Last night was a great example of this. Forest showed me unequivocably how much he loved me, and I showed him how much I loved him back. It started with a movie. We chilled out and watched Practical Magic which is a lot of fun, and always makes me want to go dancing in the moonlight.
After that, we talked of going to bed early, but neither one of us was sleepy. So there we were, just lying on the bed, facing each other and making each other laugh. Soon, we were in a turf war over bed space, and wrestling, he trying to pin me, me trying to pin him. Then came the tickling, when we both laughed so much we almost cried, and then he leapt off the bed and fled, running through our dark house.
There are plenty of places in our 80-year-old house to hide and jump out at people. We played for a while at ambushing each other, and finally ended up in out and out combat, sparring, feinting, retreating, and so on. We laughed, shouted, squealed, and screamed (all merry noises in this context), and tumbled around the house like children for over an hour.
It's wonderful to not be dignified, not be grown up, and not be quiet. It's great to not go to bed on time, to scare the cat into hiding, and taunt each other with crazy accents and Shakespearean insults. But mostly, it's just another way of showing each other how much we love each other. It brings us closer, and I wouldn't trade it for all the candlelight dinners in the world.
After we finally hit the pillow last night, Forest revealed that he doesn't feel like this is "his life". The things he's involved with now are things he didn't think he'd deal with in years, or in some cases, never. He never thought he'd be a parent, yet he knows Kirstin wants him to be at least a parental figure for her. He never thought he'd live in a small town, he hated the one he lived in as a kid. He didn't figure on owning a house for years, but I own a house. I bring with me an entire lifestyle that he never figured would happen in his life. He feels like he's off on a seperate life from his friends, and is afraid he'll lose them by leaving his old world behind.
What's sad is that I know exactly how he feels. I sympathize, and empathize, and all the other-pathizes. My life was something entirely different before it had Kirstin in it. I liked my old life, it was care-free, it was my childhood and young womanhood. But she was too wonderful and I loved her too much to even consider giving her up for my old world. Within a split-second of her birth, I knew I'd never go back, that having her would put me firmly on another path, and I didn't mind it a bit. Until a few months later when I realized what I was missing. Then it got confusing. Who was I? I couldn't be the way I used to be, but I didn't feel like the person whose life I was living.
Forest is feeling the same way about me. He liked his life before, or at least parts of it. He had a young man-hood he figured on experiencing before he even remotely considered settling down. A whole world of possibilities. Then he met me, and without a bat of an eye, he jumped into his next phase of life; without realizing what he was leaving behind.
Karen says she understands it, too. She is 23 years old, and last year was a party-hard drink-a-lot college student living in poverty. She liked it. Now she's a graduate, a homeowner with a husband, a dog, and a cat. She says she feels like she's becoming a yuppie, or that all of the sudden she's expected to be "mature".
What's funny about it is that both of them realized this through the same bumper sticker slogan. Karen saw it on a T-Shirt, Forest got it as a gift from his brother. The sticker reads "Jesus loves you, but everyone else thinks you're an asshole". In his old life, Forest would have put that on his car, and laughed heartily about it. He didn't care what anyone thought and there were no consequences for it, anyway. Karen would have worn the shirt, for pretty much the same reason. Now Forest doesn't feel he can put that on his car, because my mom might see it, and he'd feel bad driving Kirstin around in a car with a profane word on it. Karen has to worry about people she works with seeing the shirt, and the slogan possibly insulting her neighbors, since she won't be moving for several years.
They both feel like they are constrained by their new lives in ways they never imagined. But neither one of them feels they ought to give their new lives up.
I can only partially relate, myself. I carefully chose to move to Eaton Rapids, and took a great deal of time to adjust my thinking before jumping into it. Since I have Kirstin, in many ways I've already given up a lot of the outward vestiges of youthful "don't give a damn what you think" attitudes. I thought I was looking before I was leaping.
Trick with that, though, is that no one can guess what effects entirely alien ideas will have on their lives. I hadn't, for instance, realized that renting, living in south Lansing, and hanging with Jeff were things I had in common with my friends. Like Forest with James and Will, our circumstances were part of what tied us together. Now I'm out here doing something completely different (possibly completely nuts) that none of them can be expected to be interested in, much less relate to. They certainly aren't going to sympathize with me about the latest assessment hike, or having to mow the lawn in March, because it thawed so early. I now know a bit of how Andy felt, working all those years in an 8-5 job while the rest of us were off doing other things. He was going through things we couldn't possibly understand.
Forest and I both feel like we've gone off on some other track and left our friends chugging merrily along where we most likely belong. It's bizarre. I'm not too worried about it, though. These are emotional, identity-related things, that will take us time to work through, each on his/her own. Obviously we have more in common with our friends than just our living circumstances. Of course after a while, we'll start to blend who we have been with who we will be. We will slowly adapt. We've both been through big changes like that before.
I had lunch today with Karen and Laura, and I guess Laura's going to come visit me late tonight. That will be fun. Laura is such a hard worker, she doesn't have any time to come out and visit. She goes to school full time and waits tables more than full time. She's excited that for the first time in her college career last semester she brought home grades she was really proud of, and has found a rhythm, a system that works for her. This week is her spring break, but she's only taking today to visit with family before going back to work double and triple shifts all week.
It's always fun to talk to my sisters. We don't reminisce about great olden times, because we're far enough apart that we didn't socialize with each other in high school or anything like that. We had different friends, different lives. We talk about right now, though. We all have cats in common, men in common, and work in common. We all deal with my mom and her err... unique way of relating to us, my dad and the fact that he never calls unless its a holiday, and our step-parents, who oddly both have extremely foreign ways of looking at the world. We talk about where we're going, and where we've been. Poor Laura gets heaps of advice on practically everything, poor Karen gets information on only the specific things she asks about, and I get reminded that I ought to chill out a bit and stop scaring people.
We are an interesting trio because we've been through a lot together, but we aren't the kind who talk about that. My sisters are crystal-clear people in my mind. Karen is incredibly intelligent and intellectually organized. She got better grades than anyone I know, simply because she did every last detail of every assignment on time and to perfection. She knows how and when to study which things, and was willing to give up her life and live in poverty to get the job done. She likes to get attention, and sometimes gets quietly offended when someone changes the subject in a conversation before she's ready. She likes things her way, and can be very tempramental and moody, and lets you know when you've pissed her off. She's sweet in her affections and bitter in her inflictions, and always has been. My mom still hasn't gotten used to it, 23 years later. Karen reminds me of Forest in a lot of ways.
Laura seems like the quietest of us, but in fact she's the most social. She doesn't talk a lot in large groups, or use the big vocabulary words that Karen and I do every day, because she doesn't really care to impress people that way. She's got a great smile, and a way of warming a conversation once she joins in that's unmatched. She's very socially adept, and can usually make her thoughts known with a combination of a few words and a gesture. She doesn't *need* to jabber on like Karen and I do, because it doesn't really matter so much to her whether every last detail of the point has been conveyed. As long as she communicates the general idea, she's happy. She's the most introverted member of our family, but she also relates most easily to people out of all of us. Small children in a room with the three of us will naturally tend toward Laura, because her physicality tells them that she's relaxed, approachable, and loving. I have no idea how she does it. Kids (and men) would follow her anywhere.
I don't know what I look like to them, or how they would sum me up. Karen would probably say that I've experienced everything for myself before she and Laura get a chance to consider it, so I know a lot. I've done a lot of life's things already. My experiences have taken the place of parts of my personality, I guess, even in my own self-image. Laura would probably say that I've been trying to find a place where I fit for my whole life, and haven't gotten there in the past. Laura wouldn't judge whether I was there right now, or not. That's not her style. I'm more an idealist, and they are both more realists.
Karen and Laura are also closer to each other than I am to either of them. They both went to Western, and have lived in relatively close daily contact for the past few years, plus the three years they lived together while Karen was still in high school after I had moved out. They hang out together, have friends in common, and so on. I've never been drunk with my sisters, for example, but they've been many a time together.
Perhaps I should call a midnight margarita night at my house. We play loud music, drink margaritas, and dance around the house and get plastered. I got the idea from Practical Magic.
I just finished reading I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and can't believe how much more I got out of it since I'm a grownup and could understand more of what I was reading. There are some books you just shouldn't have to read in high school, because there's no sense in it for you at that age, and you don't have the time to really dig into the words and enjoy the book. Or maybe I was just naive in high school, or too damn busy to read my assignments with enjoyment. For whatever the reason, when I read the book as a teenager I understood all it was saying, but really didn't sympathize with the characters much. This time when I read it I was shocked. The words were beautiful blunt objects, dragging me with them with great forcefulness, despite the gentle voice of the narrative. I highly recommend that adults read (or reread) that book. Wow.
For now, though, I must to work. I'm putting the smack down on people again, and that's always fun.
