Hooky.
The game I never really got to play until I went to college.
B. and I skipped class yesterday. We had (and still have) tons of homework, midterms crashing down upon us, stress and busywork and class loads burying us and our marriage, pummeling us as a couple from every angle. Our days consist of meager morsels of food snatched between classes now that cooking have just become an inefficient use of our time. I leave before she's awake. She gets home long after dark. We're struggling to cope.
But not yesterday. Yesterday we just said screw it and left town.
We didn't go far. Just an hour's drive north to see B.'s sister and her family visiting. Their grandpa, an aunt and a few cousins joined us all for dinner. One cousin got some well-earned and well-meant ribbing about his recent truancy issues. We could only shake our heads. He'll graduate high school, go to college, and maybe one day he too will skip class like us, just to preserve some semblance of sanity.
We were asked about how our lives were going, why we didn't visit more often. All we could tell them was that we had to skip class just to come that night. I'm not complaining here. We're both employed, we both go to good schools, our credit cards and student loans are manageable, we are in relatively good health. I should be grateful and I am. I guess my question is:
When do we get our lives back?
When will I go through a week and not worry about paying all the bills?
When will the universe let us start saving again?
When will we get a weekend together, homework-free?
I know this is the "career" chapter of our lives (it has to be, neither of us has time for each other, let alone a kid), but come on, people. There has to be some light at the end of this tunnel. There's got to be a job at the end of these long years of classes and training and portfolio-building. Because that job has to pay for B.'s tunnel-end light: grad school. Make that ONLY grad school. No more juggling full-time work and 12-15 credits a semester. No more insulting busywork, no more sadist chemistry professors who take pleasure in squashing the souls of students. No more getting caught in the crossfire of med school hopefuls and the premed classes that are only used as deterrents.
Okay, ranting done. But seriously, she's going into zoology, ok? Not med school. Leave my wife alone and lets move on through stupid chem and be done with it.
Back to truancy. I don't like that our life has become a choice of what to miss out on. I either miss out on the early years of my marriage, career-building job opportunities, important learning moments in school, deep and important spiritual and personal growth at church, or time with family.
We're all truant on something.
I missed out on most of the dinner conversation last night, but I'm not too upset. I'm used to snatching opportunistic mouthfuls whenever I get the chance. Plus the reason for my absence from the dinner table came in the form of my adorable 2 year old niece. I took her out when she got antsy (about 3-4 times in the same meal) and we found things to marvel at in the parking lot next to a mall. We picked flowers and put them in her hair, we picked more for her mom and for her great aunt. We looked for red cars among the crowd of parked vehicles, we spun on the grass until we plopped down and stared up at the clouds. I needed that. Probably more than she did.
We've missed her, but we've also been missing out on her. We try to be a stable presence in the lives of our nieces and nephew, but with them living so far away and our attention so often and thoroughly diverted elsewhere it's hard to keep up with them and how fast their childhood is slipping away.
Yesterday was good. Yesterday was needed. It was a reminder to stop for a moment, let some people down, abandon some posts, be truant for a moment, and breathe.
Nothing's changed on the homework front. We're still buried. We're still behind. We still jump straight from work to homework like miserable amphibians. But I was reminded yesterday that I'm not just a paycheck. I'm not just a taxpayer, a bill payer, an employee, a student, a grade, a number.
I'm the uncle who found the purple flower to put in my niece's hair.
Maybe my cousin's ahead of the curve. Sometimes school can wait. Because life sure won't.
What are you missing out on?
S
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