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December 20, 2003The 19th. Happy 52nd to my mom :DI came home Wed night and was picked up by my half-sister I who is exhausted after a semester of teaching 2nd graders. Family history: my father got married around 19, the lovebirds had I, then they divorced. Later came my mom. Now, I, her husband V, and their son Sa. live 15 mins away from us, giving my father ample opportunity to not only (attempt to) exert his influence over his 30+y/o daughter, but also his grandson, whom he tortures every Friday afternoon with a piano lesson. Who has piano lessons on FRIDAYS? Jesus... Ira told me my father still tends to hyperventilate about Sa.'s recital performances and theory tests. From what S tells me, he's actually simmered down quite a lot since my years in high school. He seems calmer when I see him, although that's around holidays when S doesn't have math tests looming haha. Still, my mother says that he has stopped trying to help S with schoolwork (math). This is incredible. I'm not sure where my father's obsession with math comes from. Out of all the subjects, he really focused on math during both my and S's education. Also, he actually tried to teach us math he had never learned himself... That was exciting. The teaching phase with S has stopped about the same time as it did with me: the time of Calculus. I think the whole derivative/integral thing really throws him off. Still, there were some nights when I got frustrated, didn't know what I was doing, and my father would just sit on my bed and look along at the textbook, never offering direct math help, just suggesting I look for a similar example, or reread the explanation, or look at notes from class -- all things that sounded better and wiser and more important in my father's voice than in my own head. So I came home, and after delivering all necessary new news to my parents, I learned that my father has HIGH ASS cholesterol. S is extremely concerned and determined to get my father's ass in gear by dragging him to the local gym, which thrills my mother since two important males in her life are (in S's case) bulking up and (in Father's case). She was never as supportive of my quest to get what S calls "beer can calves," my senior year calves. Maybe it's time for them to make an encore appearance. S has taken up calf raises in the spirit of the beer canned ones... sweetness :D After some food, my parents stayed up and talked until 2am-ish. Always the same core topics, always some twists to add every time I come home. And on the core topic of future plans... I was exploring grad programs online when I came upon Emerson's Master's Program in Publishing and Writing (second on the page). I think the booklet I got in the mail actually gives more detail than the website haha. The list of courses in the booklet is made up of both Writing classes (think workshops, literature) and publishing/design classes. My heart stopped when I scanned through the list of classes... It looks like something I could really like :D Today was pretty fantastic for my first full day at home. The plan for the morning was to visit my high school. In the hours before I actually got into the car and drove up to school, there was much milling about in the form of: waking up, roaming about in pajamas, checking for my 8.02 final exam grade online (bastards!), and reading a letter to Dear Abby from a 12 y/o girl who wanted boys to like her for more than her "bust." Carry them proudly honey. They can be a heavy burden at times, but are also fun to play with once you get to know them better. I finally got around to my HS. The new building looks great, after so much work, so much planning, and so much overdue money still rolling in, slowly. Walking through the halls is always like being at home -- this quiet and natural sense that I've been there before, many times, for many reasons, during many different moments, and it's familiar, I know it, my past. Some of you know that I can't remember ANYTHING, EVER ("Who did I see Shrek with?"), and sometimes when I do remember, it doesn't matter what the memory is, but I receive pleasure from the simple of act of remembering something, when the past floats back up, and I get a vague sense of how things were, and how I was. Mr B was reminiscing about his olden days teaching music. After he had gone through some positive memories, he said that he should probably stop reminiscing soon, or else the real truth of his experience, along with negative memories, would come out. I said, "That's dangerous." When asked what my high school experience was like, I usually answer with some variation on, "It was awesome." In a couple years I'll say the same about MIT. Maybe the phrase will be a little more tempered, with some hesitation thrown in, like, "It was, ah... pretty fantastic." And eventually that will get reduced to, "It was an amazing time." And all these adjectives I'll use in a Biblical sense, like, "You marched across the land in awesome anger and trampled the nations in your fury" (the Evil Bible Quote of the Day from Sept 21). I've always felt that the 1st step to something becoming a part of my past is starting to view it as the past, to be consciously aware of filing away current experiences as memories, to be remembering something that's not yet over, and to know that whatever it is, it is, like most things, only temporary. After visiting my HS, I swung by Borders and then came home for a birthday dinner. My father had already given his gifts in the morning, an excellent choice of fragrance, matching lotion, and some of the most amazing roses I have ever seen (photos to come later). S&I gave ours in between snacks of blini&caviar and the main dish of deep dish pizza: Dan Brown's bestselling The DaVinci Code which she's mentioned a couple times and planned to buy for our trip to the Dominican, an MIT long sleeved tshirt which is only the start of her MIT clothing collection, and a book entitled Icons of Film to encourage her to pursue her renewed interest for movies. Rxn: "You gave me exactly what I wanted." Parents always say that haha. And... I totally had cham-pag-N & caviar! Holy moly. After dinner, I played some excerpts from this semester's DanceTroupe concert, Intensity, for my family. 1st I played the ones I was in, and my father spotted me every time I came out on stage. Daaamn he is good. Explaining the "Sexaholic" dance to my mom was fun. I think both my parents enjoyed the white dressed lyrical "Immersion" and were slightly unnerved by the hiphop pieces. They just can't take rap well. Mm. One of the best things about being home is driving down to my HS listening to WPGC and catching 92Q's beat pounding remixes on the way back home. Well, it's officially J's birthday. Happy 20th :D S spent some quality time complaining about how my father won't let him use the space heater, ever. After that came the observation that as soon as I come home, it's, "Oh, it's so cold in your room, why don't you turn on the heater" type of thing from him haha. So tonight the heater is in S's room, and so is the computer, so I will be sleeping on the "trumble" tonight. Thanks to the heater, S's room is now unnaturally toasty for a December night. I love the last days of December. |
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