Miss Beth
(There is an addendum at the end of this for those who've read it already and wonder why it suddenly popped up again on your RSS feed)
She called from Texas today to give me the scoop and tell me about her day.
Beth and her roommate, Laura, have been for the past couple of days co-proprietors of a B&B near college while the owners are away. How two 20-year-olds got this gig is still sort of a mystery to me, with three guest rooms and 20-plus acres and horses and four dogs and keys to everything, but they're very responsible young women and they can certainly make breakfast and clean up bedrooms.
Sounds like they're having a great time. They were cleaning today and listening to the soundtrack from "The Big Chill," which I also have and which is a lot of Motown, and Beth was singing along loudly and they have these big wood floors and she slid across the length in her socks, singing, and just then the guests walked in the door. Everyone laughed.
"It was very cinematic," she said.
There was a slight problem. Breakfast was covered, of course, but places to eat dinner in proximity to this place were typical Texan, and few, so she called me the other day to ask if she broke her vegan Lenten lifestyle just a teensy bit would it make baby Jesus cry?
I told her to ask Mom.
I did give her my opinion, which is that it's not a test, it's a state of mind, an effort, a challenge, a commitment, but none of us are perfect and I don't think it's a game with rules, I don't think if she intends to go vegan for the duration and then has some chicken fried steak, for example, all the runners get to move up one base or something. I told her not to worry. Make sure you eat something, that's all.
She's had luck with jobs. She's never had to flip burgers or clear tables or sell, market or process anything. She mostly just sells herself, her skills, so she's babysat and been a nanny and taught cello lessons to middle-school kids and been a church musician, and now she maybe has her favorite one, the B&B thing being temporary.
She teaches voice lessons at a conservatory of music a little bit north of where she lives, where they pay her what I think is a remarkable wage for a college student and she has lots of little students and she teaches each and every one of them to sing "The Rainbow Connection" and they call her Miss Beth.
She was born this way, almost literally. Julie did a Wagner production for Seattle Opera while Beth was in utero, and there was plenty of other singing, too. Beth could sing two-part harmony when she was 5. She wasn't a prodigy; that's too special a word for something that comes so naturally in the bloodlines.
Me, I flipped burgers and cleared tables and cleaned meat machines and developed x-rays and lots of other things, but then she's on a different path. She's already been places I may never go. Eastern Europe, for example. New York City, for another, over this Christmas break.
And she and Laura head for Boston next, for spring break. Other kids go to Ft. Lauderdale for sex, drugs and booze, but Beth is going to the birthplace of the American Revolution. Dad, needless to say, is pleased.
They're also taking a bus to Providence to visit Beth's friend, Cindy, in Rhode Island, a place I've suggested more than once may not really exist. I just wonder if a something the size of your average J.C. Penney store can be legally called a state, but we shall see.
So, she's moving on and growing up, having experiences and learning things. She knows that rainbows are illusions, for example, and also knows why there are so many songs about them.
She put a deposit down on an apartment recently, which she and Laura and another woman will move into come May. The two of them will drive out here at some point in early summer, showing Laura her West Coast roots, and then Lucas* will drive back east with her after a week.
So, come August, Beth will have been home three weeks out of 52 and home will then be somewhere else.
I'm amazed we've adjusted the way we have, but I'm generally amazed by pretty much everything so pay no attention. It seemed to me, way back when, in 2002 when she started her senior year or 2003 when she graduated and then moved, that the universe would suddenly shift out of alignment and gravity would get weird and prices would go up or something, but it turns out that life has a way of just moving along, with or without you.
We are different, now, here in this house. There are different dynamics, different schedules, different noises, different silences. I get up every morning, check to see who's sleeping in what room (we play musical bedrooms sometimes here; the dog has gone crazy), reset the router since it seems to shut down at 4 a.m.., get something to drink and head downstairs, and somehow it seems I've done this all my life when I know I haven't, so routine obviously is some sort of emotional anesthetic.
It's not her room anymore. We call it "Beth's room" sometimes just because we have to call it something, but aside from some photos still on the walls it holds no echoes of my daughter to speak of. She has moved on.
Her blue Lynx still sits parked alongside my house, but only because I've procrastinated about having somebody haul it away, cracked block and all. It has moved on.
We used to, a long time ago, sit in the basement before bed and have "dark time," when Beth would snuggle with me and I'd tell her stories or things about the world, preparing, I suppose, for writing about it all someday. I still have dark times, but not too often. Mostly I see daylight and sunshine, or remember that they're around, anyway. I have moved on, you see.
She will fly to Boston next week, and being the good daughter that she is, she will give me her numbers and times, knowing that Dad likes to track flights on the Internet, partly because it's fun and partly because it's some comfort, because it turns out that fathers, even well-adjusted ones, ones who have moved on, have moments still when they inexplicably wonder where their little girls are.
ADDENDUM: Beth told me today that the owners called, and apparently since the bed-and-breakfast biz is slow in North Texas in the summer (heat and humidity would be my guess) they want to take the summer off, and so offered the house and ranch to the ladies, free of charge, for the season. The occasional guest will result in income for them, but since they both have jobs it will mostly be housesitting on 28 acres with the horsies and the beauty and no Internet access. They got out of their lease agreement for the apartment smoothly and with no pain, and so I think now that you're lucky if once in your life, life being difficult, you can find a rainbow connection, and what better time than when you're young and free and can skate across the floors in your socks? Much joy. Plus, I can visit and have a place to stay. I will bring socks just in case...
*Click here to read a really wonderful story about Little Lucas.
6:58:38 PM 
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