A Couple of Things I've Wanted to Mention
Yesterday was a spontaneous day for me.
I slept in far too late. I woke up at two in the afternoon, and was disappointed not to have as much time with the house to myself as I wished. You see, only very recently have I begun to take full advantage of my fairly frequent hours of solitude in the family abode.
As it generally happens, I roll out of bed and descend the stairs with an attentive ear. If Padfoot is dozing in the ceiling window's sunbeam in the front hall, the chance is good that no one is home. Still, I check the kitchen, backyard, and sunroom for anyone's presence. Then I go to Conner's bedroom window to make sure the cars out front are gone. If all of these cases are so, then the party hour has come.
I go to the computer off Conner's room, and I pull up lyricsmode.com From this internet location, I can find most song lyrics and their accompanying music videos. I turn up the volume, push play,
And dance
And sing
And stomp
And raise a ruckus all on my own.
Yesterday I had only enough time for two songs (Shake It, and I played it twice), but today I had a three hour marathon, the likes of which I have not thrilled since Japanese karaoke marathons.
But it gets better.
Yesterday after my mom arrived home and cut short my jam sessions, I called Madz to see how her arm bone reconfiguration healing fun time had gone. I spoke with her for two minutes, in which time she told me she was fine and expressed her gratitude for the call, and then I talked with her mom for a half hour. It was a good conversation. Pleasant. Enjoyable. But I kept thinking, "Wow, we're still talking. This is the longest we've talked ever maybe. This is weird."
Call completed, I stood dumbfounded before my mother and explained to her what had just happened.
"Well, you're an adult now," she said. Which almost doesn't make sense, but does it. Because I feel the difference now. I understand that I can now have these kinds of encounters and that I need them as well. I'm no longer a mature-for-my-age teenager; now I'm an adult and will be interacting with other adults as such. Kind of intimidating, but I get it and know that this is what I must do.
So I've been watering a family friend of old's plants while she and her family were away, and we made plans for her to stop by and drop off my payment, with the unspoken understanding that she and my mom would catch up with each other for a while (they used to see much more of each other when their sons were best friends in grade school).
Before the thirty-minute phone call with Madz's mom, I had planned to ride the bike for an hour, but with only a little over an hour to shower and prepare for Mom's and my joint visitor, I skipped the bike. Good thing, too, because I had maybe fifteen minutes of free time before said visitor arrived six minutes ahead of planned time. So we all three--she, my mom, and I--sat down at the table and proceeded to chat for an hour and a half. At some points I zoned out, usually musing, again, on the meaning of being an adult. I never joined their prolonged mother-to-mother chats before, and it was okay then. I could go about my preteen activities with merely a "Hello, Mrs. H*****" to cover me and maintain the necessary politeness. But if I were to have done this yesterday, it would not have covered me and would have actually dismantled the careful courtesy I had until then constructed.
So I sat with them, and I joined in the conversation, and they listened to me (which speaks volumes), and I was one of them.
Once our guest had departed, I decided to go for a walk. I asked Morgan if he would like to go, but despite my wheedling, he declined. So I set out on my own with my iPod, thinking, "A few laps around the neighborhood will be nice."
But I reached one end of it and thought, "A few laps in the park would be even nicer."
So I set off for the park.
But as I approached it, I changed my mind again. "The Greenbelt. The Greenbelt."
So I walked through the park to the opposite side, crossed the street, went up the hill and along the road until I reached the trail. And I began to walk it.
Along the way cyclists encountered me and I encountered fellow walkers, so I intermittently hummed to the tunes on my iPod. But past the DairyQueen and under the bridge and down some hundred feet of the trail, I noticed something.
I was completely and utterly alone. And a dance track began to play. And I began to move. And skip. And jump. And flat out lose my mind to my ear phones and the fields and trees on either side of me and the path before and behind.
It was the most liberating feeling, one to which even many wondrous experiences and moments in Alaska cannot compare. For two songs the world was mine, and I owned each second, free from the thens and the hereafters. I felt just like a kid again.
Which just goes to show that adulthood may come, but it does not efface.
I slept in far too late. I woke up at two in the afternoon, and was disappointed not to have as much time with the house to myself as I wished. You see, only very recently have I begun to take full advantage of my fairly frequent hours of solitude in the family abode.
As it generally happens, I roll out of bed and descend the stairs with an attentive ear. If Padfoot is dozing in the ceiling window's sunbeam in the front hall, the chance is good that no one is home. Still, I check the kitchen, backyard, and sunroom for anyone's presence. Then I go to Conner's bedroom window to make sure the cars out front are gone. If all of these cases are so, then the party hour has come.
I go to the computer off Conner's room, and I pull up lyricsmode.com From this internet location, I can find most song lyrics and their accompanying music videos. I turn up the volume, push play,
And dance
And sing
And stomp
And raise a ruckus all on my own.
Yesterday I had only enough time for two songs (Shake It, and I played it twice), but today I had a three hour marathon, the likes of which I have not thrilled since Japanese karaoke marathons.
But it gets better.
Yesterday after my mom arrived home and cut short my jam sessions, I called Madz to see how her arm bone reconfiguration healing fun time had gone. I spoke with her for two minutes, in which time she told me she was fine and expressed her gratitude for the call, and then I talked with her mom for a half hour. It was a good conversation. Pleasant. Enjoyable. But I kept thinking, "Wow, we're still talking. This is the longest we've talked ever maybe. This is weird."
Call completed, I stood dumbfounded before my mother and explained to her what had just happened.
"Well, you're an adult now," she said. Which almost doesn't make sense, but does it. Because I feel the difference now. I understand that I can now have these kinds of encounters and that I need them as well. I'm no longer a mature-for-my-age teenager; now I'm an adult and will be interacting with other adults as such. Kind of intimidating, but I get it and know that this is what I must do.
So I've been watering a family friend of old's plants while she and her family were away, and we made plans for her to stop by and drop off my payment, with the unspoken understanding that she and my mom would catch up with each other for a while (they used to see much more of each other when their sons were best friends in grade school).
Before the thirty-minute phone call with Madz's mom, I had planned to ride the bike for an hour, but with only a little over an hour to shower and prepare for Mom's and my joint visitor, I skipped the bike. Good thing, too, because I had maybe fifteen minutes of free time before said visitor arrived six minutes ahead of planned time. So we all three--she, my mom, and I--sat down at the table and proceeded to chat for an hour and a half. At some points I zoned out, usually musing, again, on the meaning of being an adult. I never joined their prolonged mother-to-mother chats before, and it was okay then. I could go about my preteen activities with merely a "Hello, Mrs. H*****" to cover me and maintain the necessary politeness. But if I were to have done this yesterday, it would not have covered me and would have actually dismantled the careful courtesy I had until then constructed.
So I sat with them, and I joined in the conversation, and they listened to me (which speaks volumes), and I was one of them.
Once our guest had departed, I decided to go for a walk. I asked Morgan if he would like to go, but despite my wheedling, he declined. So I set out on my own with my iPod, thinking, "A few laps around the neighborhood will be nice."
But I reached one end of it and thought, "A few laps in the park would be even nicer."
So I set off for the park.
But as I approached it, I changed my mind again. "The Greenbelt. The Greenbelt."
So I walked through the park to the opposite side, crossed the street, went up the hill and along the road until I reached the trail. And I began to walk it.
Along the way cyclists encountered me and I encountered fellow walkers, so I intermittently hummed to the tunes on my iPod. But past the DairyQueen and under the bridge and down some hundred feet of the trail, I noticed something.
I was completely and utterly alone. And a dance track began to play. And I began to move. And skip. And jump. And flat out lose my mind to my ear phones and the fields and trees on either side of me and the path before and behind.
It was the most liberating feeling, one to which even many wondrous experiences and moments in Alaska cannot compare. For two songs the world was mine, and I owned each second, free from the thens and the hereafters. I felt just like a kid again.
Which just goes to show that adulthood may come, but it does not efface.