May 2, 2004

It’s supposed to be for makeup

“…but you came and you gave without taking…”

Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” is running through my head and there is this odd contrast of Bea Arthur and Rue McLanahan’s voices bantering underneath it all. To my right is Mark’s completed Bach paper, the infamous Axe bomb cans, the 1st place Twisters mug, the invitation to Pakes’ graduation party. Billy is across the hall, watching “The Fast and the Furious” on computer and Brian and Kevin are watching “Unbreakable.” I want to go to StopGap for a BAC but I don’t have keys to get back into Bigelow. My fear is rising and I know that the only thing that can quell it is time – a week or so, and my life will either begin again or be shattered forever.

What is this life that I have molded?

And the playlist switches to Billy Joel and I am taken back to high school. I suddenly miss the night walks and the quilt and ice cream with milk and Rotamer Road and weekly “TXF” with popcorn. Will this longing for the past ever leave me? Will marriage, children, even death be the final eraser?

There is really nothing left of who I used to be – the events of the past year have made sure to cover all traces, whether in bad ways or good. I have my name, my trademark blue eyes, my crooked nose. But I wear a different ring on a different finger, I weigh a little more, and I keep a different number on Speed Dial #2.

My summer will be filled with work, motorcycles, races, ice cream, volleyball, shopping, the girls, movies, pancake breakfasts, co-ed sleepovers, “Law & Order.” Every day marked off on the calendar is a slash on the wrist of my old life.

Am I supposed to change this much? Am I growing up or growing away?

I love you. You are no less important to me than you were a year ago, a year and a half ago, three years ago (can you believe it has been that long?). But I shuffle you to the back of my heart with only the slightest twinge of…anything. It is where you belong – with the white box emblazoned with your name and the stack of photographs kept in the blue plastic box.

its all part of growing up. we are all changing into who we will be as adults. the past is there to remind us of mistakes not to make again, but more importantly how to smile at the memories of what was. we all long to go back just once, for one day, but sometimes we just have to grow up, but we will be growing up together, and not growing away. miss you! ~jill

food master

May 9, 2004

Change is a good thing, something to be charished and excited about. We take the best of our past and let it remind us of where we came from so we can have a guide into where we want to go. So often where we think we want to go is so far away from where we actually end up…it surprizes us. My belief: We are where we are at the time we are suppose to be there. Think about it.