Went as far as I could, trying to get out of this place

Every Saturday morning, unless I went dancing all night (highly unlikely) or depleted several bottles of wine (unfortunately rather rare), I wake up around seven and go downstairs to call my parents. EVERY SATURDAY MORNING. Normal people sleep in. I call my mommy.

(This is because my parents never call me. NEVER EVER. I hardly even get emails anymore. I know they call my sisters, because they complain about my sisters never answering the phone, but they don't call ME. I fear that I have simply CONDITIONED them into expecting their late Saturday afternoon phone call from their First (And Therefore Most Special) Born. WHATEVER. I suppose we can chalk it up to the usual reason oldest children chalk things up to: JUST NOT FAIR. Oh, cruel world!)

Saturday was graduation day at my old high school and normally this would not interest me in the slightest. But Jessica, the 4-year-old twerp I babysat when I was in 7th grade and who is now a ten foot tall honorary member of my family (despite her blinding blondness), was (OMG) graduating from high school. I AM ANCIENT. So it was a very big deal. Graduation was held in the town square this year, so my parents called up the Bar Centrale and RESERVED TABLES, thereby ensuring that they could watch graduation in style, from underneath an awning and with a constant stream of cappuccino. Sitting in the actual audience was, apparently, for suckers.

So began the homesickness.

The worst part was that I happened to personally know the commencement speaker. At my graduation, we were lectured at by the base commander, a puffy uniformed man with a 19-year-old daughter about whom we, the graduating class, knew entirely too many intimate details. The Class of 2006, however, was either wicked smart or dumb as rocks and invited my friend E to inspire them about Life After Graduation.

When I first heard about this I thought: SURELY they must be joking. E! The graduation speaker? E will only stand up there and talk about... hair product. Or how he has iron in his nose. Or how to go no longer than a week without a girlfriend. WHO CARES if he was really crazy smart and was the class valedictorian and went to Berkeley and is a freaking ENGINEER. You do not want some guy up there who speaks Valley Girl better than you do. Right? (Also, I am simply befuddled as to why they didn't ask the class salutatorian to be a speaker, which would be me. I am REALLY OFFENDED, Class of 2006.)

But no, my friend E eagerly accepted this invitation and arrived at graduation two weeks early, the better to show his wife all his old banana-yellow moped routes. And this is when I REALLY got homesick. Not only did I miss an espresso-soaked Italian afternoon and the celebration of Jessica's escape from high school, I missed my friend E's APPARENTLY EXCELLENT (?!?!) speech (and the as expected not-as-excellent co-speech, from E's co-valedictorian, whom we couldn't and still can't stand, and, in a freakish coincidence, is stationed at the same place she attended high school. Lord knows what she did to deserve THAT.)

We talked about all the teachers he ran into, the places he went, the things he forgot, the fact that he was staying with my parents and how excruciatingly LAME it was that I WAS NOT THERE. Seriously. What is wrong with me? We pondered this for quite a while. We, the Co-Valedictorian and Salutatorian of the Class of '97 could not use our combined smarts to figure out how I could POSSIBLY be so dense as to let such an opportunity fly by. (Let's see how many times I can fit 'salutatorian' into this entry because GOD it's the only time I'll ever get anything out of it. Salutatorian! Salutatorian!)

And for all my annoying talk about how Seattle is home, I couldn't help the sniffling when my dad talked about how much I would have loved to be there, how fun it would have been to see E and Jessica and go to the parties, how much everyone missed me. Okay, maybe they didn't REALLY miss me, but that's my dad. Always making me bawl and always making fun of me when I do.

When I got off the phone I went upstairs and told Phillip that I didn't CARE if we spent all our money on our Hawaii trip and I didn't CARE if he didn't have any vacation days left over, we were going to Italy in September. I wanted to go HOME. I wanted my mom to make dinner and my dad to take me out for coffee. I wanted to talk about how we should drive up to Villach or Lake Bled or take the train to Venice, but not go because it's just so nice lying around watching Agatha Christie mysteries. I haven't been back since February 2004, which is a REALLY LONG TIME. It predates the BLOG, people. For someone used to her yearly European jaunt, OVER TWO YEARS is a painful and debilitating amount of time. So! I am not going to freak out about how plane tickets are twice as much as last year (and I totally regret to inform you that "twice as much" is NOT an exaggeration), I am going to think about Italy in September, when all the tourists have gone home and it's warm and colorful and my mom is nagging me to wake up at 5:30 in the morning so I can go to school with her and help the third graders with their spelling. 

Comments

[susan]

did i hear italy in september!!!!:)
i'm going the 5th to the 15th. we should go together in spirit:):)