I'm not sure I've ever belonged anywhere. I grew up as an only child mingling with older adults, taking my index finger and middle finger and placing them over the edge of a cocktail glass to be able to lift it at age four to join in the conversation with people who were schmoozing with my parents over dinner at our house. I went out with my grandmother for lunch in Cleveland and asked what she thought of Lillian Hellman's , and she received quizzical and funny glances followed by fits of laughter as it became obvious that the question was emanating from a four-year-old.
But when playing with other children my age, that sense of belonging, that ease, was far less accessible. I wasn't chosen first—or even second or third—for the squads in gym class. Every year, in anticipation of my birthday as a child and as a teenager, my mom would ask me which friends I wanted to invite to a party.
Rather than be excited about planning it with her, I was filled with nervous dread knowing that my friends weren't friends with each other, which served to remind me that there was no single group to which I belonged. And there was Shaker Heights, Ohio, the city in which I grew up, a seemingly beautiful and gilded community where I learned that belonging was fraught. My parents weren't interested in joining a country club, but all around me I was discovering that many of my friends' parents had.
When I was little and my friend, Betsy, invited me to Oakwood Country Club to have lunch, guzzle A.
