Today, I made up for the things I didn't do yesterday. I did, after all, write up the interview from last week, though the more I think about them the less I think this will make publication. Unless I'm underestimating the volume of interesting local news, I have a feeling this one's going nowhere, and so I have decreasing dedication toward finishing it. The paper didn't send out a photographer, so it's that much easier for it to make it to the bottom of the stack and never return.
I cooked some things today to eat through this week. I expect that I'll be out and around doing things most of the week and wanted to have things at least semi-ready-to-eat when I get back at night. Too many nights lately it's been far too easy to get home, lacking any energy to cook something good, and pick up the speed-dial on the phone and force the pizza guy to bring the steaming flat thing. So I now have a bottom shelf filled with curried rice, vegetable soup, and macaroni and cheese.
I'm not vegetarian. I thought about it once, but realized that I have no particular aversion to meat or the process by which it's produced, and rather than worrying about it, I simply eat what I like in moderation. I think my goal is to simply live simply, not to make a political statement through what I place in my mouth. This week's refrigerator meals are more a reflection of not wanting to figure out what to do with chicken or fish. The advantage to all the things I did end up making is that any of them can be frozen in case a better dinner deal manifests itself.
No, he didn't call today. I probably used the soup-making in particular as an excuse to hang around the house, waiting for the phone. It didn't happen. I'd have settled even for Marcy to call, looking for a post-mortem on last night, but even that disappointed me.
I will not fall into that trap. I will not suddenly start doing the girlish, high-school fretting I never actually did in high school. I will not suddenly warp my psyche around this guy. You heard it here.
........
It's now somewhat later, and I'm thinking some more about that last line. I really didn't do a lot of "typical high school" things in high school. I spent my time playing music, writing, and trying to blend into the background. I'd bet there will someday be someone who will happen across this page and not recognize me. Someone who would have presumed they knew me when I was 17 or 18, but wouldn't even make the connection now. The picture's pretty different than I was in 1986 (it's a different than I look now, for that matter) and the things I say here and do here are nothing like the me of eleven or twelve years ago.
I'm not sure now what I missed. Did I miss something? I had few definite "dates" then. I never had what you'd call a "boyfriend." I spent my time with a loose collection of people all of whom seemed to share the idea that for any one of us to pair off with another would spoil the symmetry of the group.
James, the clarinetist. He stopped playing after college and I haven't heard anything about him in at least five years. Terri, the singer, who was tiny where I was a giant, energetic where I was passive, intense where I was moderate. She got married in her second year at the University of Wisconsin and never finished. Doug and Dan, who lived for marching band and seemingly knew every chemistry fact there was to know. I don't know what happened to them after high school. No word at all. Molly, a bassoonist who moved away partway through senior year, left a psychological hole no one else filled. She was the femme fatale of the group and often dated "other guys" but was always strictly friends with the guys in our circle. One Friday night when I gave him a ride home after a concert, James once confided in me a terrible crush on Molly, and I understood why. He was like a puppy and was not the same after she left. Last I heard, Molly was in graduate school in New York somewhere. Lynette, who was my second oboist all during high school, also gave up playing after she went off to school. And Derrick, the cellist, who had these blue eyes like the Hope diamond -- I had a terrible crush on him which I, too, never dared speak -- went away to Virginia and later to Europe. He had hard times after college and apparently got into drugs for a while. That hurt me to hear about. I felt like the six or seven of us, together, were all the healing and support we needed, and when we fragmented and went our ways in the mid-1980's, we lost something of ourselves that maybe we haven't recovered yet. I felt like there was something I could have done to keep them all together and healthy. I know that I've felt more alone since.
The high-school things, though... one thing about being part of an insular group was not undergoing the agony that I watched other girls undergo. I didn't sit around on Friday nights waiting for someone to call me to go to the dance after the football game. Instead, our group went to Denny's, got the good booths and waited to hear about the game later. I never agonized about the prom, but then also, I never was asked. I remember feeling a little left out. At the time I didn't let it register on me. There was too much pleasure in devaluing those conventional wants. Too much smugness in feeling superior to those wrestling in the social snake pits. I don't feel that way now.
Now? Maybe some part of me feels like I missed something. Maybe a lot of things. There's little to do about it now. I'm not 17, I'm not surrounded by a group of like-minded friends, I'm not any of that.
It took a while for me to choose the image that you found on my home page. I looked through several possible images, and even considered going out and sitting for a photograph now. I chose that image because it represents what I think was the most pristine version of me. Just about done with that process of personal re-learning that is undergrad, not yet dented by grad school and work and everything that happened after. I look positive, optimistic, interested in the future. I knew where I'd been and thought I knew where I was going.