GOOD VIBES STUDIO

I’M BACKKKKKKK!

Let’s catch up ~ In the past month I graduated from Florida State University, threw all my crap into my 2003 blue mitsubishi lancer (whom we call manny) said goodbye to Tallahassee and all my dear friends and headed for Miami. Quite an emotional time, you would think, but that’s not when it hit me. Sure my last few all nighters in Strozier Library, my last walk to Banditos Burritos down the street, my last few sprints to my neighbors houses on Airport drive in my underwear and a long t-shirt, my last visit to Bullwinkles and the Palace (though a blurry memory) definitely pulled on some heart strings. Though still, it hadn’t hit me. I understood I was leaving the place I called home for 4 years but I didn’t feel all that older.

The first weekend I got home, I went to Jessie Parker’s house, the girl that I had babysat since she was 11, to wish her off to college at Tulane University in New Orleans. I tried to keep it together but like a mother letting go of her daughter, I felt a piece of my soul leaving as she drove away. How was the little girl that used to cry every night at summer camp because she missed home and wouldn’t fall asleep until her counselors called me over to tuck her in, OLD ENOUGH TO GO TO COLLEGE? So it started to hit me. Time was passing all around me and though I had made hundreds of new friends and memories while I was away, I wasn’t ready to come home to so many changes.

A week after, I woke up at 7 a.m. to get my 11-year-old twin sisters ready for their first day of middle school. They are the exact age now that Jessie was when I met her. Caroline wore a white collard shirt, khaki shorts, her white high-top converse and her hair down. Katy wore a black collard shirt, with skinny jeans and purple high-top converse, with a choker necklace and her hair in a loose braid. I quickly came to the realization that they were old enough to know what they liked and what they didn’t—that they had become their own individuals. WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?!?! I walked them into school and almost made them late for their first class because I didn’t want to let go. I squeezed and squeezed them in my arms as if the squeezing would stop them from growing any older. That maybe if I hugged them harder, held them closer, they would remain my little girls forever. The bell rang, they flung their over-sized backpacks over their little shoulders and walked down the hall. I started to think of Jessie and how it felt like just yesterday that I was picking her up from middle school and making her lunch and getting her ready for dance practice. Before I could return my thoughts to her leaving for college, I shuddered, closed my eyes, and ran off the school premises.

Later that week my family gathered together for my grandmothers 82nd birthday. Except this time, she wasn’t much in the mood for celebrating. Nothing on the menu was appeasing her and neither was the cacophony of background noises mixed with our family’s blending conversations. She got up at least four times to go to the bathroom throughout lunch—I walked her every time. For the first time I noticed that she truly was getting older. She moved slower, she talked slower, and her ability to handle a large group of people was, well, non existent (to say the least.) My Momala, a retired poet, writer, lover, Disney fanatic, teacher, soda bread baker, bridge player, friend, mom, grandmother, was just a little less vibrant this time. All the voicemails she left, “You have to visit, I’m dying soon,” I wrote off as Jewish guilt. Now I saw something different—a dim in her sparkle.

So it hit me. The passage of time. It smacked me right in the face like a door I didn’t mean to walk into. Everyone around me had grown up, including myself. I hadn’t realized in the four years I was focused on balancing that perfect library to party ratio, that I was growing up too. Sure my face looked a little older, my body slimmer, my style had changed a bit, I started parting my hair down the middle, super short shorts and skirts just weren’t as appealing—but it’s the big things that I hadn’t registered. The fact that I had read over 150 new books; read hundreds of poems; conducted hours upon hours of research and that now I could write a 15 page paper with my eyes closed; how to take three shots of vodka in a row and then shot gun a beer; how to perform a 30 second keg stand; the thousands of conversations I’ve had with friends and professors about our experiences and dreams; how to upkeep my own house; do the laundry; tidy not only a dorm room but a kitchen, bathroom, living room, front and backyard; how to pull 3 all-nighters in a row when need be; how to go out late with friends and wake up early for class… the list goes on. And somewhere in between the papers and the parties and the game days and the nights I stayed in and the nights I went out, and all the other memories I made in 4 short years, I grew up.

The past few weeks I let my emotions settle on this fact and quickly realized that growing up isn’t half bad. When I think back to all the promises I’ve fulfilled, the grades I’ve achieved, the goals I’ve accomplished—I feel pretty damn proud. Yes everyone’s growing up but everyone’s getting smarter and brighter and developing their own ideas about the world and that’s fuckin’ precious. So I’ll leave you with this ~ if you ever start to feel down about how quickly life passes by, remember to take a deep breath, remember all that you have been through and everything you’ve become, remember that every day is a new opportunity to better yourself and to do the next right thing, remember all of your accomplishments, your friendships, your opportunities for growth, the wisdom you’ve shared, and remember, with all these things considered, growing up is a beautiful, remarkable thing.

Sending love and light,

Nina ~