Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Welcome to the Compound

I can very distinctly remember my 8th grade year. My best friend and I were inseparable. We had been best friends since 5th grade. We dressed alike when we could. We had pet nicknames for each other. We listed the boys we liked in initials running the length of our folders and notebooks surrounded by arrow-stabbed hearts. We had our own table of friends in the lunch room. We had teachers wrapped around our little fingers. We had dreams too. Even though this was before the time of "Friends," that urbane group of chic, beautiful people, living together and hanging out in a coffee shop in New York City, this was how my bff and I envisioned our grown-up lives...maybe with a little Sex in the City thrown in. I knew even then that I wanted to be a teacher, but that could fit the dream, I figured. They had to have teachers in New York!
But as often happens, my bff and I drifted apart in high school. There was no drama or angst involved. It seems now it was as gradual as the seasons and it crept up on us like dusk to children called inside too soon on a summer night. My dreams stayed with me, even after the best friend was gone. I wanted to escape the mundane town in which I resided. You couldn't even call it a small town; its legal description is village. I still felt the city calling me.
In college, my thoughts of living on the east coast were resurrected for an inkling when I dreamed that Mr. Right, graduating as I was a sophomore, would beg me to transfer schools and come with him. While I imagined he was Mr. Right, it turned out I was just Miss Right Now.
Picking myself up and dusting myself off, it was cities in the south that called to me next. Minoring in Spanish, working in the summers with migrant children, and eyeing an opportunity to student teach in Texas, I began making different plans. Once again, I found my plans changing.
This time it was due to boredom and ennui, which happily led to a forever love. At any point along this journey, if anyone had told me I would be blissfully married to the man who truly is my Mr. Right, I would have laughed until I was blue in the face. These days I do laugh until I am blue in the face...because our life together is joyous and funny and just plain awesome.
So welcome to the blog of our life stories. Welcome to the joy and the pain and the children and the animals and the mess of a yard and the white house behind the red farm gate that we affectionately call The Compound.

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