Drunk-dialed Birthdays are the Best Kind

I’ve been feeling down these days.

My job feels pointless more and more often:
I think often of the future, and my plans.
Even my boss asked me that yesterday.

There is, of course, the PSU thing.
I don’t even have the energy to touch that subject. (Another day, perhaps…)

As I sat in my home this eve,
I received a call from my Cousin.

Its her 21st birthday….my mother, my aunt, and two of my uncles are taking her out in York.
She calls. Drunk. (of course)

I immediately smile when I hear her slurred words.
I flashback to 1999. My 21st. My uncles and aunts take me out (from what little i remember….)

She continues to ramble…
"i wish you were here"
"Why are you in Illinois"

and my smile mixes with heartbroken sadness.

I think of my past. My upbringing….
Everything my family did to help a little bastard-child born with hopes and dreams.

And I think how everything has changed.
I think how I rarely seem them, if ever.
I think of the end of the home I grew up in (with the death of my grandparents…its being sold)

I think of my cousin, so young, just a child when I went off to college in 1996.
How much time we used to spend together….

And so here I sit, at my computer;
smiling.
writing.
and dreaming of home.

Cheers,
E.