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Not Completely Sure

            As I sit by the window, waiting for the plane to take off from Hobby, I figured now was as good of a time as any other to reflect on my break, 2004, and, I don’t know, life in general.

            I’m still flustered from rushing around the airport.  The lines were so much longer than expected but I still made it to my gate with a little time to spare.  I’m kind of grateful for this morning’s rush; it helped me take my mind off of some other things, namely, leaving home and so many people who I love so much and care so much about.  I don’t understand.  For the past year and a half, I’ve come and gone from Houston without too many tears but in the last 12 hours, I’ve probably shed more tears than all those other times combined.  What was it about the past three weeks or so that made me not want to return to California?  Was Christmas break really that fantastic?  Or was my fall quarter really that awful?  I’m not completely sure.

            I’ll tell you what I do know.  Everyone always asks, “So are you doing anything/did you do anything special for break?”  “Not really, I’m just going home and spending time with family and friends and relaxing a bit.”  But wait, that is something special.  In fact, the best break I could ask for.  Worrying about nothing, sleeping late, being with loved ones… honestly, what more could a girl ask for?  Sure, it’s not the wild and crazy trip to Cancun.  And it’s not an expensive trip to somewhere with lots of rich history/culture or whatever but who cares?  It really doesn’t get much better than hanging out with and catching up with people you haven’t seen in 4 months.  We need to appreciate these breaks while we’ve still got them, before we grow up, start to get real jobs, and miss out on all this.

            “So, Carling, what exactly was so great about your break” you might ask.  Quite honestly, no one event just jumps out at me; it’s just a warm fuzzy feeling I get when I think about the whole time I was home.  The snow on Christmas Eve, the usual New Year’s Eve drama, the Galleria, the “date” with my “friend from work,” the multiple drunken chick flicks at Wes’s house, just… everything.  Something reassuring about being able to hang out with the best friends in the comfort of your homes, something about being with Mommy and Daddy (even if they do drive you crazy), something about getting acquainted with a different group of friends and completely loving their company.  I don’t know, just something about the whole experience made me happier than I’ve been in a really long time.  But I’m still not completely sure why.

            Despite all the thoughts running through my head last night before bed, I’m at a loss right now for words, so I think I’m going to take a nap and continue this later.  I mean, let’s be serious, a girl needs more than 3 hours of sleep a night.

Part 2:

            We’ve landed in Phoenix and the flight’s over 30 minutes late taking off.  So hopefully I won’t miss my connecting flight from San Diego to San Jose.  It’s raining outside and the sky’s pretty ominous and gloomy, doesn’t really do much to help the mood.  I checked the weather forecast for school yesterday- rain for the next week and highs in the 40s and lows in the 30s.  Keep in mind that it’s just a light rain though.  Not crazy Houston thunderstorms with bolts of lightning that illuminate the dark sky, just a light-enough-to-make-your-whole-day-shitty kind of rain.  How appropriate for my mood.  Wow.  It’s a little crazy how much I don’t want to go back.  I was talking to the twin last night and he was already back at school and missing everyone from Florida.  Once again, he and I are on the exact same page: leaving this time was indescribably harder than all the other times.  Chris started to try to convince me that it’d all be OK and that after a little time back in Cali, everything would be fine.  But let’s be serious.  Who does he think he’s fooling?  He and I both know that things might improve slightly but in reality, there’s no way things will even come close to the way they are at our respective homes.  And it’s not just the stress of school and all the other crap that comes with it; there’s just something comforting about being surrounded by people who you have history with, some whom you’ve known since you were in middle school, even since you were a baby.  So what am I doing in California?  I know I’ve got a great opportunity here or whatever, but let’s be serious, I’m a Texas girl at heart.  Everyone knows that.  My parents and some other people have a hard time understanding it, but it’s really quite simple.  So simple that I feel it doesn’t even need an explanation.  And I’m not completely sure I could even give one.

            But in terms of positiveness/happiness to ring in the new year/quarter, I’m not doing too well, so maybe I should continue this later when I have something a little happier to say.

Later:

            So I missed my damn connecting flight.  I was supposed to arrive in San Diego and leave on the 11:20 flight to San Jose.  Well, I get in around 11:50, but there’s a flight that leaves at 12:20.  Well, unfortunately, they tell me that one’s full.  Fan-fucking-tastic.  The next flight to San Jose isn’t until 2:30.  Unfortunately, I’m supposed to meet Diane at the airport in San Jose at 1.  Argh.  So, needless to say, I’m not in the best mood as I write this.  But let’s see.  Maybe I can try really hard to think positively or at least make a point about something.

            I’ve learned quite a bit this year; unfortunately, I’m not smart enough to apply most of the lessons I learned.  I guess I still have a lot of growing up to do.  But it’s a new year, right?  So time for some fresh starts, right?  I could make the typical New Year’s resolutions-be healthier, do better in school, form stronger relationships with family and friends.  Those are all great goals to have but I think I’ll take a break from all of that this time around.  Honestly, I wish I had something more profound to say, some prediction about this coming year, some deep reflection about 2004 but again, I’ve got nothing.  All I know is I’ve got a ton of thinking to do in the next few weeks.  And who knows, maybe I’ll actually do something that will make me happy.  But, you know, I’m not completely sure.

            Oh yeah, my 2:30 flight? Pushed back to 3:30.

Warning: Today’s entry is another one of my more emotionally-charged ones. Proceed with caution...


So you know how, supposedly, you never appreciate something until it’s gone? Well, I think it’s also true that you really learn to appreciate certain things if you catch a glimpse of what it would be like to lose them.

So today was my first day at the Office of the Attorney General in the Child Support Division. And let me say first and foremost, we are all incredibly, incredibly blessed. You think you have it bad? You have NO idea. After today, I look back at the past 19 years of my life and think about all of the times I’ve been ungrateful to my parents despite all they have provided me with. Not only have they always supported me and provided me with a loving environment, they’ve always supplied me with much more than just the essentials. When I wanted that cute Abercrombie skirt, Mom was willing to fork over the money; when I needed a new tennis racket, Daddy obliged. That’s not to say I took everything for granted and didn’t appreciate the value of a dollar. I think it’s fair to say that, for the most part, I’m careful with my spending, especially after last year, when I found my first real job and had to work a whole hour to earn a measly six bucks, some of which went straight to Uncle Sam. While I’ve always loved my parents, I often get frustrated with them when they nag me repeatedly about the same stuff over and over again. But I realized that I’m lucky enough to have parents who nag because they care about me and where my life’s going. I realized that what irritated me about my parents (the nagging) is exactly what so many kids out there miss out on. Well, not necessarily the nagging, but the love. Or, if the nagging is present for them, it’s for other reasons not rooted in love.

I watched parents, or NCPs (non-custodial parents) as they’re officially called, come into the office today and try to lessen their child support payments or try to get out of them all together. I say parents because it’s not just the stereotypical “dead-beat dads;” there were some mothers present today as well. I don’t understand that concept; I can’t fathom why anybody wouldn’t want to support his or her own children. I watched as one lady discussed her two different cases regarding two different men. One of the cases had been closed because the children’s father had been in jail for ten years and would remain there for at least another ten; the other father just wasn’t making payments. I watched a girl only a year older than me declare that she had to find a second job to support her family because the father of her one and two-year old children was only paying her $190 a month in child support. I watched a father talk threateningly to his little 5 year old daughter because she told him she was thirsty, a father who has also been cited in the past for a family violence situation. But the case today (out of 15 to 20 or so total) that touched me the most was a boy a couple years younger than me who came in with his grandmother. (eek, this is getting a little heavy… I’m sorry, I’ll try to keep it a bit lighter) So, after the two walked out of the office, the woman who I worked with today asked me, “Did you see how he kept glancing over and checking you out?” Under normal circumstances, I’m sure I would have been aware of this. (The guy said that he played football, basketball, baseball, I forget what else, but he was quite the athlete… and it showed…) But, today, I had been so occupied with the case and the conversation I had with the boy that his roaming eyes went unnoticed.

So, the boy’s mother had him as a teenager with a father who left her after the son was born. The mother then proceeded to abandon the boy and leave his grandmother to care for him. So the grandmother has basically raised this boy on her own. The boy has only talked to his mom twice, once when he was 8 and again when he was 15, and the mom is now raising 4 other children she had with another man and is failing to send child support to the grandmother. The grandmother told us about how she called to speak with her daughter to check up to see how she was doing and after the daughter curtly replied that she was fine, she proceeded to hang up on her mother. Well, I stepped out of the room for a bit and when I came back, the grandmother was crying. Being the Spanish illiterate person that I am, I had no idea what was going on. It turns out that while they were discussing the boy’s birth mother, he turned and pointed to his grandmother and said, “No, she’s my real mother. She’s the one who’s been there for me. She means everything to me.”

I don’t know. I just wanted to write about my day and put my feelings down somewhere, especially because this one case just evoked so many different emotions in me: anger towards the irresponsible mother, sympathy towards the boy and his grandmother, confusion about why the mother would support the other kids but not this one, but worst of all, the unrealistic desire to make everything better. While they had been through tough times, the boy and his grandmother still had such sunny dispositions and were so sweet. I wanted to call the mother and ask her, “What’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you taking responsibility for your own son? Your mother shouldn’t have to be doing this at her age.” I don’t know. I just had this overwhelming desire to make things right. Who knows, maybe this field of work could be in my future. You see, I got a chance to talk to the boy for a bit while the case worker was making copies and, not to sound cheesy or anything, but he really inspired me with his passion for life. Despite everything he’s endured, his outlook on life is admirable. His grandmother frequently talks about what a smart kid he is, and it’s pretty obvious how much she loves him. She doesn’t speak English and couldn’t understand what we were saying but she was beaming; you could see the pride in her face. He and I started talking about school and he asked me all about college. So I asked him where he wanted to go, and he said he wanted to study medicine at Baylor. He told me he wanted to become a pediatrician and help others; he didn’t want kids to suffer. He said he would make sure to go see them if they couldn’t come to him and that it would completely be worth it just to see the kids’ smiles. As lame as it sounds, I kind of got all choked up when he said that; what can I say? I’m a softie deep down.

In closing, I’m going to share part of my conversation with him. During our talk, he asked me about leaving and going to college so far away from home so I mentioned the concerns I had in the past, and he said, “You had a great opportunity, one that not everybody has; a lot of people from my area don’t get the chance to go to college. It’s really important that when you have an opportunity, you seize it; that’s what makes life worth living.”

So, I’m going to start taking a lot less for granted. I mean, I know I’m not perfect. Hell, I know I’m nowhere near perfect, but I’m going to try and live my life and seize every opportunity that I have been blessed with. Hey, you’ve got to start somewhere. Thanks for reading...