Morning has many shades

Last night I got to sleep around 1:00 AM, and it was a blissful journey.  The journey was short lived, though, as I woke up two hours later to an old friend I call "dehydration."  Aware that I could easily be awake for a while with this feeling, I ventured out to the kitchen and promptly downed three small glasses of water.  

Laying back in bed, I noticed that my eyelids seemed more elastic than usual, and upon further self-inspection, I found that no matter how I tried, I was unable to close them without wanting to open then right away.  Hours went by.  Very slowly.  Yet before I knew it the time was 5:00 AM and I had to leave my bed for want of a lighter and cooler atmosphere.

I tiptoed with shoes and sweater, out the front door (accidentally waking up Jon's dad) and breathed in the cool morning air.  The sun was peeking above the horizon just enough to create a deep blue glow at the otherwise dark hour.  Allowing my ears to wake, I was delighted and enchanted by the copious amount of birds that were singing happily as if the sun had been blessing them for hours.  The sound was peaceful for me at that time, but I knew that if it was any other time, and were I sleeping in a room with thinner walls, the noise would have been disruptive to a soundly sleeping, normal human being.  Normal was far from what I was feeling.

The alien chirps and songs were unlike bird noises that I had heard in quite a few years.  The freeness with which they sang was far from the strained and shy sounds that birds make in Boston; birds that seem to be more interested in surviving than singing.  Much like the human city dwellers.

I lost a lot of sleep, but the time was spent with happy relaxed thoughts, rather than feeling anxious about the recent events in my life.  That, at least was a wonderful change.  I can sleep other nights.  I am just happy to know that vacation has the right effect on me.

Dead.

Our itinerary on Friday looked like this:

3:30 Boston to Chicago flight

5:30 Chicago to Paris flight

Our itinerary ended up looking like this:

3:30 Board airplane

5:30 Take off

6:40 Arrive in Chicago

6:40 Realize there is no chance of having made our flight to Paris

6:50 Stand in line for customer service

8:00 Talk to customer service person

8:20 Receive tickets that will reroute us to Washington Dulles the next day

9:00 Eat cheap Chinese food to stave off starvation

10:10 Arrive at hotel (which we were permitted to stay in as long as we paid despite the discount of a whopping %60 off, even though it was in no way our fault that we missed our flight)

11:20 Try to get to sleep in our relatively nice hotel room

1:42   Receive call from Holly Bittinger in an effort to try to see her before we left Chicago.

2:30  Finally get back to sleep.

7:30  Ignore alarm

7:40  Ignore alarm

7:49  Finally wake up and take a shower to meet Holly for breakfast

8:30  Eat breakfast with no ability for conversation.

9:30  Say goodbye

10:30 Leave for airport

11:08 "Boy am I glad we got through security TWO HOURS before our flight leaves."

1:08   Leave Chicago

4:00  Land in Washington Dulles

5:20  Leave Washington Dulles for Paris

This all seems to be a little more complicated than we had originally anticipated.

The aforementioned "itinerary" contained effectively no emotion.  Internally I was kicking myself for leaving so many people alive.  I imagined groups of people falling before my mighty "punch in the face."  I wrote a lot in my journal.  At the moment I am far too tired to worry about adding more.  Tomorrow I will go through my notes and give you a far more humorous version.  Hope everyone had a better weekend than I did.............

After all of that we were at least able to sleep for most of the day before attending a dinner with a whirlwind of French speaking (see point 1. in my previous post) and it included all the things that should be had in France.  Meats, cheeses, French bread, copious amounts of wine, cognac, strawberries and dessert.  That was incredibly satisfying.  This trip has finally started, no thanks to United Airlines.  If they are wondering at any point, I can let them know where they can shove it.

Let the Travel Begin!

As of tomorrow, I will be embarking on a trip to France for about two weeks. While I am there, I hope to have at least a couple of chances to update on my perception of the country, and its similarities and differences to the way that we live here in the USA.

We will be staying for most of the time in Nantes, a province in Brittany. About four days will be spent in Paris, doing the tourism thing. As this is my first time out of the country (ever...wtf?) any experience will be completely new, and I can't possibly compare it to any other. Traveling in the United States is really not all that different. Even Hawaii is just an Americanized tourism spot to make you think you are in an exotic area. Don't get me wrong...I love Hawaii. I would live there, honest to God. It's just not a foreign country.

Below are listed some key points that will most likely be discussed in blog entries to come:

1. I don't speak French. Not much anyways. So that should be interesting. Good thing I am going to be with a few people who speak both French and English.

2. A LOT of amazing food is about to be had. And I am somewhat under-nourished, due to my college budget. Gotta stretch out that stomach.

3. MUSEUMS........(that was for you Lee Marie) No but seriously, I love museums, and I am thoroughly excited to be visiting some of the most famous in the world.

4. There will be pictures. SOO many pictures. Any one who knows me, knows that I already go nowhere without my camera (double negative is in no way not necessary), and this is NO exception. I will be posting them on Facebook, and for those of you not on Facebook, I will share the albums to your email, upon request.

5. I have the soundtrack music for Ratatouille stuck in my head. Very French, non?

And for now, bonsoir, mes amies!

Mother's Day is for Mothers

I thought of sending you a card. But all the cards I looked at were made by someone else. I thought of making you a card, but I didn't have the materials. I sent you an e-card, but that seemed like a really lame way to express what I feel. So I made you this as well.

I still do not know what it really means to be a mother. I do know what it means to be mothered, and for that I am lucky. What would my life have been like if I were one in the vast group of people who didn't grow up with a mother, or were mistreated, or simply didn't want to be around parents? I don't even want to hazard a guess.

What does it mean to give and give, until you feel that your energy has been willed to a being completely apart from yourself? Who is that woman who lived in the mountains making art, breaking rules, living young? Who is she now?

Is she really so different? Not to my knowledge, though I suppose my first-hand is only really a third-hand account. She is the woman who gave me courage. I can't see who I would have been, had I not been privy to the courage that my mother exhibited all through my life. Up on a stage with only lights separating her beating heart from the hundreds of pairs of eyes spread across a black floor. Would I be pursuing a degree in performance, if I hadn't grown up with the indisputable knowledge that I CAN risk embarrassment for the sake of the moment where I feel my heart sing in my chest before the eyes of strangers? Is it a compulsion to perform, or a legacy?

The multiple question marks within these paragraphs are a testament to the far corners of life which I have not yet reached. I am still learning, and I'll be damned if I don't have the most interesting, capable, and altogether adorable teacher there is.

Every year, Mother's day gives each of us an opportunity to reflect on the past actions that allowed us to arrive at the points that we have reached. Specifically, the actions that were administered by the woman who made it all possible. Do we all have responsible parents? Unfortunately, no. But you have to face the fact that without them, you wouldn't even be here to make that judgement.

I am lucky in the sense that as a child I got my mother all to myself. No siblings to divide her attention.

I am lucky in the sense that my mother's talents allowed her to see very clearly my need to create art that was all my own. Her support was unwavering.

I am lucky for having had the ability to create very few disturbances in my youth, giving greater allowance to cultivate a stone-etched friendship with my mommy. The word "Silliness" begins and ends with the two of us.

I reflect often on the strange fact that I have such a strong connection to my home and my parents, yet I was still able to move across the country, and generally acclimate myself to infrequent visits to or by my parents. I find myself yearning for my mother's cooking often; desiring my mother's company on walks around the city; wishing I wasn't dancing alone in my room.

I draw this series of broken and oddly connected paragraphs to a close, with the assurance that my thought process goes deeper and further than I could ever eloquently express in written words.

I love you more than any of these words say. I hope your Mother's day is relaxing and perfect. I wish I could be there to make it so. I got you some flowers from Boston. I hope you like them.