The snow storm outside is miserable. It's all wind and tiny snowflakes driving down - not even the huge, fluffy snowflakes that make snow storms pretty and tolerable. The temperatures are, supposedly, starting to rise a bit. I'm not buying it. I plan to drink coffee, do the crossword puzzle, and read. All day. Going outside just isn't an option at this point.
I've been home for 3 weeks now. Jesus. I didn't realize that it has already been that long! Luckily I remembered that all of my books are here at my mom's house and not in storage in her friend's basement like the rest of my stuff. I've been spending some quality time traversing the pages of The Journals of John Cheever, pretending that it's summer and that I'm drinking gin. I've emerged from the pit I was in when I first decided to stay in Michigan while I waited to hear back from my new job. I'm trying to take advantage of this time and enjoy my solitude and use my brain a bit.
I think that one of the only reasons I can stand being here at my mom's little house is that it is conveniently located about thirty minutes from the place where I grew up. I am not confronted with flashes of my entire life when I take a short drive. I do not see siblings and parents of old friends, and I am therefore not constantly faced with the fact that everything has changed and life has, in fact, continued on in my absence there. Continued on quite nicely, actually.
I say that because I went back to my high school for the first time since I graduated in 2003. It was a half day for the students, so the school itself was pretty empty. My best friend and I went to keep her mother company, who works in the attendance office now. Which, incidentally, would have saved me quite a bit of trouble if she had been there during my high school career. But, I digress. We played a game of Scrabble in the attendance office, and I excused myself to use the bathroom. I couldn't remember exactly where the nearest bathroom was, which was strange. But when I re-found it, I couldn't believe that it was exactly the same. There were new floors in the hallways (I think), some new lighting, beautifully remodled offices for the administration - but the bathrooms were exactly the same as they had been since probably the 1960s.
I walked past my old locker. I went in to the auditorium where I had spent so much time, now redone and looking absolutely beautiful. I felt at the same time much older but also that I was still the teenager that had spent so much time in that school. Do we ever grow up? Am I ever going to feel as old as my drivers license tells me I am? I think, actually, that I have gotten less mature with age. I have depreciated. I am fairly certain of that. What I wouldn't give for a shred of that innocence and openness that I had at 17. Maybe not.
My paper journal is rapidly filling with sentences and paragraphs I have written before - one of the dangers of coming home again, of being near old friends and old other kinds of people.
I'm freezing. There is snow actually blowing in through the cracks of the door near me. Time to retreat in to bed.
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