a promise kept

When I was younger, my family took road trips across the country to visit relatives for vacations. I have only the barest recollection of the sandy-colored Volvo four-door we drove during my formative years. In 1992, it was blindsided by a car turning left against a red light and subsequently retired. Then we drove a cobalt blue Dodge Grand Caravan, the minivan in which I spent countless highway hours over the next nine years. It had gray fabric upholstery, tinted windows in the back that popped outwards instead of rolling down, and captain’s chairs in the second row for my little sister and me, special ordered so that the two of us would not be forced to share the same bench seat. It was a terrible car, a lemon.

A few moments of those thousands of miles covered stick out in my memory. I stop the tape in my walkman and lean forward to ask what’s wrong, why are we getting off the highway again, we just stopped for lunch; I take off my headphones and ask my dad why the car is going so slow; we open the windows, crank up the heat, and turn the fan to high in a vain attempt to keep the engine from overheating; I wake up and gaze at the dusk as we pull into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, Salina, Kansas. I wish I could describe the town, but all I remember of it is that Holiday Inn. It was nice: restaurant, pool, several holes of miniature golf in a skylit indoor courtyard that seemed impossibly large.

The Dodge had an AM/FM Radio with Cassette Player, but we were not a family who owned a lot of cassettes. In democratic fashion, we each had our turn choosing which tape to play on the car radio. My sister always chose her soundtrack to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, ordering the rest of us to sing the supporting roles while she sang Belle’s part in her best six-year-old soprano. I don’t really remember what my parents chose; maybe some Frank Sinatra for my dad, while my mom probably humored one or the other of us kids by picking one of our favorites. I always chose one of three tapes. There was an album of early Bruce Springsteen (before “Born to Run”), a mix tape made sometime in the 80s hand-labeled “Music from Miami Vice,” and Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” The first of these has stayed with me since those childhood drives, and the second will hopefully never be heard again. It took me until college to rediscover “Graceland.”

I played the album again recently. Even though I’d heard it a thousand times, I had never really listened to the third verse of “I know what I know”:

She moved so easily, all I could think of was sunlight.
I said, aren’t you the woman who was recently given the Fulbright?
She said, don’t I know you from the cinematographer’s party?
I said, who am I, to blow against the wind?

It was contemporary to my life. I too was recently given a Fulbright, and I don’t know how to talk about it.

* * *

Even the phrase “I got a Fulbright” is part of the problem. The verb, particularly. “I got” seems more accurate than “I won” and is free of the self-congratulatory overtones of “I earned” or “I was awarded.” The word seems to downplay the fellowship, normalizing my acceptance letter by implicit comparison with a lifetime of things got, most of them mundane like haircuts or a new t-shirt.

I want to be able to tell people without feeling guilty, without feeling like I’m bragging about it. Some of the friends I want to tell may well have applied for similar opportunities but were mailed differently-shaped and -weighted envelopes. I want to leave the bragging to my parents. I want to remove the inflection from my telling, keep pride out of my voice. And so I look down when I start to answer their questions about post-grad plans. I smile, but only if they smile first. I get excited, but only if their eyes show me warmth.

In college, achievements stay on résumés; they don’t venture into polite conversation. The accomplishments we share with each other are few and are supposed to be self-deprecating. The only person I want to make jealous is an ex-girlfriend who was uncomfortably competitive; I hope everyone else can just be happy because it’s good news, maybe excited for me if we’re close. I don’t get a choice, though. This Fulbright is part of my life, so I’m expected to talk about it without sounding like an asshole, and that takes practice. We live in a social environment where it still takes six drinks for a friend to admit he was his high school’s valedictorian. I think we’re sick of the competitiveness that accompanies achievement. We are people and that should be enough.

I watched “Adaptation” last week. Self-congratulatory intellectual screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is threatened by his crass brother’s interest in his profession—he wants to enroll in a three-day screenwriting seminar.

Charlie: Screenwriting seminars are bullshit.

Donald: In theory I agree with you. But this one is highly regarded within the Industry.

Charlie: Donald, don’t say “Industry.” …Those teachers are dangerous if your goal is to do something new… Writing is a journey into the unknown. It’s not building a model airplane…

Donald: McKee is a former Fulbright scholar. Are you a former Fulbright scholar, Charles?

And I’m watching a little bit of my life again. The strange rhetorical weight of having to justify having something I hoped for but never expected. The anxiety that I will do something tragically ordinary with an extraordinary opportunity.