I got this purple book for my Bat Mitzvah and I used it as a journal until I graduated from college...that's a lot of life to recount. Of course, it's only select snippets, but interesting nevertheless. I have several things paper-clipped to the pages in the book including the junior prom ticket, valentines, poems, cards...The thing that a lot of these things have in common, at least during my high school period, was that these were mostly from the same person...my first boyfriend, Dave. That book chronicles my entire love life...all four boyfriends; the last relationship ending five years ago.
What's interesting is that my handwriting hasn't changed but my writing style has grown up with me (as one would expect). I go back and marvel how idealistically I loved the boys that I loved...without worry about the future; it was enough to love them right then. There is no way that I would date Dave or Sean today...we have nothing in common that I would seek in a partner, yet then it made all the sense in the world. Who knew that when Dave and I grew up we would still be tentative friends but fundamentally disagree on a lot of things.
I always found it hard to write my fiction when I had a boyfriend and maybe that was because I was busy writing sappy love scenes about myself than sappy love scenes about people I made up. A part of me wishes I could return to the time when a kiss goodnight (on the cheek, no less) was what I hoped for and it was as uncomplicated as that. No JDate, no compatibility tests...just two teenagers trying to make their way through high school together.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Five Years...
Five years is a long time. It's been five years since I was a junior at Syracuse, living in my single in Shaw. It's been five years since I broke up with my then-boyfriend. It's been five years since I took my first class with Prof. Dubin. It's been five years since I sat in Dubin's class and watched in horror as buildings collapsed in New York City on a big screen like some grotesque imitation of an action movie where nameless extras died but it would all be ok if Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford saved the day.
It didn't work out that way. What I was watching was real. And I did not lose anyone close to me, directly. I did lose something that day, though and I think a lot of Americans did. We lost our security and complacency. We were no longer invincible...and are no longer invincible as we deal with the daily rigors of supposed new terror threats.
An eerie silence envleoped our campus that day and for a couple days after that. No one was walking around or playing frisbee on the quad. I sat in my room for two hours to wait for my dad to call me to make sure he got home from his Philadelphia office safely. My cell phone didn't work. I woke up the next morning to the endless news coverage that I had to switch to I Love lucy re-runs because I couldn't see them anymore. Not because I was unsympathetic, but because the images were already burned into my consciousness and I didn't need to see them anymore.
My boyfriend and I split the day after and I didn't even care; it seemed so unimportant at the time...I was spent of energy and had no more to devote to whether our fading, dysfunctional relationship survived. Instead, i took solcae in my friends and how we gathered at the chapel for Hillel the following Friday evening. I sat next to Dan like I always did and I prayed quietly, mostly to myself. I question, almost dailly, the wisdom of prayer as an act but in the end, if it makes you feel better, then why not?
The football game for that Saturday was cancelled; rescheduled and I sat in my room on Saturday, bored with nothing to do since I didn't have band to fill my time that day. I contacted old friends that I knew to be in the city area and everyone responded, which doesn't usually happen. They were more or less all right and I heard that a high school friend's father, who worked in the towers didn't go in that day. Usually, that would be a mundane detail. But today it was remarkable because he was still alive.
And nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and we shall not know war anymore.
It didn't work out that way. What I was watching was real. And I did not lose anyone close to me, directly. I did lose something that day, though and I think a lot of Americans did. We lost our security and complacency. We were no longer invincible...and are no longer invincible as we deal with the daily rigors of supposed new terror threats.
An eerie silence envleoped our campus that day and for a couple days after that. No one was walking around or playing frisbee on the quad. I sat in my room for two hours to wait for my dad to call me to make sure he got home from his Philadelphia office safely. My cell phone didn't work. I woke up the next morning to the endless news coverage that I had to switch to I Love lucy re-runs because I couldn't see them anymore. Not because I was unsympathetic, but because the images were already burned into my consciousness and I didn't need to see them anymore.
My boyfriend and I split the day after and I didn't even care; it seemed so unimportant at the time...I was spent of energy and had no more to devote to whether our fading, dysfunctional relationship survived. Instead, i took solcae in my friends and how we gathered at the chapel for Hillel the following Friday evening. I sat next to Dan like I always did and I prayed quietly, mostly to myself. I question, almost dailly, the wisdom of prayer as an act but in the end, if it makes you feel better, then why not?
The football game for that Saturday was cancelled; rescheduled and I sat in my room on Saturday, bored with nothing to do since I didn't have band to fill my time that day. I contacted old friends that I knew to be in the city area and everyone responded, which doesn't usually happen. They were more or less all right and I heard that a high school friend's father, who worked in the towers didn't go in that day. Usually, that would be a mundane detail. But today it was remarkable because he was still alive.
And nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and we shall not know war anymore.
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