Sunrise, Sunset

My mom and I were cooking dinner tonight and listening to Fiddler on the Roof.  As she was stir-frying the chicken and I was doing my best to cut up a pineapple the song "Sunrise, Sunset" came on.  The words feel like they're about me.  About my parents.  About our lives and how they are changing.

"Wasn't it yesterday when they were small?  Sunrise, Sunset.  Swiftly go the days.  Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers, blossoming even as we gaze...Swiftly fly the years, one season following another, laden with happiness and tears."

I am moving out on Thursday and my parents will be alone for the first time in nearly 24 years.  How much it seems we've been through together, yet there is still so much ahead of us.  It feels like yesterday that I was starting first grade with a fearful smile and when people ask me if I can believe I'm starting college, I frankly tell them "I'll believe it when it happens."  Even then, it will be hard to believe that I am eighteen and starting this ridiculously big chapter of my life.  In the blink of an eye, highschool was over and in the next four years I'll blink again and I'll be graduating from college.  How does it happen so fast?  How can 18 years be just an instant?  To be honest, I never thought this day would come and there is a nervous feeling inside me telling me it's not actually happening.  

I looked through my memory box recently and found relics of the past.  Drawings for Fathers Day, paper hearts from Valentines Day, elementary school projects, report cards, Sunday school books, programs and awards.  Everything came back into mind so vividly and there were tears and laughter as I went through it all.  Finding funeral programs from too many who died too young.  Finding paintings from the first grade that look just as good as anything I've done lately.  Photographs from my first steps to receiving my diploma.  It's all there, 18 years of memories put into one big, purple, rubbermaid box. 

There have been many seasons of life for me, but they have all looked relatively the same.  I start something new, I fear the change, I find the good in it and I smile.  Repeat.  That has been my life and now I am starting something very new.  Newer than starting high school.  Newer than learning how to tap dance, than learning how to act.  Thanks to those 18 years behind me, the fear is gone.  I am starting something new for the first time with courage rather than uncertainty.  These will be good years, like the songs says, "laden with happiness and tears".

Whatever Way Our Stories End

Song lyrics have started to mean so much more to me lately.  I feel like they are expressing my feelings better than I ever could, so I am sharing them with you. 

"I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason bringing something we must learn.  And we are led by those who help us most to grow if we let them and we help them in return...It well may be that we may never meet again in this lifetime, so let me say before we part: So much of me is made of what I learned from you...and now whatever way our stories end, I know you have rewritten mine by being my friend."

--"For Good", Wicked

I first heard this song on my last day of high school and it was shared with me by my dear stand partner and friend.  She told me that it was a story about me and her, which is true, but it is also the story of me and many others lately.  There are so many people who have been in and out of my life, yet they have all been so important in shaping it.  Without them, I wouldn't be listening to these showtunes and letting them touch my life so deeply.  It is so true to me that people come into our lives for a reason and though that reason is sometimes not seen until those friendships are over, it was still a reason.  So when I have been saying good-bye to my friends as they head off in separate directions, I realize that some of them I may never have the same relationship with them.  Even though those friendships will not be the same, I will still never forget them and they will still be so important to me.  As we head off and our paths become more clear, with a few clouds along the way, we will not forget the things we learned from each other.  No, we will take the lessons with us and we will never forget the impact we had on each other's lives.

  

A Summer About Life

"This is how it works

You're young until you're not

You love until you don't

You try until you can't

You laugh until you cry

You cry until you laugh

And everyone must breathe

Until they're dying breathe

No this is how it works

You peer inside yourself

You take the things you like

And try to love the things you took

And then you take that love you made

And you stick it into some

Someone else's heart"

--Regina Spektor, "On the Radio"

For me, what was meant to be a relaxing summer before the college plunge has proven to be one of the most difficult yet.  It has been a summer of feeble attempts to do everything I can and in turn, has been a summer of the reality that I can't do it all.  I listened to this song and the words seem to jump out at me as a message of how to live my life.  It told me I can't do everything...a crude realization, but an utterly true one.  It told me I can't be friends with everyone, that some friendships will last and others will fall.  It has told me things I desperately don't want to hear, but things that are necessary to hear.  It told me I must go on and spread my love through my world.  Not the whole world, that's what I want to do and can't do.  No, for now, I need to spread love through my world.

There have been beautiful moments this summer and also moments that have made me sad.  If I want to really live life, I must experience both.  I put on a play this summer with 10 friends in six weeks and, exhausting as it was, it was a wonderful way to spend my time.  I have spent many hours in the company of old friends and new friends alike.  There have been evenings spent in tears, tears that show our concern for what lies ahead.  There have also been times of pure laughter, living in the moment and not letting anything get in our way.  It's been a summer unlike any other and as I prepare to go to college, I wonder if there will be more summers like this one.  Summers of joy, but of uncertainty.  Of love and of irritation.  Of the realization that some things will come to an end, whether we want them to or not.  

The next year will be full of the same feelings, but this difficult summer is something for me to be grateful for.  It has taught me things that were important to know before I approached my entirely new world of college.  In the end, though it has been harsh and tearful, this summer was a blessing for me.  Blessings come in many forms and this is one I don't often like to see, but as I grow older, I realize how important it is to hear the painful truth in the times you desperately don't want to.  I am thankful for the tears and the laughter and they will go with me into the next year where there will be even more.