Julie left for her apartment in Maryland today. The dogs and I are sort of mooning around the house, looking up hopefully at every sound from outside. Lucie and Rufus don't know it yet, but they won't see Sister (as we like to think they think of her) again for a long time. Maybe it's better for them that way - thinking that each passing car is hers returning home. I know better.
Spring classes don't start at the University of Delaware until the second week in February, so we had Jules at home for the better part of two months. With neither of us working, I think this was the most time Julie and I have spent together since that first summer after we moved here, when we would drive to West Branch every day to swim and lay in the sun. It has really been wonderful having her home, and I know I will miss her every day.
At the same time, however, I know she needs to get back to school and to her life in Maryland. She has such a clear goal and is focused on accomplishing it. When she and Tom were growing up, we always said to them "when you go to college" not "if you go to college" and they both took that to heart, it seems, with four degrees and counting between the two of them.
I try not to have too many regrets, but one of them is definitely that I never finished college and got a degree. At least Tom and Julie did not make that same mistake. For that, I will take partial credit.
3 comments:
sometimes i wish my sense of the passage of time was more like the doggies'--i'm not sure they can tell the difference between a half hour and a couple weeks! or maybe i just like to think they can't...
i do feel a bit like that though--i'm so caught up in routine (stupid exercise) and prepping for the school year (stupid dutch history book) that i haven't noticed the days passing. it both feels like i've been here months and like i've just gotten back. kinda weird. but living in two places as i have been for the last several years, you get used to the oddities of frequent long travel surprisingly quickly.
how i wish it were summer and hot and sunny and we were swimming at west branch though! or maybe somewhere more fun, and near me--say chincoteague--where there isn't strange algae growing out of the bottom...
don't forget to get back out here and visit me!
also i've had just really a terrible time explaining to people what i did at home for my ridiculously long two months of break--"prepping for christmas took a lot of time, and i was able to do a lot of pleasure reading" is just not adequate. then we talk about how we wish we could read for fun more, then the conversation slows, and they're like, "what else did you do?" besides "enjoyed myself immensely," i don't have much of an answer.
H-m-m-m... I don't suppose you could just say that you lit up your mom's life every day that you were home? No, probably not.
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