Guest Blogger #30
Well, here we are. Thirty days, thirty blogs. I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted. I need to take a break...
I'll wrap up tomorrow, with some stats and a little symmetry, but we have one more to go.
It's been almost four years since I sat down at the computer, wondered what I was going to write about in my column for that week, and typed these words: "This year, December 14 falls on a Friday..." Since then, I've covered a lot of ground, but I've written about no single subject as much or as often as my daughter.
It makes sense, at least to me. She had started her junior year in high school, and I was beginning to smell the inevitability of it all, the caps and gowns and goodbyes. And as she walked into her future, I matched her steps in sort of a parallel universe. She was getting older, and so was I.
Once I did the walking for both of us, strapped her on my back and wandered Broadway on Capitol Hill in Seattle, window shopping and accepting the admiration of strangers on the street, who oohed and aahed over the splash of red in the backpack, sleeping or babbling, trusting that I knew where I was going.
So it's appropriate that Beth gets the chance to tell her side of the journey. It's hers now, after all, and I'm just a spectator, watching and sort of wondering what happened.
Learning to Walk
By Beth Sigars
Something funny happens when you move away from home: home keeps going.
When I talk to John on the phone he'll say, “My dad took me to the video store today.”
“Your dad? YOUR DAD?” “Oh right, I guess he’s your dad too, huh?”
This is what I deal with. I keep a close eye on them, you know; someone has to keep those crazy kids in line. I talk to my parents every day nowadays, and after being away for two years I think they realize I'm gone.
It's been a critical year for me. I got a job – heck, I got two jobs – and I began to achieve some degree of professional success. I met some wonderful women who are my touchstones and make me clean up the house. (Right, right, I got a house.) I deal with stray dogs and cockroaches, and leaking water heaters. I pay taxes (which hurts, despite my liberal upbringing) and I worry about rising gas prices.
I dress professionally and comfortably, not flashy.
Grown women pay me $40 an hour to teach them to sing.
Oh yeah, there's a guy, too. A really great one. For that matter, there's also a dog – a Great Dane named Rosie who I think I would risk jail time to protect.
Announcement: I am old.
Ok. Job, house, career, water heaters, roommates, taxes, Great Danes, cockroaches, and men. I go to work, then I go to rehearsal, then I come home and iron men’s shirts.
Then I went to the doctor.
For the first time since I had left I felt that I really needed my parents. I needed my mom to hold me while my father went through the vast medical database that is his head. I've never had anything seriously wrong with me in my life. I was okay this time. Things would have been shady if I had waited any longer, but I was okay; shaken, but okay.
The weeks that followed were busy ones. Seven hours a day of rehearsals were exactly what the doctor ordered. I was doing what I loved, and I was happy.
Until things got worse.
I’m at the doctor again, and I guess things don't look too good.
So now I'm seeing a specialist, and on a lot of medication, and coming to terms with the fact that my life will have to change.
Despite my health, I'd say I'm happier than I ever have been. I feel settled, and grounded, but I would give that grounded feeling up in a heartbeat if it meant my family was in my living room.
My mother is coming up in less than two weeks, and I am counting the seconds.
Let me tell you a secret.
I really need my family.
Just because you leave the nest doesn't mean you don't have the ability to turn your tailfeathers around and fly right back when you need to.
I miss you, and love you.
6:35:08 AM 
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