So I got two jobs this week, one of which is my first job that doesn't involve directly working with kids. Hooray Cold Stone. I also have my school year job working in the star theater part of the planetarium, actually working at planetarium shows. I feel quite independent and grown up. When my rent comes due next week, the money I pay will be mine, not some kind alumnus who started a fund and not some federal grant, but money I worked for. I might have been living off of PB&Js for the past month, but I bought that peanut butter and that jelly and that bread and by golly, I'm going to eat it. Now if I could just have a car, I would call myself an adult. And not a moment too soon- I'm only three months, give or take, away from being 21.
But maybe I'm not so excited to be so independent, so grown up. I called home earlier today to tell my parents that I'm coming home for the weekend but nobody picked up. I thought this was odd- my dad's always at home and my mom shouldn't have been too terribly busy today. I left a message, called my mom's cell phone and left a message there, thinking they would call me back soon enough. It got to be 9:30 and I figured I'd try again- they both have to be home by now, I thought. I walked out back, left the trash can keeping the stairwell open because I was too lazy to bring my keys and sat out in the wonderful summer night looking out on a scenery-killing parking lot. I called home, but nobody picked up again. Brain blast: My parents are at the beach for the first time in goodness knows how long, to celebrate my aunt and uncle's birthday. So I call my mom's cell phone, but she doesn't pick up again and I leave a falsely cheery message about staying at 'the house' by myself for the weekend, 'if that's OK,' like I need permission to sleep in the house that I've lived in for 20 years, regardless of my current address. I hang up the phone and I start to cry, tears like raindrops staining the pavement.
I don't even know why. Big alligator tears running down my cheeks because my mom didn't pick up the phone? Maybe it's the thought of them being gone, the house all alone, and I'm not with them. Maybe I felt rejected- Hello, it's your only daughter, you could pick up the phone and talk to her because the one weekend she's going to be home for the rest of the summer is the one weekend you're in a different state. Maybe I cried because that's the beginning of the end of being a kid, the beginning of that step into the world when you're not so-and-so's daughter or so-and-so's sister, but little independent you. I was calling home and they didn't have to answer because I didn't need them to answer right then. I'm fine by myself. One day, they won't be there for me to call home to. This makes me cry and I never call home.
So I cry and wait for my face to look less like a clown mask and more like a person who just stepped outside to make a phone call and I walk back inside. I talk to a couple of friends, listen to my roommates making delicious cupcakes and then my mom calls. We talk about my ride back on Monday and my mom makes the cardinal college kid mistake. You see, when we go away to college, we make the mistake of talking about our dorms like home. When we go back to where we're from on breaks, we talk to other people around our parents and when they ask us how long we're in town, we say, 'I head home at the end of the week,' and our parents sigh and tsk and joke about how grown up we are, but they're really kinda upset on the inside because they think we've gone, moved out in our minds. My mom said, 'And you want to go home Monday morning?' I correct her: 'I need to be in Chapel Hill at 12 because I have to work.' She brushes it off and says she'll see me Sunday afternoon. And I wait a second because I always make my mom say 'I love you.' I never say it. I always wait until she says it and then I mumble, 'Love you, too' and hang up. I get kinda mad when she doesn't say it, but I never say it, I just leave it angrily unsaid like th kid I've been. This time I did. And I know it's just a phrase and maybe I should say it more often, but it seemed momentous to me right then. She said, 'I love you, too' and hung up and I went to go take a shower in the hopes that my eyes would look a little less red when I came out. Does crying in the shower work that way?
I have two jobs. I was veritably excited when Mickey Jo (listen, I was so destined for these jobs- my boss at the planetarium is named Mickey Jo and the owner of Cold Stone says that she had an Addie Jo work for her in Raleigh- spooky) let me into the star theater and let me look at the control panel. There are all these buttons and they're labeled right ascension and declination and meridian and I'm going to know how they all change the fake stars in the planetarium sky and this makes me unspeakably happy. I am going to get a ride back to my house this weekend and sleep in my queen sized bed, steal some food, get another pair of contacts and see friends in Hickory. I am going to blog/write/whatever about this because that's how I deal. I throw my growing pains, my coming of age stories, my stumbles in faith, my God moments with the world in writing because romanticizing them, putting them down and never having to say them makes them so much easier to deal with. These are my faults, or the fruits of my faults, anyway. And these things make me unspeakably sad.
You know what I love about God? He does not leave us on our knees. Oh, He'll let you sit down there, because you need to see why sometimes, but He doesn't leave you there. He pulls you into the dance. And maybe I'm glad I'm not the flower girl dancing at the eternal wedding of the universe. It's time I learned to lean on someone's shoulders.
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