I don’t know what’s come over me the last few days, but I’ve been sadly homesick in the worst way. What way is that? I’m homesick for homes that no longer exist. Yearning for people and places and situations that I couldn’t get to even if I tried really hard and spent all of my money. That just sucks. If this is what being an adult is all about, then I must say that I think it’s for the birds.
It all started a few days ago when someone asked me about my ring that I wear. It’s my Great Aunt Barb’s wedding band and I’ve been wearing it since I was 18. That’s 8 years of wearing this ring and I still don’t think of it as mine. I think of it as Aunt Barb’s. But for some reason when someone asked me about it for the millionth time, I realized that it’s not her ring. It’s mine. It belongs to me and when I die, it will get passed along to someone who never even met Aunt Barb. That just made me a little sad. But I bucked up and it didn’t bother me for too long.
Then the next day Lisa and I were in the grocery store and I walked by a bin of fresh green beans and was hit with a waft of that smell and was suddenly thrown back in time 20 years to a summer when I was 6 when I spent some time in Michigan all by myself with my Grandma Genow (oh how cool did I think I was that I got to go there all by myself? so super cool! Maren didn’t get to go by herself, but I did!). Grandma had a garden out back and more than one night during my stay we would snap the ends off of the fresh picked green beans. There I was standing in the grocery store while Lisa was reading the list of things we needed, and trying my best not to let on that I was missing my grandmother something fierce.
This isn’t something that happens to me often, as she died 13 years ago, but there I was, wishing I was snapping the ends off of green beans, or playing UNO (which she and I did every night before I went to bed) or going to Lukes (the grocery store) or riding in her big giant green car with the plastic virgin mary taped to the dashboard. Life was good and I was missing it. But, I calloused up and went about my grocery shopping business.
And then the kicker. I was talking to my friend from nursing school, Autumn, and I was sitting on the couch, watching some Olympic coverage and was suddenly hit with such a desire to be in Weatherford, Oklahoma that I almost couldn’t take it. Now, this desire to be back in college, living with my best friend (Amber) and having the best time ever, is a constant, but this day it was overwhelming. Usually when I’m missing Amber and college, I will give her a call and we’ll reminisce for a few minutes and I’ll feel better. However, this time I felt that if I called Amber and started talking about all of the things I was yearning for I might actually cry. What!? Brianne working up tears for something that is not a sports-related-warm-fuzzy or General Hospital or a good book? Inconcievable! And yet, that is where I was. I then made the mistake of looking at pictures from college and that made it ever so much worse. The worlds greatest apartment on Huber. Living next door to John and Young Dan. All of the crazy stupid things that Amber and I did that we can’t tell anyone about because you really really did have to be there. Oh, Berta, why did we leave college after only 4 years? That was the biggest mistake we ever made. Damn our stupid smart life plan. Boo!
This is just a really crappy feeling to have. It’s not like when you’re at camp as a kid and can go to the home you miss at the end of the week. These are people and places that I can’t ever see again and while this is not new information to me, it’s been unusually upsetting the last few days. I don’t like it.
As if she could sense my distress from afar, Amber called as I was just finishing this blog and she could understand and identify with my need for a place that we can’t get back to. Thanks, Berta, for your timely call and for being the best roomie ever!
[sort of but not really related-does anyone know of a good way to get my old photo prints that aren't digital onto a digital disk? the only way i know of is to take them all to a duane reade or the like and scan them all in one at a time to one of those kodak scanner things. this is so time consuming that i'm hoping that there is an easier way. perhaps a place i can send my photos where they will do it for me? does anyone have any suggestions?]
