the deep breath, and then the plunge

**warning: the following is lengthy and impossibly wordy! :)

finally, some moments of silence in the house. everyone gone to work or still sleeping, and i sit here eating flourless chocolate cake with whipped cream for my breakfast (with coffee, of course.) it's my first day off from work since i started five days ago. for the five days previous to that i was packing, moving, and cleaning. so it's felt like a while since i've had any time to be alone with my thoughts...especially after coming out of a year where many days ALL i had was time and my thoughts. ;)

i like to think that my current gratefulness for these few moments of peace and solitude will both help me sympathize with all of my friends who are parents and prepare me for the time in my own life when my children will demand every second of my attention. this past sunday at church we were studying the passage at the end of chapter 1 of mark, when jesus leaves peter's house in capernaum in the middle of the night to find solitude after a long day of demands from other people. somehow i feel like finally now, in these few moments of quiet, i have the clarity necessary for a bit of reflection.

it's been a strange and wonderful year for me, truly a time out of time...a pause, but not really, because life keeps moving and everything changes and me with it. i've taken lately to calling it my 'sabbattical year', and i am immensely grateful for it. it was not always comfortable. i struggled a lot with feelings of laziness, ineptitude, uselessness, triviality. i put these on myself and then also began to notice a shift in the attitudes of some of my friends toward me, as if they agreed with these assessments. there are a few who i've felt looking at me with a newly developed distaste, as if they sized me up and found me lacking. perhaps they thought i was wasting my time, or my resources, taking up oxygen and space and energy and not contributing anything of value to the world in their eyes. i got the feeling that they had lost respect for me, that i was a disappointment. i admit that this could be in my own mind, my own fears and doubts coloring my assumptions of how others view me. but there has been a subtle shifting of friendships, some stalwart companions who have faithfully loved and encouraged me through these last frustratingly aimless months and others who would seem to rather keep their distance. i have felt much of the time as if i was floating, treading water, on a great sea with no land in sight. there i tread and hoped for rescue. i waited and waited. i wondered if i should DO something, but i felt like what i was supposed to do was wait. it was difficult. and finally, a current came and swept me up. and i still don't know quite where it's taking me but it's a relief to be carried along in some direction.

life is funny and rarely turns out the way i imagine. last summer i remember wishing quite vehemently that my brother and i could switch places and i could be twenty again, just finishing up college and getting ready for the rest of my life; he could be thirty and working for a decade and financially and emotionally well-prepared to marry his girlfriend and start his family. well, here i am: working at starbucks and living with my family for the summer. back in my crowded room overlooking the maple trees, back in the green apron. i've been granted my wish to do it over. will i make all of my old mistakes again? am i fated to repeat my patterns, or can i break out of the rut into a bright and dazzling future? i feel it's the latter. there's a buzz and effervescence under the surface as i keep walking forward; an undercurrent of electricity that tells me something exciting is just around the next corner. the difference is that i'm NOT twenty anymore; i've had a decade to ponder what it is i want to do and be and how i fit into the tapestry of history...and the ephemeral clouds of desire and dream are FINALLY beginning to take tangible shapes. i feel prepared to name the things that i want and do my best to take the steps necessary to acheive them. i've always been so inspired by my friends who do this: who fix their gaze on what they desire and ambitiously work to attain it. i thought myself incapable of their focus and dedication to their goal. but perhaps i too can join their ranks of persistance and eventual achievement. oh, my, but i'm rambling now. blah blah blah!!

i've been checking memoirs out of the library, reading them on my breaks at work and for a few minutes every night before i succumb to my exhaustion. i've just finished 'love child' by allegra huston (sister of anjelica.) here are a few passages that resonated with me:

"Dad praised accomplishment, not effort. That made sense to me. I wanted to do things just right, and I didn't see anything to praise in doing them badly just for the sake of it. And he, good at so many things, made them all seem effortless. I had little concept of learning, outside of academics; I thought you ought to be able to paint, or sing, or ride, the first time you did them--or at least, show obvious talent that required only honing and direction. So I avoided the things I couldn't do, and played to my strengths."

"I had learned not to want what wasn't there. I tried not to ask, or expect, of people what they didn't have--or want--to give. Really, I tried not to ask or expect anything; that way I wouldn't be disappointed, and whatever came to me would be a bonus, a treat. I wasn't by nature a doormat, but I tried to look at things from the other person's point of view. Circumstances were difficult. Everyone was doing the best they could."

"I felt like a pretense, a walking shell: the shape and shadow of me, the brain of me, but a blank space where the heart should be. I wondered, suddenly, if I'd ever really had one. Who would I cry never to see again? No one. I could outlast any loss now. It scared me--mildly, as much as I could be scared by anything less than a raging beast or a plane crash--that I was so empty."

i find while reading books that i tend to start thinking in the voice of the writer or character, that i mold myself and my thoughts into their style. i like reading memoirs because i find individual lives so fascinating. it's what i named 'the human experience' as a teenager. every person so incredibly unique, every moment of every day unique because although circumstances are universal, we all process through our own filters. i want to understand as much as possible what it's like to be not only me, but anyone--everyone--else.

well. there's quite a bit of heavy, and now for some light. independence day was delightful as usual. i rose before sunrise and went to work, then headed up to seattle to spend the rest of the day with gwen. we decided the theme of the day was "thirteen again" and we walked to the grocery store, ate frozen yogurt, ran through the sprinkler, lay in the sun, and talked about boys. then when it cooled off a bit, we went on one of our urban hikes down through the city, to the waterfront, back along the lake, and stopped to watch the gasworks fireworks through the aurora bridge. i love fireworks: the big round ones in all of their bright colors, the spindly bursts like pointed flowers, the sparkling white and gold that fall through the dark slowly. my achilles heels are shredded and i've got big blisters on the bottoms of both feet, but it was well worth it.

i'm looking forward to HP6 coming out next week and cooking at camp (where my darling max will be a camper)...hopefully a visit to montreal later in the summer to visit amiliah, who is studying there for a semester...maui in september, and DC for christmas. i've been to so many extraordinary wedding celebrations so far this year and have even more to look forward to. life is bright and ever-changing and incredible.