Time and Tide Wait for No Woman

Back home is always bittersweet.

I went home to spend the long Labor Day weekend with the fam.  Being back home, or the closest thing to it, simultaneously reminds me of how things never change and how they never stay the same.

My mom and I were having breakfast at that same Chick-fil-a on the Boulevard when in walks a gaggle of girls in volleyball uniforms emblazoned with the logo of the school where I used to teach.  My first job.  Undoubtedly, those girls were my former students.

"Weren't you our Spanish teacher?"

"We still sing the song you taught us!"

When I first started teaching, those girls were in 3rd grade.  Now, they're in 10th.  You never forget a face.  And you never forget songs taught to you in Spanish in 3rd grade, apparently.

A parent chaperoning the girls' volleyball team who remembered me came up as well.  She said her daughter has continued with Spanish and is doing very well in it.  "And it's all because of you.  You're the reason she fell in love with Spanish.  I can't wait to tell everyone I saw you!"

It made me cry.  For several reasons.  That I made an impact on someone's life.  That they still sing that silly Spanish song.  That I'm old enough to have taught kids who used to be in 3rd grade but are now in 10th.  That I'm still in school myself.

Then, church.  The very same.  A child whose ultrasound video I bawled my eyes out to is now taller than me.  As in, I saw her when she was a fetus and I was old enough to have birthed her myself, I remember when she couldn't walk or talk and then when she was able to do those things, I remember when she would throw herself face down on the floor during her temper tantrums.  This same child is taller than me.  And not only that, she now attends the same middle school I attended.  "Who gave you permission to grow up?" I always jokingly ask her.  But part of me isn't joking.  It's such a sobering, bittersweet thing to consider.

My parents might be moving into a new house soon.  We took a little tour this weekend.  Of course, they deserve it.  They've worked hard and they're now in a position to have a nicer place.  I'm happy for them.  But there's a part of me that fears what that's going to mean.  The house I spent my adolescence in will no longer be "home."  It will no longer be my "permanent address."  And the panic:  Why don't I have my own "permanent address" yet?  I imagine the halls of my parents' future new home haunted by the souls of unconceived grandchildren.

I'm one of the lucky ones whose parents are not so old-fashioned that they would dare let any semblance of pressure to get married pass their lips.  Not once.  Not a single solitary time have they let such a thing slip. (I don't believe my father would terribly mind if I never found anyone "good enough.")  But I can see it in my mother's eyes every time she sees or holds a baby.  I want one.

There's something about going home that makes me see my relationship failures (okay, let's put a positive spin on it and say "lessons learned" instead) stacked up like a tower of multicolored Legos.  I dunno, it just didn't work out. Block.  Yeah, you should have known that wasn't going to work out. Block on top of block.  I thought this one might have worked out, but . . . Block on top of block on top of block.

What's maddening is that though being home gives me this feeling of nostalgic ambivalence, the prospect of returning to my present life is no comfort, either.  Once I get back into the swing, I'm okay, but it's the psyching myself up for the return trip, knowing that reminders of more recent "failures" linger that pulls at me.  Knowing that deadlines and responsibilities await and must be reckoned with.  Time and tide wait for no woman.