The Past is Now Another Land...

(or, one of many posts about transition)

Is anyone else shocked that it's May already?

This summer is going to be one of finality. My parents are selling our ancestral home, the only home I've ever known. I've lived other places, on my own: college dorms, college apartments, and my current residence. That's the right word. There have been other residences in my life but only ever one home. As a little girl, I sometimes wished I lived in a neighborhood, so that there were more children around. As a teenager, I sometimes wished I lived somewhere- anywhere!- where there was more to do (shopping malls, movie theaters, whatever teenagers do). But I never doubted that I was incredibly lucky to live in our big, rambling country house.

I am trying very hard to be supportive of my parents, which is a funny flip. I've been helping out on weekends: painting and prying up floorboards so we can cut home out of my life. I know it's very hard for both of them, my mother especially. And their decision makes a lot of sense: they don't have the time or the energy to take care of an old house anymore, plus with my middle sister going to college next year, there's just going to be three people, wherever the live.

I guess I'm about to learn that it's people that create home, not rooms. I hope. But the cozy kitchen of that house is sort of the physical center of my universe. I'm going to have to do some shifting.

And it's a time in my life for shifting. Afterall, this August I'm shifting my world up the coast, to NYC. I'm going to visit my new school and my new apartment this weekend, armed with a tape measurer and money to buy some piece of clothing that says NYU on it. Yes, I'm that girl.

This is probably the last summer I'll spend in this area. The last summer I'll hang out at the neighborhood pool, throw field parties with my cousins, join in crazy rambonxious games of neighborhood volleyball, drive around to the local wine festivals. I feel like I'm just learning how to really utilize the area in the summer. And now I'm leaving.

Don't get me wrong. I'm excited. New York City...it smells funny, but it's bustling with life and it's going to be my new life. I've led such a quiet, country-girl existence. It's a total change. It's a vastly different future.

Last night I spent some time reading over my college journals, mostly because I filled out a survey on my college experiences and had trouble remembering sophomore year. It was very interesting, but didn't inspire too many good feelings. There's a lot of angst penned into those journals. And while I can safely say I'm not the same girl who's much larger handwriting filled the lines freshman year, I am the same girl who scribbled her heart out senior year. Two years out of college hasn't changed that. NYC might, a bit. A bit.

I'm ready for this next step. I'm eager for it. It would just be so much easier if the foundation on which I've built my life wasn't about to be altered forever. I'm about to become the girl who can't go home.



"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations."

~ Anais Nin

A Lesson in Terminology

Scene: My parents' kitchen, over steaming bowls of chili.

Mom: Sometimes these things aren't intentional, they're just...outdated. For instance, I didn't know that Oriental was wrong until I met Hae Lim. I just didn't know to call her Asian.
Dad: I don't see what the big deal is- Asian, Oriental- who cares what people call you?
Mom: Well, you wouldn't want people calling you 'asshole', would you?

Why no man?

So, the internet has created this entire new medium for people to hit on each other with. I respect that. I do not respect, however, the blatant uncreativity that has resulted from this new format.

A little bit of dullness can be expected in a live action pick-up. Afterall, the pick-upER is on the spot and likely to fall back on tried and true methods of hitting-on (the language in this blog is very awkard, so far- 'pick-up and hit-on conjugated in different words- if anyone has better ideas, please let me know).

But on the interweb, there is time to think before you write. And yet, on myspace, these are the sorts of messages I very often get:

hi your cute why no man?

That is not a paraphrase. It is an actual message sent to me by a young man attending a nearby college.

How is that, in any way, supposed to impress me or grab my attention?

But, in honor of that hideous message, I am composing a short list.

WHY NO MAN
1- Circumstance.
2- Bad Choices.
3- Limited Availability.
4- Good Choices.
5- High Standards.
6- Beneath my clothes, my body is completely covered with scales.

It is certainly not a crime to be 23 and single. As I told my Dad last night at dinner, when we weren't arguing about politics.

Dad: Well, I don't understand anything about registering. Maybe if one of my daughters ever got married.
***Keep in mind, my sisters are 17 and 12, so by 'one of my daughters', the man meant me. Also, as my mother pointed out to him, he was married twice, so he should know something about registering.***
Me: Think of it this way- isn't it better for me to be single than to be married to one of the losers I've met so far?

Then my Dad lifted his glass of Chianti in a toast to me and my single-ness.

Take that, world!