Preface: There are two songs that have profoundly affected me in these last few weeks and I want to share them with you, if you'll let me.

I turned 23 just a few weeks ago. For the last few years, I have greatly anticipated turning 23 because of a very special Jimmy Eat World song of that name. The day before I turned 23, feeling on top of the world, I had my last day of student teaching, and drove to Mobile blasting this song out of my windows. I cried then, feeling so relieved to be through such a huge part of my life, and finally feeling ready to be a "grownup."

I felt for sure last night
That once we said goodbye
No one else will know these lonely dreams
No one else will know that part of me
I'm still driving away
And I'm sorry every day
I won't always love these selfish things
I won't always live...
Not stopping...

It was my turn to decide
I knew this was our time
No one else will have me like you do
No one else will have me, only you

You'll sit alone forever
If you wait for the right time
What are you hoping for?
I'm here I'm now I'm ready
Holding on tight
Don't give away the end
The one thing that stays mine

Amazing still it seems
I'll be 23
I won't always love what I'll never have
I won't always live in my regrets

You'll sit alone forever
If you wait for the right time
What are you hoping for?
I'm here I'm now I'm ready
Holding on tight
Don't give away the end
The one thing that stays mine

A month has not even passed since I turned my favorite age, and I've experienced the hardest part of growing up already: losing a loved one. I saw Grannie the weekend I graduated and had a wonderful weekend with her. We laughed, like we always do, and even got choked up over the same card that my mom gave me that said, "I think you've found your wings." (Grannie read this blog and knew exactly what it meant.) At the funeral, many wonderful things were said about her, but to me, she was the embodiment of Jesus' greatest commandment: "Love one another, as I have also loved you." She was endlessly tolerant and unselfish, completely giving of herself and her resources for her "family", which included those who were related to her, and a special few who weren't. Losing her was sudden and unexpected, like being punched the stomach. From the moment Mom called and said she was in the hospital, I had this overwhelming feeling of loss and I immediately missed her. We drove 17 hours each way to Odessa for the viewing and funeral. As beautiful and well planned as the funeral was, nothing can fill that feeling of loss that tugs at me. It feels like a wound that will never heal. My heart breaks for Granjack, who I know feels infinitely more wounded than me or anyone else can feel about her loss.

There is another song that has suddenly become very important to me because of these recent events. I never really connected to the song till now. Rob has always loved it, and for some reason had been fixated on it in the weeks before Grannie passed. Mom called me as Grannie was in her final hours, saying that Granjack, Dad, his siblings, and several others who had gone to Sherman, were refusing to leave Grannie's side. At the time, I didn't understand how they could sit and watch her suffer. Dad agonizingly watched the monitors slowing down as she slipped away just before midnight on May 15. Rob later said that this song, "What Sarah Said" by Deathcab for Cutie, fully describes what he and his family all were going through. I know he is right.

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself that I'd already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD took you a little farther away from me
Away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines in a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds
But I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground as the TV entertained itself

'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said
That "Love is watching someone die"

So who's going to watch you die?

I'm kind of homesick for a country
To which I've never been before.
No sad goodbyes will there be spoken
for time won't matter anymore.

Beulah Land, I'm longing for you
and some day on thee I'll stand.
There my home shall be eternal.
Beulah Land -- Sweet Beulah Land

I'm looking now across the river
where my faith will end in sight.
There's just a few more days to labor.
Then I will take my heavenly flight.

Beulah Land, I'm longing for you
and some day on thee I'll stand.
There my home shall be eternal.
Beulah Land -- Sweet Beulah Land

-

we love you. longing to see you again.

I'm pleased to say that this is my first blog as a graduate of the University of Alabama.

Last weekend's ceremony was long and boring, and made even more uncomfortable by the Elementary Ed graduate sitting next to me who kept violating my personal space. Insert Inner Monologue: This is my chair, that one is yours. Both are not yours. We must learn to share. Isn't that something you teach your elementary students? Also, if you would just shut up for five minutes and show some respect for the speakers and other honorees today, you would no longer be turned around in your chair talking to those behind you and, therefore, all up in my bid-ness!

After graduation, my whole family came back to my apartment and pigged out, which is the perfect cap to any celebration, if you ask me.

My LOVE has been in town all week long and I'm really getting used to him being here. We've been trying to get some important things accomplished while he's here; so far, we've taken care of his wedding band, the invitation design and wording, cleaning up our gift registries, and catching up with old friends. Quite productive. We still can't find bedding that we both love and is affordable. We found some beautiful bedding at Macy's, but holy cow it's expensive. Like, we could buy a bed and some nightstands with that money. However, if you would like to buy the bedding for us, dear reader, I would be forever grateful! :-) For now, we have decided to keep looking and just buy bedding later with cash we receive in wedding gifts.

Unfortunately, this weekend Rob will have to leave and return to his normal life and I will have to start packing up my apartment. Yikes. Moving is such a pain. However, I am looking forward to throwing/giving away things that I no longer need or use. It will be a cleansing experience, I'm sure.

Ta.

I mentioned a while back how much I love the new U2 record. One particular song, "White as Snow" is particularly resonant lately, especially in light of something that my pastor said a few weeks ago. Bono, in all his good-deed-doing, claims to not be into organized religion, but somehow, he always ends up to be a theologian in his lyric writing. Or maybe I'm just reading my faith into it, like I did with Radiohead's "Let Down" in a previous entry.

As boys we would go hunting in the woods
To sleep the night shooting out the stars.
Now the wolves are every passing stranger,
Every face we cannot know.
If only a heart could be as white as snow.
If only a heart could be as white as snow.

"Now the wolves are every passing stranger/ Every face we cannot know"-- the level of distrust and suspicion that we bring into our interpersonal communication results in a series of tactics of self-preservation with as little human interaction as possible. We ruin relationships before we even get a change to have them by seeking to avoid potential "wolves".

For example, as I was driving home this weekend for my dress fitting, I was in the left hand lane passing another car at about 7 miles over the speed limit. Another car rushed up behind me and came up very close to my bumper. Because I was unable to get over at the time, I just continue driving. When I looked again in my rear view mirror, it appeared that he was about to hit me. I slammed on my brakes (briefly, though) and honked my horn. I got over to the right hand lane as soon as I could. As he flew past me at 90 mph, HE flipped ME off! I was so mad that my reflexes, unfortunately, were not quick enough to return the gesture in time for him to see.

As I watched him speed ahead and exit a mile or so later, I thought, "That guy will always be the a-hole who flipped me off." To him, I will be "that slow female driver who almost made me hit her". I will never get to know that man, but in our brief encounter, we both chose to be hostile toward each other (me, toward his tailgating, and he, toward my "get-off-my-butt" driving tactics). Once I realized that I let my anger get in the way of showing the man some patience and undeserved courtesy, I was sad for the two of us. Now we both have lost another piece of faith in the human race. Lesson learned: while it's true--"Every face we cannot know", I need to show love, not hostility, to every "passing stranger".

With that said, here is the quotation from my church's bulletin on the 26th that REALLY got me thinking about such brief encounters. It's long, but it's worth it:

"It is easy to produce examples of the many ways in which Americans attempt to minimize, circumvent, or deny the interdependence upon which all human societies are based. We seek a private house, a private garden, a private laundry, self-service stores, and do-it yourself skills of every kind. An enormous technology seems to have set itself the task of making it nnecessary for one human being ever to ask anything of another in the course of going about his daily business. …We seek more and more privacy and feel more and more alienated and lonely when we get it. Our encounters with others tend increasingly to be competitive as a result of the search for privacy. We less and less often meet our fellow man to share and exchange, and more and more often encounter him as an impediment or a nuisance; making a highway crowded when we are rushing somewhere, cluttering or littering the beach or park or wood, pushing in front of us at the supermarket, taking the last parking place, polluting our air and water and so on. Because we have cut off so much communication with each other we keep bumping into each other, and thus a higher and higher percentage of our interpersonal contacts are abrasive."

-from Pursuit of Loneliness
Philip Slater

My last week went unbelievably well. I did have to stop a fight in another classroom while all the teachers were in a parent conference (By "stop a fight", I mean, I got an administrator out of the conference to page our SRO... I'm not stupid enough to get between two angry adolescents!). I remember when I first started student teaching, I would panic when Mrs. R left the classroom for a minute, fearing that something would happen and it would be my fault because I couldn't control the classroom. This last week as Mrs. R was in and out of the classroom, I finally realized that nothing would happen as long as I was in charge and for the first time, I really felt like a teacher! I figure if I can survive student teaching in an inner city school in an impoverished neighboorhood, I can make it anywhere.