Mornings Like This

It’s 7a.m., and my Mom is opening the door to the small upstairs bedroom that I’m crashing in. She asks me how I’m feeling, and I mumble something about feeling sleepy, a small smile playing across my face as I stretch my arms over my head and roll onto my side, further wrapping myself in blankets.

“Do you want Tim to take Justin to band lessons?” my Mom sincerely asks me.

“No, no, it’s ok,” I say, “I’m getting up.”

My dog jumps up on the bed and licks my ear. The slobber causes me to shriek, but I am laughing and smiling nonetheless, controting to try to escape the rest of the wet willie. I throw the covers off and head downstairs towards my little brother’s bedroom. On the way down, I run into my stepdad (not literally).

“Hiya, Sam,” he says, climbing the last few stairs to the second floor. “Goodmorning, Tim,” I reply. I walk down a second set of stairs and cross a hall into a small dark bedroom that contains a beautiful sleeping boy.

“Justin,” I say, gently patting his back, “It’s time to get up now. You have band lessons.”

I will need to use more prodding to get him up, eventually pulling the covers off of him so that the cool basement air will wake him up. We have a schedule-things to do, places to see, fun to be had. No more of this sleeping nonsense. Pulling the covers off is just the trick. Now he’s up and complaining about how chilly it is.

“Well, put some clothes on,” I say with a small chuckle.

I leave to go get ready myself, leaving him, standing in pajama shorts, looking through his dresser drawers for what to wear. I walk into the bathrrom, and before I can close the door, my Mom comes bustling in. I’m still dealing with the remnants of sleep and so am slightly uncoordinated. I stumble back a few steps to try to make space for her. I look at her, trying to process what she’s saying about how she needs to grab something from the bathroom and how she’s wondering if I’ve seen a bunch of plastic bags bunched together and do I know where her shoes are. I think I may have seen the plastic bags and suggest possible places to look, as well as leave the bathroom to help her look for them. I don’t find them, but she finds them after a few minutes of searching. Turns out they weren’t what I thought I had seen.

My stepdad helps her look for her shoes, so I return to getting ready, getting dressed, washing my face, and brushing my teeth. It’s getting closer and closer to the time my Mom has to go, so she starts getting a bit frantic. When it seems like she’s going to be late if she waits any longer, she finds her shoes.

She’s just about to leave but suddenly remembers, “Justin has tutoring today, so he needs to take his pill.”

The message is communicated to my stepdad, who is on it. He will make sure my brother gets his pill. Then my stepdad leaves. Then my little brother and I leave for 8:00a.m. band lessons.

At the beginning of the summer, I wasn’t staying at my Mom’s house very much. The reasons why would require books, not blogs, of explanation, and so I won’t go into them here. I do want to say though that I guess I didn’t realize what I was missing over there. Over there, at times like those, I really feel like I’m part of a family. In those times when the t.v.’s off and everyone’s jostling around, helping each other out, bumping into one another’s lives and what needs to be done in them, I feel that something really special happens. A family is formed. A true family. Not just four people sharing a home and the occasional meal, but a group of people supporting eachother and enjoying the wonderful chaos of everyday life. It’s about enjoying whatever life may bring, not because it always brings great, momentous things, but because the people who you experience it with are in and of themselves great. Mornings like this make me happy. Mornings like this, I’m coming to realize, make life worth living.

Vagrancy, With a Twist

I am a vagrant this summer. At any given moment you could peer into my car and find various living essentials strewn about its interior–bottles of water, duffel bags filled with clothing, a plastic bag filled with toiletries, a backpack stuffed with notebooks and textbooks, and various food wrappers and containers from meals consumed on the go. It’s sad and amusing, all at the same time.

Amusing, I guess, because things this summer did not turn out at all as I had planned. And sad for that very same reason. My summer was supposed to go a bit something like this: get a wonderful job working at a non-profit in the cities, live in a house in the cities with my best friend where people would come to socialize often, visit other friend in cities who just had a baby who I am the godmother of, and occasionally travel home on weekends to visit family. What ended up happening was this: move into house with best friend. Move out of house because of unfortunate unexpected events in neighborhood. Move back home but try to maintain living together with best friend, so spend numerous nights at her house. Best friend goes on vacation. I go back to my house. Best friend returns from vacation. We move into a new apartment.

But, I have not yet added in the job thread, which further complicates things. Non-profit job in cities is wonderful when they actually have me work, which unfortunately is not very often. Need to look for another job. We’re in the middle of a recession, and I’m part-time, seasonal, and it’s the middle of the summer, a terrible combination. There are no jobs for me. Mom tells me she’ll pay me to nanny for my little brother. Awesome. He’s one of my favorite things about life, and I have no money. I’m in. But, brother lives away from the cities, and best friend lives in the cities, so I will split my time between two places. Monday-Wednesday nannying my brother, and Wednesday-whenever with best friend. Oh, and my parents are divorced, so I’ll want to spend some time with my Dad at his house as well.

All of this still has not included the two random trips I took to my grandmothers’ homes. I spent one week with my Nana in the cities due to unfortunate unexpected neighborhood event that caused best friend and I to leave our house. And I spent half a week up north at my grandmother’s house because I sorely missed her and my godfather and wanted to get away from summer stresses.

Wait. Did I just say “summer stresses,” and aren’t those two words that shouldn’t be used together? Yes and yes. But, that’s just how life goes sometimes. I’ve learned this summer to let myself really feel however it is I’m feeling-to be bummed that things barely followed any semblance of my plan, but also to find the humor and amusement in how life will take you to new and unexpected places and people and experiences without a plan. And I guess that’s kind of amazing. So, this summer I’ve been sad, amused, amazed, and, let’s add one more to the list-happy. Yes, there’s happiness in this summer. Some days I have to look for it harder than others, but it’s there. It’s in the smile on my little brother’s face, the quality time I’ve been able to spend with both of my grandmothers, the new things I’ve learned during the times I have gotten to work at my job, being able to go on adventures in the city with my best friend, and heck, even just being able to share a room with my best friend.

So, if at any given moment you were to hop in my car and ride along with me to one of my homes/temporary stops/vacation places, you would find my plans, diagrammed and inked on drafting paper, fluttering out of the window, one by one. In their wake, happiness is being created. Pure, unplanned, and spontaneous happiness. Never knowing what one day to the next will bring, I’ve learned to take this happiness as it arises. It is, after all, one of the serendipitous perks of being a vagrant.