Tag: personal nonsense

Last night I attended Greek Week’s Recognition Night. The final portion of the evening was dedicated to seniors. First, they presented a slideshow with pictures of us as babies and as college almost-graduates. Second, they delivered letters from our parents. Although seeing the picture of myself was funny – I had never seen it before – I was particularly affected by the letter.

At first, I didn’t think much of it. I’m a little disappointed in myself in admitting that at first blush, I felt the letter was rather blase. I think I read over it and imagined that it was the same letter that every other senior would be receiving. Nevertheless, I called my mother and thanked her for the effort. She told me I was welcome, of course, but also told me that dad cried a little after he wrote it. We both chuckled at the cuteness of it: the tenderness most-times hidden beneath a tough, austere face.

When I called last night, I was out with friends, and so couldn’t talk for very long. I called her again this morning and after talking with her, spoke to my dad. He expressed that the letter was very hard to write. After my conversation with them, I picked up the letter again and read it. I think this is when the disappointment for how I originally viewed the letter sank in, but then was quickly washed away by what the letter actually said: “We couldn’t be more proud of you.”

Although I constantly think my parents are insane for being proud of me and I don’t understand where their perception of me comes from, I’m realizing that their pride means something very special to me – much more than I originally thought. I regularly get down on myself for not doing enough. I don’t study enough, I don’t work hard enough, I don’t mean enough to enough people, I don’t win enough awards, I don’t make enough money, I’m not being a good enough friend or lover, and so forth. This morning, I woke up mired in that familiar well of disappointment and regret. When I read the letter my father wrote and was confronted with how proud he and my mom really are of me, I started feeling that everything was okay. I started to realize that I usually subject myself to a pretty impossible rubric for what I should be as a human being. And although that will probably never change…and honestly, I don’t know that I ever would want it to change, I’m realizing now that the only rubric that should matter to me is the one my parents put forth. Honestly, who do I owe more for all that I have been able to experience and do? And who do I care more for? My love for them runs so deep that I can easily forget about it: it fades into the background of who I am, something as vital but discrete as blood or bone.

I may never think that I’ve done anything worth a damn, but I’ve got to say, so long as my parents think highly of me, I can feel proud of that. I hope that in the future, when I get down on myself, this is what I’ll return to.

My dad started off his letter by commenting on how wonderful spring is because of the sense of newness one gets from flowers and trees starting to bloom. As I was writing, I looked out my window and realized that the oaks outside were in full bloom for the first time this year. My father ended his letter by proclaiming how excited I must be at the newness that lays before me. I guess he was right.

An hour and nineteen minutes into a day stretching ignorantly into an obliviously lengthy future, I’m waiting on a program to
run – just, run, damn you! – and let my head sink into its ‘relaxed’ pose: cocked slightly to the right, angled towards my left. In direct line of sight is a whiteboard I’ve mounted, but never used. A smattering of reference papers (“Return Reason
Codes…) and self-important notes begging for attention (“Call Amy! 000-000-0000”), but above and beyond them, an understated expanse of white which begins to call to me. Perhaps its just the ridiculously upbeat overtones of Belle and
Sebastian’s’For the Price of a Cup of Tea'(“If you want to know the truth / Her friend the stars dripping from the jewelled sky…She can finally be the person she wanted to be”), or maybe its a lack of sleep, coffee deprivation, or something similarly mundane, but I find my mind heeding the whiteboard’s furtive whispers, and all of a sudden, everything looms large.

My gray threaded cubicle office widens beyond the normal sight I’m possessed of and gives way to white, all white, as my body- and something deeper, depper – falls (simply falls!) into the small two-foot by two-foot whiteboard which I know just shouldn’t be able to contain me, but there I go! It is, in this moment, the window I had never too-seriously hoped for. Standing atop a cliffface, I’m overlooking the endless sea of land dotted with budding forests, rising and falling breaths of hills, and creeks running in the direction I’m facing – which the rising sun on my right tells me must be North – as though racing each other to see who can get farthest away from the cliff first. Wind whips around my face and seems to challenge my right to stand here, right here, and brings to bear a cloying scent reminiscent of Rome and its proud, old trees. Sia’s voice howls around me, “Just breathe,” and then holds. The world becomes silent and I close my eyes. Without fear or the hesitation which common reason screams would be wise, I close my eyes and spread my arms. I’m suddenly aware of the world slowing down around me in its silence, my heart beats, and the pulse sallies forth through my veins and I feel it like I would a
shockwave, flowing down through my body to, yes to my heel. As though it were a powder keg and that wave of sanguine energy the match, my foot explodes into a minute expression of inertia, released. My toes gain strength and inch upwards, my foot pushes against the ground it was, seemingly for eternity, married to. I’m cognizant of a sweet sense of freedom, of flying, of becoming.

“Just breathe.”