Tuesday, June 2, 2009

I drank my childhood today. As a young child, while still living in my first house, my family would sometimes eat out at the nearby A&W restaurant. Alongside hamburgers and loaded hotdogs, with my little hands I would wrap my fingers around the thick jumbo sized frosted mug of root beer and take a sip of that frothy, sweet caramel-hinted syrupy fizz. Root beer was a luxury drink of my early years. We sometimes had it around, and in a kitchen cupboard, if I could ever reach, sat a couple of those A&W mugs, purchased, once, during a trip to the restaurant. I felt like a queen on the rare occasion I drank from one. When I was older and living in a new house, we never again went to A&W and rarely bought the pop from the store. It was soon only a memory and the taste of root beer became the flavor of being six years old. On the table out in the living area of my dorm floor is currently sitting a pack of root beer, bought for an evening occasion and left out afterward for any to partake. Root beer with all its sugary sweetness is no longer my pop of choice, but simply because it was sitting there, I took one, and the instant that childhood nectar touched my tongue, I felt, if just for a moment, the cool atmosphere of the air conditioned A&W as we sat in the brown and orange colored booth with plates of food before us, and cold mugs of root beer in reach, likely because the hot summer evening made the house too unpleasant to cook in. Back then, only the wealthiest people in the Northwest had air-conditioned homes. The rest of us ate out.

It is a curious thing that the older memories become, the more enjoyable and less bittersweet they are to recall, as if after a certain passage of time, they move into a different space in our brains—Memories only, where there is no longer possibility attached to it, only reflection. They enter through the door of the "Golden Days."

I find the hardest part of living in Kentucky is that nothing is old. I have no memories of Kentucky, no experience from years past, no long lasting friendships, no history here. Everything is new, and sometimes, without roots, it feels as if I’m going to be swept away. In fact, on Friday, I felt as if I was swept away and it was Marilyn who pulled me back up to my feet before I was gone, like in the midst of a raging river an unmoving rock that I could grasp onto: the voice of reason on the brink of insanity.

And so I’m brought back to the present where I’m currently sitting in my dorm room typing this. A candle burns beside me and my lights are off with the hopes of the nearby storm making an appearance, but it is too far north for any wonders tonight, I’m realizing.

As has been normal the past many days, the sun shined bright and warm today and I opened my curtains to let the light stream in as I finally finished cleaning my room. I have moved the bike back in and all that is left is to finish putting up the pictures. The goal after that: don’t mess it back up—a goal which I have never succeeded in, but with a slower paced summer I can at least pretend it might be possible.

I am discovering that Marilyn’s advice to be productive may serve less to actually feel particularly useful to the world and more to keep me from thinking about feeling useless. Today, I have been less productive than the days before and I could feel that despair begin to seep back into my bones. I wish I could enjoy the nothingness that my life is right now, the open book, the unmarked calendar. I want to enjoy it for those times that are yet to come when my life will be more full than there are hours in the day to live it. But, in truth, it is difficult to enjoy a break from something you haven’t yet lived.

But I’m still enjoying the reality that I have nothing I need to set my alarm for. I can be lazy in my productivity and take all the time I need, and it is nice to see the enjoyable results of things neglected just a few weeks ago, like a clean room. I can get back to my Bengali lessons, as I do every summer, and hope that maybe this year I’ll get somewhere further with them. And maybe, hopefully, I can come to be at peace with myself enough to be able to sit still for a while and just read. Tomorrow, however, I will finish putting up my pictures, and then, because I can’t sit still quite yet, I will clean the bathroom.

PS. Today, I had a job interview for a workstudy job for the City of Wilmore. I will be hopeful about it. I would like the job.