The Grass is Greener

One of the girls I work with is in her early 30's, African American, born and raised in inner Kansas City, had her first child at the age of 14, divorced, etc. You know, apparently the typical scenario around here. Nothing I was very familiar with until I began working here 8 months ago. Now I discuss with my co-workers my life, as I would any other acquaintance, and I am suprised at how often this particular girl exclaims how fascinating my life has been. Fascinating? I don't know if I've ever thought of it that way. Well, I guess I've had my share of interesting adventures and carry a fair amount of spell-binding stories, but some of the things she finds so fascinating are so ordinary to me. Granted, some of these things she was forced to forfeit by having to raise two girls through her own youth - ie: being blackout drunk at retro night dancing with a bunch of gay men - but others have a lot to do with our different backgrounds. For instance, here is a conversation we had the other night. She was going to be taking off an entire week to watch her 2 teenage girls while her mother went out of town. They didn't have much planned except maybe to go to the movies a bunch of times. I thought that was ridiculous.
"You have an entire week off to do nothing, right? With 2 teenage girls?"
"well, yeah.." she began.
"You should go to Colorado! Its only 7 hours away, for godssakes!" I exclaimed.
"What's in Colorado? I mean, why would we go there?"
"um.. to see the mountains...because they're gorgeous.."
She laughed.
"Well, I guess I've never seen the mountains before. That might be nice. I want to see the Grand Canyon sometime too, and that place that shoots water from the ground.. what are those called?" You could tell she had actually dreamed about these places.
"Geysers. That's in Yellowstone."
"Is that near the Grand Canyon? I'm terrible at geography. You've probably been there too, haven't you?"

Well, yes. I have. (and no, its not close to the Grand Canyon, if you're terrible at geography, too.. though relative to the rest of the US, I suppose its in the same general area.) You see, while other kids were going to Disney Land or maybe just heading to the zoo and swimming pool all summer long, my parents took 2 weeks off every summer and hauled us out to every interesting place of natural or historical significance they could think of (Don't get me wrong, we did plenty of the zoo and swimming pool thing, too.. though usually it was free zoos, and the stock tank pool in our back yard.) Luckily, most of this road-tripping consisted of experiencing all the glories the great American wilderness had to offer, but it almost always included some kind of historical sidetrip. Lincoln's home, Fort so-and-so, the Oregon trail, the Amana colonies, etc. Now when you're an 8 year old kid, an old fort out west might be the worst kind of summer trip, but when you're all grown up, you'll be really appreciative of the experience. Everyone else thinks its fascinating, b/c no one else was driven 2 hours out into uni-bomber country to find one of most obscure ghost towns in this nation. And as I pointed out to my co-worker, you don't necessarily need a lot of money to pull off these vacations. My dad was a teacher, and my mom stayed at home to raise 3 little kids. Do you think we had a lot of money? We just pulled 10 hour days on the road, and no we didn't have dual dvd players. My older brother read Tolstoy, my younger brother listened to headphones, and I stared out the window and imagined what it would be like if I could live on a cloud.

I think my parents like to think of most life as a possible adventure. Which I suppose is fine, and maybe overall the best way to look at life. Everything is an experience, whether good or bad. When we lived in St. Louis, we acquired all our clothes as either hand-me-downs or from the local resell-it shop. A lot of our food came from the community pantry, and we actually got some of the pastries that Panera (St. Louis Bread Co) packages up at the end of the day for soup kitchens. When I asked my mom in bewilderment a few years ago how she could've let us live like that, in an apartment that was soon condemned after we moved out, she replied, "well, I guess I was just caught up in the adventure of being poor." Oh. WELL. It was only our childhood, so I'm glad you had such a fun experience. I guess the whole thing wasn't lacking on us, though. Whenever my older brother or I read The Glass Menagerie, we both think of our childhood in St. Louis. It was another life.

It was another life when we moved to Kansas and finished growing up in small town America, and another life when I went off to college. There have been so many other lifes through those years that I don't care to see most people who thought they knew me when I was an akward teenager - only those who have been around through it all.

Life has to be lived to the moment, broken up in separate pieces so you can remember each experience like a story. Each phase in time remembered almost as a different person, though always still a wisening creature. You only have one life, and it is going by with each tick of the clock.

I am feeling anxious again. Stifled, and needing to expand into something more.