With Spring Comes Good Things
Hello to anyone who reads this, and sorry for being a delinquent blogger.
A couple of great things have happened to me recently. First off, I got a job babysitting for a beautiful family up on a snow-covered Vermont hill. They eat organic, have beautiful artwork covering their walls, and I had to use every last inch of my creativity, patience, and poise to successfully care for the two adorable children.
This is not to say that they were any more difficult than any other kids, but getting two wriggling girls into bathing suits, into a pool for a swimming lesson, showered, dressed in pajamas, fed, transported home with brushed hair and full bellies, all while cleaning and dressing and keeping myself together was not an easy task. But the job was great, and reminded me of a lesson I thought I’d learned in high school, but needed to be reminded of: there is much more to babysitting than sitting on the kids.
An expected event that happened was that I ended my job at the bookstore. I bought my last batch of 35% discounted books, stationary, and doodads, and I said goodbye to the life of a bookseller. Although I was grateful to have gotten the position, I found working at a Barnes and Noble quite bleak at times. For one, I was the youngest bookseller there during the day. Secondly, after a couple of weeks, shelving, organizing, and pulling books became extremely repetitive. Much of the time there was little to do, and I was told that even during slow days, I was not allowed to read while on the job.
This is like asking a Ben & Jerry’s employee not to taste the ice cream. Except that I could survive that, easily—I’d just pretend the ice cream was colorful lard or soap or something inedible, and scoop the day away. Books, on the other hard, always look like books—and to me, books look like reading. Being asked not to read while at the bookstore was asking too much. I read and read, and was not a star employee as a result. I don’t regret it. My mind was busy when the store was not, and I did what I had to to keep myself sane.
Living in Vermont was always a temporary plan, since Misha and I have been planning a trip of some sort since early fall, in order to give shape to this strange odyssey called Adult Life. I was sad to leave the friends I’d made at the store, like Stefan who would passionately read aloud from Moby Dick as I worked the cash register, Suzanne the funny event coordinator and only person who read more than I, and Ashleen, who worked nights and played the role of the Only Friend My Age in Vermont.
I left the bookstore with a big smile, not only because I like change, but also because after my last day of work, Misha and I drove straight to Burlington for a day and night of college town fun. Additionally, I had found out some extremely exciting news in the previous week, news so thrilling and that it has now become the only thing I want to say to myself or other people: I have been accepted to graduate school for poetry. Next September, I will buy myself new notebooks, meet a handful of other would-be poets, and together, we will write and critique and write and rewrite, for two years of postgraduate bliss.
I have been accepted to three programs so far—two in Manhattan and one in Boulder Colorado, and in these handful of days left before I embark for Europe (on April 1st), I have a lot of assessing to do. The happy fact is that I will be content at any of the places I have been accepted to, and therefore, I am officially excited about both my immediate and more distant future, which is saying a lot considering that ever since college, life has been noticeably below far in the “exciting” category.
So happy spring to everybody! I’m putting away my plaid (well, maybe not all of it), and gearing up for some warm months of travel. I lived through an icy winter in Vermont, and I think I deserve a bit of sunshine on my fading freckles.