Mitosis

I've spent the past three days back in my hometown - Green Bay.

Whenever I come back, I've noticed a large, large part of me flies backwards to high school and becomes the hopeless romantic all over again. I get stuck in a time doldrum, thinking about all of the what-ifs, the should'a-would'a-could'as.

And then, the other part of me becomes instantly mortified and red-faced with embarrassment, wanting so desperately to flash forward and leave the city to get back to my real life, my current life.

A lot has changed since then. Things have happened, sights have been seen, people have entered into my life and other folks' lives, and life has consequentially become inelastic. Basically, the gloom-doom sentence that things will never be the same, can be applied here.



Alas, I've noticed I'm entering into another thick period of growth and development.

I mean, we're always growing and developing...but I notice I'm entering a stage of my life that is going to be especially populated with changes and challenges.

People and pets are aging - my grandpa is getting a pacemaker January 7th, and my dog turns 14 just days before that. My Great Aunt Verna died right before Christmas. All of my cousins have grown up. My younger cousin that I once remember holding as a newborn baby, is about to get her driver's license.

Folks are making career changes - my mom has been going back to school full time for her college degree, and my brother is entering his twilight years at UWGB.

People I watched grow up, get braces, play in a soccer league with me - they are now getting married off and buying houses, and talking about planning for kids of their own someday! It's so surreal.

I'm proud of those friends - right now, I'm living vicariously through them. I toured my cousin Chrystal's property today, where she and her husband are building their dream house, complete with a band room, a home theater system, a full bar in the basement, a spiral staircase, etc. It is gorgeous!!

I also met with Sarah and Joshua - old, old friends from middle school and the aforementioned soccer league days. They seem so casual about standing in the middle of their dark mahogany cabinet-ed kitchen with hickory hardwood floors, talking about their new house and new married life. On the inside, I am secretly freaking out and looking around, taking in as much as I can with my eyes. Taking mental pictures, but also marveling over how far they've come. Wow.

Tomorrow night, I'll visit my Milwaukee college circuit, dining over supper with Connie and Todd (another wedding I'll be standing up in), talking about their wedding plans. Connie's maid of honor, Alison, will be there - 5 months pregnant with her firstborn child.

On New Year's Eve, I'll see my 'BFF' Sonja, who will probably update me on her pursuing her master's degree, going house-hunting with her husband, and also nesting for her diehard alleged biological clock that is ticking to have a baby. Again, wow! What is going on???


So much is occurring in each of our individual lives - but yet I do notice how the get-togethers are getting kind of strained. It's like we have to quick purge all the big stuff that we're doing, all within a 1 hour visit over a meal at a restaurant or something. And there's always that weird social panic about, "Oh man, what do I talk about after I'm done explaining these projects?? I actually have to make small talk???"

Isn't that the strangest thing? You can have the oldest of friends, but still feel stressed to scrape for the ability to small-talk. It's as if the older we get, the more socially awkward we become??

I could vouch that I am a victim of that myself. I've been in Green Bay alone for this visit, since Zach had to stay back in Ohio and work. (He flies back in tomorrow night for New Year's.) And the whole time we've been apart, I've been thinking about him and missing him, missing having him here to share things with. Although I'm fortunate of my time back in GB, and I'll savor getting back to my roots and doing things I haven't done in a long time, I have been holding my breath to just pack up the Beetle and take Zach back to our humble little life, three states away.

He knows best about my day-to-day tasks and projects. He knows about the people I work with, the projects I'm in the middle of at Honda, the carryover items from one evening into the next morning. He knows what I am looking forward to, what I dream of planning for my/our own life. Because someday I'd like to be planning our own marriage, our first house, our next vacation spot. And I'm the most content to just go back to our apartment, and curl up and stay at home.

In the next year I want to keep on my regular exercise routine. I want to try more new cooking recipes. I want to set aside at least a half hour to just leisure-read each day after work.

You can call it more "me" time, you can call it becoming a hermit...but I'm noticing folks and friends my age are all turning their lifestyles inward like that, building homes and nests for one other.




Mitosis - the usual method of cellular division. One part of each chromosome being retained in each of two new cells resulting from the original cell.

We're all growing up, dividing into cells...despite having a common history, common original roots.