Lawyer Date

I went on a date last night. It's been a while since I've been on an 'official' one, wherein the other party asked if I would like to go, and then we went. Usually, things are sort of arranged and assumed, or else they happen randomly, based on timing. People would treat me to dinner, or a drink, casual.

The Beau, as my parents called him back-in-the-day is classy-casual. I would dare to venture, always. Yes, I said my parents. And, back in the day. I don't see him often, these days.

Beau, L, and I get together about once every six months to serve up the tale of what's happened in our lives since our last gathering, and also to advise one another. We call it "Lawyer Time." Our Lawyer breakfast, actually is scheduled for tomorrow morning. This Lawyering has been a sort of tradition of ours since we graduated high school and each ended up in different states.. we all came back to our hometown in Georgia for Christmas, and usually at some point during summer break, before all dispersing again. We became adept at it by the end of college. Near the beginning, it was a little more upsetting.

Beau had a way of neglecting to call or write for the entire semester, especially early in our college careers. L and I were better at keeping in touch, being girls, maybe.. but having just spent our senior year of high-school all joined at the hip, I hated not being able to feel the love off him anymore. He went the farthest geographically, too.

Now that we're all out of college and in various stages of real-lifehood (L has a real job in NYC, Beau has decided to stay in school forever, currently in Washington state [though his summer is archaeological digging in the southwest US], and I'm putting off the grad school I think I'm going to later for a year in Japan... I told you we scattered far and wide!), it is a real comfort that we still find the time to reconnect. Even if it is the one span of a couple hours the morning after L gets in from NY in the dead of night, and just before Beau leaves for Arizona (literally, will get in his car and drive to Arizona from the restaurant).

The date was comforting too. This story has deeper roots. We were all a dream team together senior year, but L, Beau, and I all met in the 7th grade. L and Beau had known one another in elementary school, and when I encountered him lingering in my science classroom at the bell change, I began to rush to that class. When he dated L, I fed him helpful information, signing the locker notes "Incognito Mosquito." We went to the 8th grade dance together.

Embarrassment points: one zillion.

We also went to homecoming. He took me to junior prom. For all intents and purposes, we dated through high school. Except that I flatly refused to call it that. The short time we were official began like "Okay.. but what happens when we break up?" "We won't. I care about you too much for that." We're in the eighth grade, Beau, we are going to break up. He was my first kiss.

Over the course of the last ten years, we've had our requisite dosage of petty bullshit, of misunderstanding, of expectations set too high and fears about what we could or could not become. The term lawyers actually comes from the fact that at some point we sat down in the cafeteria with L and she was our 'divorce lawyer'... that day we decided we could never marry one another.

We made a lot of decisions with flair, and some even with finality. (Although I do have it written in an old journal, and I did happen to include the caveat "unless either he or I change pretty drastically.") I stormed and stewed and got fitful and got scared. I burned and brooded and yelled and bit my silent tongue. I daydreamed and despaired.

And last night he took me to dinner and a concert. Something old, and something new. We had fondue, which was one of the the most memorable things from junior prom night; I don't think he knew that, but it was where he wanted to go to dinner. I'd never been to a concert at the Tabernacle, but it was great, absolutely great.

I held his hand and we walked down the sidewalk in Atlanta.. a city so close to home, yet one I've never really grabbed for myself. It seemed fitting.

And I was just so damn glad to know that we're not done. I'm not necessarily where I want to be in several of my personal relationships. But I'm comforted to know that things change. Time moves ever forward, and change it all there is. There is the possibility that we'll look back on all this and smile sagely at the kids we were. The act of doing it right now makes me feel safer. I don't have to have all my ends tied up and my stuff sorted out. Beau and I are more on the same page, and understand one another more now than we ever have, I think. Not that we've "arrived," or anything, not that it's all "perfect." But it's pretty good.

Just because things didn't go the way I wanted them to, doesn't mean things won't be okay, perhaps tomorrow if not today.

Who's taller now?

Missus

I am not at the Butterfly Apartment, nor can I be considered "Em in Kansas," although I do like the sound of e-minks, or if you like, e-minx, for my digital escapades. I'm not sure yet what to do with this blog, so for now I'll just do what comes naturally, which is blog on.

I'm at my parents house, embarking on my first day as live-in housekeeper. I was in the midst of standing by the counter, scooping my lunch of chicken salad out of its fridge container with crackers (so college-- who needs plates? Or a table and chairs for that matter?) while simultaneously planning dinner/examining the available spice rack so I could go to the grocery store (so domestic-- I'm making chicken taco salad tonight) when the front doorbell rang.

One thing I have so far refused to handle is my parents' business. I may be the housekeeper, which leaves me the realm of food, cleanliness, and dogs, along with my personal penchant for letter-writing and other cute/frivolous pursuits of the reading and writing variety (like blogging). But I'm not sure I'm quite in a position to be answering their phone, for example, unless I recognize the number and it is my friend Kitchen.

So the doorbell rings. And I have to answer it because the guy can probably see me though the window, shoving triscuits into my mouth, unscrewing the lid on the jar of okra pickles. (My parents' food stock: always wonderful to me.) The windows are all open anyway, and so he can hear Jack and Karma bum-rushing the door, too (the windows are open because it is 68 degrees and all the flowers are blooming. Why, Georgia, why? Just to make me think it's silly to ever leave?). So I saunter out with a smile. His shirt says AT&T. He's probably the cable guy. "Are you Mrs. Lemmon?"

It sounds like "Mrs." anyway. There is a slight difference in pronunciation between that and "Miss" and I only learned the difference in the seventh grade because our English teacher was very particular about such things. She taught us well; apparently, in the south, people don't make much of the aural distinction. It was the second time in as many days that someone had asked me that question. Last night, Vanderbilt called and asked if I were (going by sound only) "Mrs." Lemmon. I blinked and wasn't sure what to say. Did they want to speak with my mother? Or, were they looking for me?

So, standing before the cable guy, I was just as stumped. My car in the driveway, its license plates finally home, I no longer look like a blatant out-of-stater. "Well, sort of," I said, making allowance for the fact that pronunciation is not to be dependable. He asked if I make any of the decisions around the house, which I've fully abdicated, so I told him no, and when I did he asked if that were Mr. Lemmon's thing. I blinked, realizing he must have thought me the young wife here in this neighborhood. I told him I was just back from college, that's all, and my parents did that stuff. (A reflex, but a lie by now.) And that Dad would be home later.

As I went back in to finish my chicken salad and finally bite into one of those okra pickles, I thought about how a lot of people my age ARE missus-es, and wondered what I'd do when I got married. I've pretty much decided to keep my last name, mostly because it sounds so cool. I'm not a major feminist or anything, but of the guys I've dated with any seriousness (or even among those I've dated without much seriousness), not one of them had a name I was dying to make my own. It might seem like a silly reason, but it's my reason. Apparently, people make big decisions the same way they make small decisions. Is it a sign of disrespect to a man and his family not to take his name? Maybe to some? Is it totally pase in this post-modern world? Will I always wonder whether the caller is looking for me, or my mother?

Visibles Later

It was great living in an apartment instead of a dorm room, so you could have more space, and move from place to place and still be home.

So.. now you have crap strewn across several rooms, instead of contained to just one.

Packing is.. going. I got frustrated and starting taking down the posters somewhat prematurely, if you're going by tradition. I think it felt like I wasn't making progress at all since it wasn't visible. Weird.

Just found a home for my bed in a very nearby house of a friend.. she has an empty room she would love to transform into a guest room. I would love to put off deciding what to do with my bed for a full year. Viola. If I move back to Kansas, I can totally just get it back from her.

Yeah, I said if I move back to Kansas. That is still up in the air, and not something I can even begin to think about seriously right now. I don't like to admit to being stressed out, but I can't ignore the fact that I locked my keys in the car twice yesterday and have been crying a lot, and randomly. I like to know that I can come back... as I wrote in my little freestyle ditty on pale orange paper: It's good to know there's room in Kansas for me; space in the wheat state where I can be free. But all I can handle right now are possibilities, not decisions. There's enough motion for me for now.

I react in ways that make my roommate say I show "no integrity." Maybe he's right.. I feel a little scattered; to be integera is to be whole, one unit. But if he means my actions and decisions and words and admonitions don't mesh into one another.. then he doesn't know me quite as well as I might have thought. When the ends of my rope are frayed, I actually do have a tendency to act out a little... always responsibly, as is my way. Those surprising words the other night were mine. "I can make all the terrible decisions I want. I'm leaving." I begin to feel pressed for time, and take action to do and say all the things I might not have the chance to do or say soon. I begin to feel like in a few weeks, none of it will matter anyway, because I'll be far away. I do a few things that seem on the surface uncharacteristic of me. But that's how I cope with the fact that it's hard to leave.

It's all good stuff I'm headed for, I know. I don't want to seem ungrateful, which is part of my hesitance to even admit to being upset. I'm going to see my family soon. On the way there, some really good friends. And then, GHP. And then? Japan! It's all good, all of it exciting and amazing. But the impending adventures still hang just above me, and that little part of my heart that gets mutinous every time I wrench it out of its new home is complaining again. How many times will you do this to me? I may be used to packing and moving. I'm also tired of it. Not enough, just yet, to stop it. But I can feel that mutinous part moving within me, slow and inexorable like the tide.

Hiddens First

The storage room off the patio would be full of seasonal things if we were what we like to call "real people." But since we are not yet that, since we are recovering college students, it is full of all the boxes and bags we've saved from the stuff we toted, the stuff that was sent us, and the stuff we bought.

We put it there and forgot; today, I bust it out again.

Before, I was freaked out by the proximity of the end-times. Now, they are actually upon me, and I've shrugged cheerfully, rolled up my sleeves, and begun to pack. I have a lot of experience at packing and moving. In 2007, when my life began its pattern of changing every three to six months, I began that pattern by physically moving somewhere in that designated time period. Years of dorm experience has made me fully capable of this.

Even more than I had realized, actually. I used to hate packing and moving, not only for what it meant (leaving), but for the physical pain and logistical nightmare it can entail. Last week I looked around my room and couldn't fathom where to begin. When I got back from Nashville yesterday, I sat down without even thinking and began on my nightstand drawers.

I developed a way of packing that was in line with my wait-til-the-last-minute-to-believe-you're-going mentality. Hiddens first. Clear out desk drawers, closets, under the bed... everywhere that you can't see at first, first. Then, when you go to sleep at night, it still looks like home, though it's slowly emptying of you. Your poster is still on the wall, and your calendar, and you can ignore for the moment that everything around you is physically now hollow.

It's a compromise I must have struck somewhere between the nightmare of actually waiting too long to pack, and the loathing of sleeping in an empty room.

I looked into one of my old rooms while I was at Vandy over the weekend, since Aa-chan lived on one of the halls we used to run. 168, bearing not even the faintest trace of me, my life, the suffering I endured there (it was a fairly rough year, junior). Such is the way of dorm life, and even apartment life. It doesn't take long for the stamp of energy to fade. It may have been achingly important to me at the time.. here I worked, there I sat, down there I knelt to cry.. but ultimately, a few months later, someone else filled it, all of me moved somewhere else. The only thing, then, that seems to bear one's stamp longer than physical spaces are the people with whom you spent time there.

Which completely explains my mad dash to spend time with everyone as much as I can in these final days. I can't say why today I'm content to clear the closet and nightstand, and maybe the drawers too. Today, the hiddens, tomorrow the visibles. I'm not even interested in my mad dash to make terrible decisions (because I'm leaving, or because it's May?) right now. Like I said.. it's a shrug, a rolling of the sleeves, maybe a passing thought of shikata ga nai.

Apocalypse

Someone just sent this lovely article to my summer-job listserv. Mosquitoes, loathed by me anyway, are overrunning the town where I'll be spending six weeks this hot-season. Time to buy that serious bug spray, the kind you can't use on babies or the elderly.

But it's alright.. because between this, other strange events, and OMG-Swine-Flu, I think the world is on schedule to end in 2012 like it's supposed to. If I survive, Georgia will be the place to be (I'm going to visit those standing stones while I'm in GA in a couple weeks).

I'm feeling that frazzled semi-world's-end feeling I get when I have to leave any place for some great length of time. Yes I want to go to Georgia. Yes I want to go to Japan. Why do I have to leave Kansas to do so?

Tonight is my last night of teaching GRE prep downtown. After that, I'm officially obligation-free. I'd pushed my official departure date to next week, because I thought it would "make more sense" to drive to Vandy's graduation from here than to drive to Belmont's from there. If you do the math, it actually makes the opposite of sense. I am starting to feel like I'm cheating myself of my last weekend in Kansas; most of the people I want to see will still be there next weekend when I am also in Nashville for Belmont's graduation/on my way to Georgia. I am not sure I'd even go, this weekend, if it weren't for my roommate who's kind of counting on it. I owe him more than that.

So, it's the end of this world. And yeah, yeah, whatever.. the beginning of the next. But I was never good at leaving any place, even for someplace better.