Saturday, November 29, 2008

The Catcher in the Rye

It's my last night at home over Thanksgiving break, and my first night back from Washington.

It was a great trip. I was dreading it for the most part but it turned out alright and we all had a good time and saw a lot of awesome stuff (D.C. really is a pretty amazing city).

There's nothing like knowing I have to go back in a few hours to make me feel like I never want to leave, and there is certainly nothing like reuniting with all of my best friends only to have them ripped away from me yet again. Scattered to the winds, all leading different lives.

I've never experienced anything like this before. I just want to hold them and never let them go and fight life away and fight terrible things away and fight grief and pain away so they never have to feel any of it. I've known grief and pain all my life. I've also known so much joy and so much happiness that you can't even imagine. I know if I hold them and never let them go, they won't experience the pain, but they also won't experience the joy. Which is why I let go when I hug them goodbye, and they go off into the world and they go off into the lives they are creating for themselves and they are happy. And sometimes there is pain and sometimes there is struggle, but the best we can do as friends is to be there for one and other. I hope I've been there for them enough, and I hope they know that no matter what, I am ALWAYS here for them. I will never forget about the people who loved me first.

Driving through town tonight I watched saw lawn chairs splayed out in driveways. Old men who smoke too much, who watch the years go by and listen to the trains die away in the distance. Young people who dream and know and do, who watch the summers fade to falls fade to winters and burst into springs. The lawn chairs never leave, nor do the old men, but the young people, like the train songs, fade into the distance and become a part of the town's memory. We have the distinct pleasure of being living memories, we dreamers and thinkers and doers. It is a great honour and a great burden.

I miss the summer breezes and the way the weeping cherry branches feel against pale cheeks and how the air is perfumed with the smell of azaeleas. I miss bare feet sweeping along the gravelly driveway, and bare heads sitting beneath the warm sun. I can't wait to sit in the lawn chairs again, like the old days, and talk nothing and eat strawberries and blackberries and blueberries. It's like time is stuck there for an hour or two, the town's memory hangs there and we're all young again and we're all great again and we will all achieve greatness and our hopes and our dreams are limitless.

A very happy late Thanksgiving to all and a very merry beginning to your holiday season.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Fried Green Tomatoes

The trip to DC was basically uneventful. I drove home yesterday (it takes about two hours from school to home) and then we drove all the way back up today to Framingham to take the Logan Express in to Logan. The flight was very short and very uneventful. We were right on the wing so I had to lean really far back into the person behind me or get on top of the person in front of me in order to look out the window (which I did, cause I have no shame).

I finally finished Fried Green Tomatoes while at the airport waiting to leave this evening. I don't get much time for leisure reading but when I have the opportunity I take full advantage of it.

My God, what a good book. I feel like I've never read anything like it before. I feel like my heart hasn't ached so badly for something to not be over in a very long time. I remember the same ache when I finished The Last Battle in the sixth grade and I cried for a week, not because all of the kids on those beautiful pages I had known and loved for an entire summer had all died in a train crash after seven books (I'm refering to The Chronicles of Narnia in case you are unfamiliar) but because it was over. The magic was over. Sure I can (and do) reread the Narnia stories, but there is something different about reading them as a child, and there is something absent when you reread a story. The mystery is dead, you turn a page and it is the same as the last time you turned it.

The point is, I am very achey right now after having finished Fried Green Tomatoes. It might not have been a good idea for me to read it around Thanksgiving, either, because now I am not only aching at the fact that it is over, but I severely miss the old days.

I miss the old neighbourhood, with Grampa Fred and Mary and the tomatoes that grew bright red along the chain link fence, with Miss Bubba and Turbo who would greet me every day after school. Miss Bubba would take me into her arms and hold me like I was her own little girl, and Turbo the little Sheltie would run across the street and shepherd me onto the sidewalk like a good babysitter. Grampa Fred got cancer when I was five. I still remember being ushered into the house to say goodbye to the man who had loved me like a grandfather and seeing all the machines helping to keep him alive for a little while longer. Mary died after we left the old neighbourhood. Daddy always told me she was alive and well, but after he died I found out he had only been lieing to me, to keep me from being too upset. Miss Bubba always smoked like a chimney. I remember bringing her one of my favourite stuffed animals and telling her she could have it, if only she would stop smoking. She took the toy and told me she would do her best. I went back a few years ago to visit her and saw the black and white dalmatian stuffed animal on the back of her couch, and the lingering smell of decades of smoke perfumed the air. But I think she quit, I have to think she quit. I love her so much still, and I know she loved the little red haired girl who would bring her beautiful leaves and art projects from school. I remember running into Mary and Grampa Fred's house, completely uninvited but completely welcome, in search of the peanuts I knew they always had.

My parents told me of the time that a transformer exploded right outside the house and they couldn't get out of the front gate, so they handed me (I was an infant) over the fence to Grampa Fred and Mary to keep me safe. They were the closed people I had to true grandparents, besides my maternal grandmother who has lost all her faculties at this point in time.

I miss Thanksgiving with my family in the old days. Mom and Dad and I would drive up to New Hampshire to my aunt's house and the whole family would be there. My four aunts and their husbands and my uncle and his wife, my eleven cousins and their spouses and their children, and my grandmother if she could make it. There was a kids table, where I sat until I was twelve years old, and then Thanksgiving stopped being a family tradition and I never got to sit with the adults (SUPER upset about that aspect of this whole shenanigan). And then the family drifted apart, and now we are lucky if we see each other sporadically in the span of a year. We all live up and down the East Coast, from New Hampshire and Vermont to North Carolina, Virgina and Florida.

I just want to hold my Mom and Dad's hands and walk into the warm mud room of my aunts house, being greeted by warm smiles and hugs and kisses that make your cheeks raw and red, hugs and kisses that you dread until they are long gone and then you want nothing more in the world than to be hugged and kissed by your family and your neighbors who you can never see again. I'm not a little girl anymore, I can't take my parents in each hand and walk into the bright kitchen and ask my aunt for a glass of tap water and head down the hill to the trampoline with my cousins. I can't get out of the little red Horizon and watch Turbo scamper across the street and greet me with a wagging tail. I can only see those things in my memory, a memory that I cherish so much these days.

I love and miss you all, my family and long lost friends. You made me who I am today, all of you. Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Craziness

I feel very awkward about this whole situation that I've found myself in, and it's difficult to express exactly how awkward it is so bear with me.

So I slept over her dorm Thursday-Friday, and then my best friend (her roommate) and my roommate both found out about it. She went home for the weekend, only to come back Saturday evening because she wanted to see me, and I ended up staying over there again Saturday-Sunday. She slept over here last night. My roommate doesn't really care because she knows I like girls and she was my roommate when I was in a relationship (a super messy and terrible relationship) last semester. My best friend just thinks it is hilarious, because her roommate is "straight." Which is what I don't get. How can you call yourself straight when you're sleeping with a chick and you are making it known that you are sleeping with a chick.

Be straight, or bisexual, or gay, or whatever you are or whatever you want to be or whatever you have to be. I wish there was a way to go through that "confusion" phase without dragging people who know who they are and what they want into the confusion.

She's acting like this is a huge issue, like it's a big deal, which it is for her but I feel like most people who are aware of this situation have forgotten that there are two people here: she and I. I know it's a big deal for her because she's never been in a situation like this before, and it might not seem like a big deal for me because everybody on this campus knows I'm terribly out and terribly proud, but I'd just like to know what's going on with everything. I feel very out of the loop.

I'm not even sure how I feel about her anymore. I obviously like her or else I wouldn't spend time with her and stuff, and she is a really good friend of mine. She took me to my first Ani concert the Sunday before last, and we went to Tegan and Sara together (with her roommate/my best friend and my best guy friend), she visited me in Connecticut even though she lives in East Jesus Nowhere, MA, my friends are her friends and her friends are my friends. She is a great friend and I wouldn't trade her for the world, and I especially don't want her to get hurt (and I myself would prefer to not be hurt, also). I'm not even sure if I want to be in a relationship with anyone, or that I am ready to be "the first" for someone (much less a great friend of mine).

Everything is very out of control right now. This "thing" has taken on a life of its own. Thanksgiving break should be good, everybody can just calm down for a few days.