My mind is a curious place to delve into on a Tuesday morning after what feels like no sleep and just before caffeine. Soooo very many things zooming along in there.
So here’s a secret that I’m going to tell the blogging community that I was thinking about this morning:
So I leave for LA in, like, 2 days (had to add in the ‘like;’ after all, I am headed for SoCal!) Going to LA is not the secret, just the premise. So I started to think about my dad. Parents are weird, but that’s not the secret either, EVERYONE knows that. The secret is that I’m divorced. Huh? What are you talking about? Drink your caffeine and step away from the keyboard!
Right. SO more premise required. My dad (and my mom until her retirement) worked at the high school I attended in non-too-shabby West LA. They are/were part of the maintenance crew. That is to say, my mom cleaned toilets and my dad replaces light bulbs, as one of my not-too-delicate classmates described their jobs to me one day. I am the janitor’s daughter. I was the scholarship student. Some days these were hard titles to live down, but most days it just meant that I knew where the secret underground storage rooms were as I’d been learning its secrets since I was three years old, or so, and that my $100 blazer (part of the uniform) most likely came from the “Lost & Found.”
Well, after I was done and gone, my parents were still there, proud that I’d attended, proud that I’d gone off to UCSC, prouder still that I’d done the Stanford thing, proud that the janitor’s daughter was doing none-too-shabby herself. Little weirded out, but proud that I went off sailing for a few years, then ended up in Hawai’i of all places and bought a house and was teaching and living their American dream! Aaaah, they’d done something right!
Well, my mom has retired and so I don’t include her in this big “sin” of pride for me…but I think they’ve had a hard time with me being, oh, HUMAN. I don’t really see it as a sin, mind, just getting into their trains of thought. WELL, what’s that proverb I’m about to slaughter? “Pride cometh before the fall?” I’m not saying they set me up for failure, no, mostly because I don’t agree that I’ve failed. My father must feel it though, or maybe that he failed…cuz the secret? *No one at my hoity-toity-HS knows about my divorce and return to California. I’m not allowed to be anything but the aforementioned “success” of above…
*I’m too lazy to wait until the bottom of the post. I told one teacher this xmas as I’ve corresponded with her since my graduation. But I’ve asked her to keep it a secret too.
I’m a little weirded out that I have to keep it a secret to a place and people with whom I’ve had the longer than traditional 4-year relationship. I think I mentioned it earlier, I was THREE years old the first time I stepped foot onto that campus. Most of the teachers I bonded with have moved on…except for my asterisk’d one mentioned above, and maybe that’s what my dad’s hoping for…that all the people who “knew me when” will be gone before he has to mention that “D” word.
I can’t really blame him…he grew up in a town of what was about 700 people when he was younger. (Now closer to 5000.) EVERYONE KNOWS YOUR BUSINESS. Good or bad, the town will have an opinion about you. My old HS, that is my dad’s world. Those are the people he has to interact with on a daily basis. I can handle that kind of stuff…but I really think, even if he happens to forget to mention my X, he should let them know I’ve moved back to CA. Maybe once I settle down in WA I’ll have them send me the Newsletter (yes, this is the kind of school that sends alumni NEWSLETTERS) there. Then there’ll be questions and he could say, “My daughter has moved to Washington.” It’s amazing how much information that statement holds! To the uninformed it might mean the whole kit and caboodle, including the Irish Rose, have made the crossing to Canada and down the coast to Washington! I may have to insist.
Okay, must get ready for that “W” word…
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