nostalgia, cooking, and baby tomato plants
Posted: 19 May 2009 Filed under: beautiful day, drew, friends Leave a comment »today i got a text from a college friend. it said “it’s such a beautiful day. makes me miss going to the swings at drew!” we texted back and forth in this vein, about the things we would do on a day like this – skip class, swing, drink, nap, be barefoot and happy…and about how we miss each other.
i wonder sometimes if i will always be nostalgic for drew. even as i write this i’m tearing up. because even though i have wonderful things in my life, things that make now so much better than then, i feel like that haunted old, daffodil covered campus, full of people i loved and who made me feel like it was okay to be me, will always be a little bit of what heaven looks like in my mind. and i don’t like missing people. but i can’t avoid it…so many people who i love are far away.
and yet, it is such a beautiful day. and there are so many things that i can do on a beautiful day that i couldn’t do when i was taking classes and working on 5 plays at a time. i can make paneer to go in my korma and with my spinach. i can plant the tomatoes i bought at shaw’s. i can do laundry and hang it on the newly functional clothesline. and the domestic goddess in me loves that. but there’s a part of my soul that’s longing for a patch of weedy grass in new jersey where i can spread out my blanket, drink my “lime slushy” and fall asleep in the sunshine.
friend shift
Posted: 10 May 2009 Filed under: friends Leave a comment »it’s strange…i’ve spent a large chunk of my past decade nurturing and struggling with long distance friends. since college ended i’ve never had many nearby friends. living in troy, there were 2, and acquaintances from shows. during grad school, there were a lot of classmates, but only 3 or 4 i’d call friends, most of whom have either moved or moved on since…the people i considered closest to me, other than jen, were all miles away. and while some of those people are still the most important to me, i’ve started to develop local friends. not just former roommate friends, who i love to bits, but rarely see…but friends i actually plan for social engagements with and stay awake to hang out with, and talk to on the phone when they’re sad. it’s nice to be entering a new friendship phase in my life, even as i’m anticipating celebrating the weddings of a long distance college friend and a local, former roommate, co-activist friend. it makes me realize the importance of all different types and styles of friendship.
