This is a big weekend for my family, my brother Craig is returning from service in Kuwait, and my grandma is in the hospital enduring the longest stretch of surgeries since the bypass/thyroid removal surgies that caused her to be bedridden for more than the last six months. I wanted to come home very badly a week a go, and now, a day before my brother steps off of his bus from the base, two days before him and my father go into the ICU in Gary, IN, I want to be there for all of it. Not all of it actually, just a little bit, just enough so I could have pictures to go with my memories, so I could have my own story to tell and not someone else's via phone call, email or text message. I don't know what it is driving my current need to go to my family. Partly because of all the changes that are happening that I can't be there for, partly because I'm sick of my comically small apartment or the fact that I have very little family out here, or even friends really, that I am close too. Whatever the cause, today was marked by a weird feeling, probably the closest thing to a depressive episode I've ever came too, not so much being sad or down, but just being out of touch. I felt like I was just going through the motions, I didn't really care either way about anything and the only thing that got me out of it was the thought of flying home. So after talking with one of my co-workers I went after finding a ticket. I envisioned this three day trip with a flight and a rental car, and found plane tickets that were too short for too much money. Undaunted I tried a more (or less) ambitious plan of flying into detroit and talking my parents into driving me around. Once I had my mother on the phone, and after she told me about my grandmother's new batch of surgeries, my mother did the unexpected. She questioned my urge to go home. She explained that craig and grandma will be in two different places all weekend so I could not possibly see both. She pointed out my lack of finances to fund this trip of mine without dismantling my plans to get out of debt. She then said the quote that is the title, and both made me realize my situation and realize my situation.
"Your classroom is your family and that was your choice."
The comment hit my head like a rock on a flat pool of water. Thoughts rippled through my head pulling me all the way back to my decision to come here. That voice in the back of my head telling me to go back to detroit might have been me. The traditions I thought I was bucking by choosing teaching may have been some traditions I wanted to maintain. When I told friends and family about my career moves, there might have been something more than wide-eyed, weak tempered fear behind the stares and akward pauses. Maybe I can't make it out here by myself.
Maybe I can't make it out here by myself.
And that thought was like the rock hitting the bottom of the pool. I acknolwedged my humanity, and probably my inability to survive out here alone. I now realize I'm probably going to have to work hard at simply maintaing my relationships with family and my old friends out here because it is not going to happen automatically. And so the ripples in the water subsided as quickly as they appeared and aside from a gentle swaying the waters in mind were calm. Not that I still didn't want to go home. I long greatly to go home and to help my family through the changes they are facing, but I know I have to do the best I can from long distance.
1 comment:
brother:
the day my grandfather died i had driven to cincinnati to see my (then) girlfriend. my mom calls, says, "i'm going to go there. i might drive over night."
there i am, in cincinnati, thinking, life is for the living. thinking, what good can i do? would grandpa want me to rush home, to change my plans for him? after all, this was a man that opted out of advanced medical treatment so as not to drain his estate and thus deprive his (now) widow and family of whatever assets he might pass on simply to wake up and see 60, 90, maybe even 400 more days.
i didn't go home. i thought to myself, "he would want me here, with this girl i think i might marry."
i didn't go home. i stayed with her. in retrospect, it was the wrong decision. but i only know that with the benefit of seeing how she repaid my efforts, which was, namely, er, not at all. but at the time, it was the right choice.
last week, my mom had emergency surgery to remove her gall bladder. i called my dad: "is this something i need to come home for."
"no."
who do we listen to? whose advice is most salient? do we miss things when we let others make our decisions? i'm going to be fairly far from my family. driving distance, sure, but at some point your life is your life. i trust my family to trust me with the choices i make.
like me, you select your friends carefully. it takes a lot for a friend to get into the inner sanctum. so many factors can conspire to prevent any given person from becoming a useful, trustworthy friend. but they're out there.
you can make it on your own. it's just a question of what 'it' is.
emails, man. emails, blog comments, blogs--this makes the task of keeping in touch far easier than it used to be. think if this were 1982 and you were trying to keep in touch with everyone. long distance costs an arm and a leg. you'd be writing letters. talk about losing touch.
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