all aspects of my life. All my plans for returning to Scotland for a while seem totally shot, and I’ve started battling time again, guesstimating how much time she may have left and wondering whether now is the point when I should try to find someone in Wyoming to show her how to drive a 16-wheeler, which is one of her dreams, before it’s too late.

I guess if you know someone who drives a 16-wheel-truck in Wyoming (Montana would do too), please let me know!

* follow this link if you want to know the dirty details http://mpip.org/otbb/bbindex.html, post "Can I just vent?" by Ness