The Sister and the Heterolifemate (April, Part III)

On the People Who Are Important to Me list, these two are way up there.

One of them is my best friend, Subcontinent, the person I've known almost as long as I've known my parents. We've never gone to the same school and we went to college on opposite coasts. We've also never had a fight (I've never fought anyone, actually, which is something my coworkers find improbable) or a disagreement, if you don't count the Sippee Cup Incident when we were two, and I don't, because I bottled it up passive-aggressively as is my wont. She knows me, I know her. We're like Montaigne and that dude; "Because it was him: because it was me." Or, in her words freshman year:

I have decided you are far more entertaining than econ quant analysis
but I already knew that 

The other is my college roommate, one of five, the illustrious Roommate J. If we get to sixty-five (allows room for an eleventh hour husband) and neither of us is married, we'll marry each other. (I'm pushing for Iowa. She likes Vermont. Hopefully by then there will be several options.) I already know we can live together. She makes unexpected noises and I like my space, but for some reason it never became a problem. We bonded over Whose Line Is It Anyway and nail polish and it accelerated from there. It got to the point where it became difficult to say goodbye. That's when you know a person is important to you.

Subcontinent and Roommate J are very different from me, and they are very different from each other, but they were the ones I used my hard-won vacation days to visit. This was the weekend after Easter, and my East Coast visit had been on the books long before any of April's other delights began to pick up steam. For a while I was worried I wouldn't get to go after all, but I could and I did and I have never been more relaxed over a hectic five day period in my life.

New York was food, walking, and feeling vaguely like an adult. Baltimore was food, walking, and revisiting old sources of entertainment. Both felt so incredibly right.

And Here Was I (April, Part II)

When I was in middle school, my grandparents came to visit and my parents went out to dinner. After picking me up at school and navigating the unpaved parking lot, my grandparents and I went to the world's best video rental store (losing intermittent access to this may actually be what I dislike most about my parents' impending move) and picked up The Four Feathers (this was before the Heath Ledger version) and The Man in the White Suit. We watched The Four Feathers first and whenever I saw my grandfather after that, I took to reciting what my imperfect memory could dredge up of the above clip.

Here were the Russians: Guns, guns, guns!
And here were the British: The thin, red line.
And here was the commander in chief.
And here. Was I.

It started sounding like poetry.

Movies were our thing. Movies and stories and Paris, France. It was kind of the perfect grandparent-grandchild relationship, because those were the things I loved most anyway. Then I moved to Princeton, New Jersey and all of a sudden I was inundated with recommendations of restaurants that had been closed forty years or more. We had even more to talk about, which I guess was partially adulthood on my part.

Whether we were in California or Illinois or France, Grandpa was always trying to foist alcohol on me. It's kind of a thing in our family; it's an Irish family, so it's not weird. (I was the weird one, since I didn't drink at all until I turned 21; freakishly well-behaved, that's been me all along.) I turned down wine in California, I turned down wine in Illinois, and, most shockingly, I turned down wine in France at age 18. I was also offered beer, champagne, and bourbon, and all my family members looked on in amusement as I declined every single time. I did dip my finger in my mom's wine and act out the Four Feathers scene, though. That's just what we did.

My grandfather passed away on April 6th and on April 7th I was sitting in my parents favorite bar with my father (Mom was in California), drinking bourbon. It seemed appropriate, which didn't prevent me from making every novice mistake in the book. In my attempt to water it down, I released the flavor. All the ice I added melted and it lasted forever. We arrived back home, tipsy, and cried all over the pizza dough. We wetly discussed Kansas, adulthood, and my closeness with my parents. Dad revealed that he had no regrets. We blew our noses, made the pizza, and watched the first two episodes of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The next day was Easter. We hosted some friends, did our (last) traditional Easter Egg Hunt in the backyard, and I took over Mom's role and cranked out some really amazing (if I say so myself) profiteroles.

The friends left and I packed my stuff to drive back to Chicago. I couldn't carry everything myself, so Dad helped me out to the car. I shut the trunk and he glanced through the window. "If you wanted," he said, "I could ride up with you and help you carry everything up to your apartment, and then you could put me on a Greyhound back." At the time I thought he was only 70% kidding. Now, looking back at the emotional roller coaster that weekend was, I'm sure it was only 30%. (If you called him and asked him, he might admit to 20%.)

I don't have many regrets, either. I certainly don't have any big ones and even if I did, my closeness with my parents would never be one of them. We've always been a very close family, and I don't think distance is going to change that. It didn't when I was in college and I don't think Kansas, even if I don't get those nice long breaks every six weeks, will do much to hurt it either.

So it's been an interesting spring, but I'm still quoting The Four Feathers, and I'm still trying to plan out my life with as many trips to France as possible, and I kind of like wine now, and I'm turning into a professional storyteller, so if that's my contribution to my grandfather's legacy I'm happy.

And if I'm tempted to turn around and stare at April like a charging buffalo and yell, "AND HERE WAS I!" then I think I would be entirely justified.

Some Simon & Garfunkel Song (April, Part I)

April happened. April really happened. So much happened in April that it's difficult to know where to begin, but let me begin, as ever, with this simple fact:

My mother is a BAMF. My mother rocks. She rocks so much that to say she rocks has become some sort of hellish understatement. She rocked herself all the way to Kansas, got a rockin' job with a rockin' salary, and rocked on back home. Or, "home." For those of you who didn't pick up on this before, my post on home in late February stemmed from my dawning awareness that the place I'd called home for twenty three years (roughly; there was a time I couldn't talk) might not even be my parent's home for much longer. It's interesting. I am proud of my mom, obviously, and excited for my dad, who is all set for his "third stage in life" (his words), which could be anything from starting a consulting business to doing more of what he does now, from straight up retirement to guiding inner city youth through the woods on birdwatching expeditions.

I am also (after almost four months of thinking about it) at peace with the idea of my home belonging to another family. As I explained first to my high school friends and then again, tearfully (bourbon was involved, but more on that later), to my dad and then finally to my mom, while that house belongs to us, nowhere else will ever be home to me. Chicago feels temporary. This apartment feels temporary. This gig (thank God) feels temporary. Only one of those things needs to be true. While that house belongs to us, I probably won't try to put roots down anywhere else, and it's rough, because I don't see myself moving back home. If I did that, I would be disappointing myself, my friends, and probably my parents. So I know it's not going to happen, but it's difficult to resist the siren call of my bed and my bookshelves and my back porch and my kitchen.

My parent's back porch. My parent's kitchen.

 So it's good they're selling the house because I need to cut the cord. I don't want to live in Kansas. (For one thing, it's a red state.) I probably will never live in Kansas. I may visit Kansas, but I can't see myself there.

As I was working through all this, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine from high school. She's a grad student in the Chicago area and we meet biweekly for brunch at Café My Spirit Animal (not its real name). Over the course of our discussion, we came to the simultaneous (and possibly belated, but whatever) realization that no one was making decisions for us any more. Another friend, this one from middle school, chipped in with the corollary over cupcakes: we don't always factor in our parents' decisions any more. None of this is earth crushing, none of this is unique to us, and all of this is as it should be, but they were two very interesting conversations.

So it's time to take charge, time to start thinking of my next steps in terms of where they may lead. As one of my favorite former coworkers would say, "Imma need for you to get it together." I'm trying, dude, I'm trying.