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copyright ©1999-2001 |
Maybe
I was just a little late in coming to terms with the inevitable, a late
bloomer in the independence aspect of maturity. At a certain point in
every young adult’s life, there comes a point where you suddenly
realize that your parents’ home doesn’t feel like your home anymore,
and for me, that moment of awareness didn’t arrive until that summer
after Australia. It’s a little sad, a little exciting, and very scary
when you realize that somehow, somewhere along the path of growing up,
someone’s cut the umbilical cord without warning you. I was
twenty-three years old and I felt homeless. At my parents’ house, I
had history, sure, but staring up at the same Tom Cruise poster that had
been hanging above my twin bed since puberty was, to be perfectly
honest, making the future look somewhat depressing. But
that miserable year in Australia hadn’t been a complete waste; I’d
seen a glimpse of how lovely it might be to set up more permanent house
with my boyfriend Asher. We were nowhere near thinking marriage at that
point, but making the leap towards long-term cohabitation – now that
sounded mighty appealing. What made taking that step just a teensy bit
more difficult was the fact that almost immediately post-Australia, Ash
had up and moved away from Boston and out to Tucson, Arizona, to begin
the long, long process of getting a Ph.D. My
first glimpse of Tucson was of brown, bare earth, stretching seemingly
forever beneath my plane as it made its final descent into the Tucson
International Airport (and by “international,” they mean planes fly
out to nearby Mexico). The ground looked painfully parched and the
plants, what few there were, seemed sad and straggly, like nature’s
undernourished rejects. The city itself was a never-ending sprawl of
identical, eyesore strip malls, chain stores mingling with porn shops, a
denser concentration of fast food restaurants than I’d ever seen in my
life. I was significantly less than impressed. I lasted four months before making the big move nonetheless. don't stop: still more this way!
---------------------------> lounge . nourish . host . laze . home. |