backwards.

Last June on its third day, my mom was driving me to the airport to fly to Seattle. I was planning to run a marathon, which would be followed up by some life lived out in the other Washington. Before the both of us was an abundance of unknown. I didn't know if I would finish twenty-six miles, or even what my cousin that was picking me up from the airport looked like. My mom wasn't sure the next time she would see me, and with her crazy worrying tendencies, if I would even live through the marathon; I had been cautioned on multiple occasions of the possibility of death from such distances. If there's even a minute possibility of disaster, I have been warned by my mother. Driving over a bridge, for example, means I could end up in the water with no way to roll my electric windows down. Naturally, she purchased for me a pressurized window breaker so I don't really have to worry about this disaster scenario any longer.

About ten minutes into the drive, she gets kind of serious and begins the sentence, "No matter where you are next year, there's just one thing I am going to ask you to do."

Based on the kinds of things she worries about, I really had no idea where the rest of the request would lead.

Then she started to cry. I was at a loss.

"Please just promise me that you will come back to go to your high school reunion."

Whaaa?

I had to hold back the childlike giggles.

Like so many mothers and daughters, we're almost always not on the same page. It has taken us a loooong time to learn how to actually communicate without getting angry at each other. Most of my early twenties, no matter what she said to me or how she said it, I heard, "hey there not good enough daughter. I wish you were completely different and more like me." My reaction to what I was hearing from her was enveloped in all things harsh and hateful, and though we've broken the cycle and do a much better job of not misinterpreting what the other is trying to say nowadays, I don't foresee us ever getting to the same page. This is one of the reasons there was so much weight and emotion within her request. In moments like that, when my definitively selfless mother who carried me in her womb and birthed me without any drugs and paid too much for my barely used college education and still calls to see if I need anything from the store...It's best of me to respond with compassion, and try try try to see her request through her eyes instead of mine.

Almost a year has passed since that conversation, which means it is the year of the reunion. I had managed to put the possibility out of my mind until the patriot act-esque wonders of Facebook brought reunion inquiries to the forefront of my computer screen. And so the thread began...

"Does anyone know if there's a plan for our reunion?"

"I think it's the job of the class officers."

"It's a little late to begin planning an event of that caliber. You better get in contact with your class officers soon."

"I think our class officers were Meredith, Shaya and Julie."

I waited it out as long as I could. I read what was being said, and in true procrastinator fashion, I didn't engage until I was called by name. I was the class president but I truly had no knowledge that reunion planning responsibility was part of the deal. I just wanted a little more recognition and accolades by my name. I officially relinquished responsibility to an eager classmate, and am left to not plan, which I excel at, and also, to sit with my mother's request.

If it were up to me and my soap box, I wouldn't go. I would tout Facebook's way of keeping us all up to date, and the fact that I already know more about former classmates than I would prefer. I would stand tall and exclaim that I have done a decent job of keeping in touch with those I wanted to, and that the rest aren't of much concern. I would refer to Romy and Michelle's high school reunion and think of disaster scenarios and depressing possibilities that would bring me down. These are all the things I would do if I didn't have a selfless mother, requesting a very simple thing from me.

This, I think, is why we have mothers and why were aren't just grown in laboratories and thrown into the mess to fend for ourselves. I was the class president, and whether or not that meant much to me, I represented something. My class was small, my school was small, and my town was in proportion to both of those things. Many of my classmates were the same through all thirteen years. My absence wouldn't be easily overlooked, and I would be viewed in the very light my mother wants me to avoid. This small world I speak of is a very big deal to her; She has invested much of herself in it over the years. Her request is saturated with a pride for the community she doesn't want me to be ashamed of.

She has cried mom wolf on so many occasions that I hesitate to listen. Most recently it was at the possibility of a stranger jumping in my car through its open window. Twenty-eight, and I am humbled by the fact that sometimes she still does know best, and in this case, she's round-about reminding me that it's best to avoid brat behavior.

tulip bloom.

There's this character that lives in my apartment building. He's a strange combination of Martha Stewart and Mell Gibson's character in Conspiracy Theory. His tulips are treated as if each bud coming out of the ground possesses a personality and a soul, while every human personality he comes in contact with is suspect. I have been cautioned to not visit any Al Qaeda sights on the internet, and also, to choose sidewalk over grass so as to not squash an overlooked bud.

I marvel at human personalities that follow anticipated life patterns, those that purchase shampoo before the bottle is actually empty, and homeowners in general. I met an engineer this week and congratulated him. "Thanks, I think," was his response. His life's asset, from this wanderers perspective, is stability in all kinds of forms. This wanderers is freedom.

Sometimes I wonder if I will wake up someday so completely aware of the level to which I have been ruining my life all these commitment free years that I will only be able to breath at the level of a heavy smoker. Engineers make me wonder this, and attorneys too.

Heavy smoking neighbors like Mr. Tulip reassure me, unbeknownst to them, that in fact I won't ever wake up barely breathing; There's value in my asset, he subconsciously says to me while telling me audibly and exhaustively about the bamboo fence he's putting up to keep the neighbor dogs from barking.

As I breathe in and out in my lease-free apartment, homemade granola cooling on the stove, I think about those bulbs that have been under the muck and frost with the worms and grub, making bloom progress in ways we haven't been able to see. And though most have seen the first tulips of spring, when they finally break through again after winter's end, it's as if we're seeing them for the first time all over. This kind of bloom is forever worth waiting for.

inspiring misdirection.

I've referenced this go tactic I tend to live by. It involves, well, going. Places.

This activity brings me to life. And it doesn't have to be elaborate. Last year, a friend had to take a cup of coffee to his girlfriend at work. It was a few miles away. I was excited to go. Genuinely excited.

I have an uncanny ability to walk away from the familiar for something foreign without much fear. There's usually a lot of unexpected to deal with once I arrive, but the getting there is emotionally quite easy.

Last night I went to a synagogue. I hadn't ever been to a synagogue before. Yann Martel, the author of a brilliant book, was speaking there. Going somewhere I've never been before to hear an author I admire speak does something real for me. It quenches a thirst rooted in dehydration.

It turns out he was brilliant, not surprisingly. And before stumbling upon writing, he was pretty aimless. He came from education, a travel-filled childhood, and academic parents. After finishing an undergraduate in philosophy and being "unsatisfied" with academia, he both washed dishes and worked as a security guard. He found writing to be that thing that consistently satisfied. And he wrote a lot of bad stuff before Life of Pi. Eventually he embraced it, lived on little, and wrote.

My years seem to be inching me closer and closer to this reality. I find the professional realm of reality to be quite unsatisfying. I have no interest in selling anything to anyone else. I have interests and hobbies, but when I place my interests up against the pressure of using using them to make a living, they lose their allure. Writing my own commentary on life is a natural reaction I have to living, and it never lacks satisfaction. I write a lot of bad stuff with no intention to stop. I already live on very little. That's another natural reaction I have to life.

Today I went somewhere else. I got away. And I am sitting in front of a new window typing this out with the knowledge that the people I run into are all strangers; Their daily landscape is completely different than mine, and they have no choice but to share theirs' with a stranger today. Later I will have lunch with an old friend, the woman who coincidently told me I should read Life of Pi, the book that took me to me the synagogue last night, a night that will help solidify the idea that occupational misdirection isn't a flaw for someone that finds more satisfaction in writing life commentary than anything else.

It's also a plus that occupational misdirection lends itself to the going, the other thing that brings me upmost satisfaction. Keep going, and keep writing, and keep being inspired by thoughtful well spoken writers that have themselves kept going, and kept writing.