RTW: Right Here, Right Now

From YA Highway:

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question to write about on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

This Week's Topic:

How did you spend the summer after graduation?

The summer after I graduated from high school was probably not as lame as I remember.  Or maybe it was.

I worked for a temp agency, filling in as an administrative assistant at various local businesses.  I tutored.  I babysat.  I cleaned houses.  I shopped for necessary items for dorm life - an ironing board, a laundry basket, flip-flops for the shower.  You know, important stuff that grown-up college students need.  I spent time with friends when I wasn't working - movies, Twins games, hanging out and talking about the future.  I was a vegetarian, I didn't wear leather and made sure that none of my beauty or personal care products were tested on animals.  I joined Greenpeace.

I wrote - a lot.  Snippets of short stories.  Poems - really bad ones.  Letters to friends.  I wrote in my journal with Crayola Bold Skinny Markers.

I just wanted to get on with my life,  be a grown-up.

As I jotted down notes for this post on Tuesday night, I was in the maintenance/storage room in my basement trying to get our water heater to reset.  It's been on the fritz for about a year, but we haven't called to have it looked at because I'm in total denial that we will need to replace it.  We just reset it over and over and over and some mornings, because we'd forgotten to check it, we take cold showers.

My kids had finally settled down after a late gymnastics night.  I was in the middle of a frantic blitzclean of the house - Hammer Guy comes home tonight after a week in Seattle and I have a new babysitter coming so I can go to Bunco across the street.  How much do neighborhood middle schoolers get paid for babysitting these days?  I don't even know.

At work yesterday I utilized my two, count them TWO, degrees by putting together a mass mailing of certificates and window clings.  I dashed off another post for my blog on the Patch during dinner.  And by the time I sat down to have a cup of coffee at 10:30 after folding four loads of laundry, my creative energy was zilch.  No journal writing with bright markers for me - or any writing, for that matter.

That is just a snapshot of what my grown-up life is like at this moment, the summer after graduation a swirl of wispy memories.

This morning my kids and I talked about the new babysitter.  It's Toad's friend's older sister.  They stay home alone during the summer and the sister is in charge.

Toad sighed.  "I suppose I'll have to do that in a couple of years," he said.

I calculated.  "Not for a few years yet, Buddy," I said.  Fourteen, I think, is a good age to stay home and take care of your little sister all day, every day during the summer.  Fourteen was the age I had my first nanny job.

"Wait a minute," I said, "I won't be working then.  I'll stay home!  I'll be a full-time writer!  We'll do fun things!"

There was a pause.  "Mom," he said, "you can't tell the future."

Oh.  He's partly right.

The summer after I graduated, I was certain that someday I would be an award-winning journalist/activist/bestselling novelist.  Fact is, I get seasick, so chances are I would have been miserable on one of the Greenpeace boats anyway.  That would have made for a terrific column.

So what's the point?  As much as things have changed since that summer after I graduated from high school, on the cusp of an amazing adventure called life, a lot has stayed the same.  While not a vegetarian, I don't eat a ton of meat.  While the plight of dolphins ending up in your can of tuna still concerns me, I'm more likely to advocate for the plight of humans and on a more local level (these days, it's mainly watching out for my kids and being a good neighbor). 

More than anything, I'm still a dreamer.  Maybe I can't tell the future, but I can still dream about it.  Maybe if I'd tried harder to live in the moment I would have enjoyed that summer before college a little more, a lesson I still strive to master. 

Yes, I'm living right here, right now: an underemployed mom with two young kids, a chaotic calendar, a broken water heater.  But I won't give up on my dreams.