Hi. Henry's up here again. I just talked him into playing Starfox while I work on my page- he's been busy trying to design his own. I'd give you a link, but I can't read his handwriting, so I don't know what directory name he picked out. It's fairly dumb right now anyway- just a list called "My Favorite Bombs" and an exploding bomb graphic. (I don't think anybody would be surprised if this kid goes mows down half the kids at his school some day. He is way too obsessed with exposives.)Yesterday I stayed up until almost 7:00 in the morning fooling around on this computer. I slept until 1:30. I like staying up all night, but unfortunately I can't tonight because I'm babysitting tomorrow and I have to be ready for her to pick me up at 12:45. I love babysitting. I would love to find a job I could do at home so that ten years from now I can be doing just what I'm doing now- sitting at a computer in the middle of the living room, only I'll have kids everywhere. I want lots of kids, but I don't have any intention of every actually having kids. I'd like to adopt and have foster kids. If my future lover wants to have biological kids, I can go along with that. But I'm sure not gonna be the one to carry them. At least that's how I feel right now. I'm told things like that change when you get older, but we'll see.
The only problem with this plan is the "future lover" part. I'm only sixteen, and I still spend time thinking I'll never find someone I could live with for the rest of my life. I mean, I've been in love once already, and it wasn't just some case of little puppy love like you think of when you think of teenagers in love. I realize probably half the people who read that sentence won't believe it, but it's still true. Maybe there's some kind of limit on that stuff. Maybe you can only be in love once. Besides, even if you can have more than one "love of your life" how in the world would I findher? I mean, if you're ready for a relationship and you're straight and have the guts you can pretty much walk up to any guy and ask him out on a date. Me, even if I had the guts (and I most definitely don't) if I just picked a girl and walked up and asked her out, I would have something like a 90% chance she has no interest. The only way around that is to go to someplace where you know everybody is gay, but around here anyway the only place like that are bars, and I don't drink. Even if I did, I probably couldn't get in. Maybe once I get to college in August.. They have a GLBT student group. I saw the room. Of course, the community college I'm at now has one too, but when I first got there I wasn't ready and after that I knew the advisor and I was too embarassed to admit it.... especially because he was one of the only ones who knew how old I am. And I've found there are people who don't believe 16 year olds can know their sexuality. This is a very strange idea to me, but then there are a lot of ideas out there I don't understand, so I guess that's okay.Entirely New Subject: Alex** is this kid I grew up with. His mom and my mom worked together and were pregnant together... He was born about three months before me, and pretty soon after that started going to this baby-sitter in town. Pauline** (his mom) liked her, so when I was born, my mom took me there too. Now you put two little kids together like that, they're going to become friends. Just like dogs- put 'em together long enough, and they'll mate. Well me and Alex became friends. When we were old enough we started at the same preschool. I'm told the first day there, I only talked to Alex because I thought everyone else might be strangers. We had to split up for Kindergarten, because we live in different school districts, and I distinctly remember this phone call from back then... I must have been four... where Alex said he'd thought we'd always be in the same school. I remember thinking that was a strange thing to say. I don't know why I thought it was a strange thing to say.
Even after we started kindergarten, we saw each other all the time. We went to each others birthday parties for years and years. We went to the same summer day camp one year, until I decided I like the all girls one better. A few years later, we both went to the same summer kids college program. Our moms worked together until three years ago when Pauline took a job as a vice principal, sometimes during vacations we would arrange that I would go to work with my mom and Alex would go to work with his mom and we'd sit and watch movies (I remember watching "Aladdin") and listen to music (he had cds- I was still on tapes- and the only thing in his CD case I came close to liking was Michael Jackson.) until lunch time, when the four of us would go to lunch at this kinda fancy restaurant. Pauline always ordered the same thing- French Onion soup and a pasta dish that had sun-dried tomatoes and olive oil on it. I loved their "turtle" desert, and Alex adored their Peanut Butter Pie.
The summer after we were both in eighth grade, Alex and I both spent most of the summer volunteering at the preschool the agency our moms work for runs. The school got done at 2:30 or so and then we would both bike back to my parents camper and go swimming or something until his mom came to pick him up. That was the same summer Pauline left the place she'd been working with my mom, and I guess it was the last time I was really in close touch with them. But even after our moms weren't seeing each other everyday, we still got pretty regular updates. I knew when Alex got his driver's lisence and his own car, and I was jealous.
A couple of months ago I was skimming the front page of the newspaper and noticed that the name under "New Principal Hired" was Pauline's. Of course I showed my mom, and we were both kinda excited and she went and called Pauline right then. They talked for a while and ended with my mom's famously non-commital "we'll have to get together and go to lunch sometime." It was just about two weeks later we heard Pauline had been diagnosed with Ovarian cancer. It was just a few weeks after that she died.
It's been one of the hardest things I've ever gone through, and I feel so selfish for feeling that way. I mean, I wasn't actually related to her. I hated talked to her in years before she died. I can't come up with a really logical reason that it's so hard. I tried to tell myself it's just the thought of a woman dying so young and leaving her family. But that doesn't work at all. You hear about women dying young everyday, but it's never before kept me up at night or caused me to cry hysterically for the better part of a week. And then I try to tell myself it's just because I've been so connected with Justin throughout my life, and that I'm just crying for him. That comes closer. But I read this quote today, in The Sun (It's a magazine.) --Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said "You never cry for anyone else; You only cry for yourself." ....and that has a definite ring of truth in it. So what on earth is it that I'm crying for?
Seeing Pauline at her wake was probably the most disturbing sight I've ever seen. I think it was because she was so familiar. I hadn't seen her in a couple of years, but I would have recognized her anywhere. I think she's such a huge part of my memories. I mean, I even remember what she ordered for lunch at her favorite restaurant! And I felt so selfish at the funeral, standing in the back of that little church, thinking, "What are these people crying for? They probably hardly knew her. I don't know a life without Pauline!" and I felt so stupid thinking that, because it's so not possible. You can't put a qualitative value on grief. But that's getting closer- the thought that I don't know a life without Pauline. But even that's not entirely it, because I do. Before she died I hadn't seen her in probably two or three years...and now I never will.
And maybe that there is the bottom of it. I'm crying because she is someone I have always known and expected to always know. I never before had to live through the death of someone I expected to live a long time. She was the first person I was close to who died so young. Both my grandpas were really sick for a long time before they died. And I've known other people who died young... Kids at my school that I knew, a couple of teachers from my school, one of my other friends moms.... but it was never someone I knew like Pauline. There is no comparison to how I knew Pauline. Her name was probably one of the first words I ever spoke. You could maybe compare her to an aunt, but that doesn't really work, because I knew her so much better than an aunt. I never saw any of my aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins... more than twice a month or so, if that. I saw Pauline nearly everyday.
I read this science fiction book. It was called "Xenocide", and it's the sequel to "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. And in the book, there's a lot of discussion about something called "Philotic Connections" and I don't know whether they're something that's more fiction than science fiction or what, but the idea is that there are these tiny smaller-than-microscopic particles that make up each person's soul, and that these particles physically connect us to other things. They're supposed to explain things like why couples who have been married for 50 years often die very close together- because when the first one died, a part of the other physically left. And not all people who you'd consider close are actually philotically connected. But some relatives, some friends, some lovers.... Maybe that's kinda how I'm conneted to Alex and Pauline. Maybe.
I think that's all the analysis I can handle for tonight. See you tomorrow. ~Sarah
**names changed