I wore my paint pants out in public today. It’s on old pair of jeans stained with spackle from last fall, wearing at the knees from the sawdust in the shop. This semester I have to paint for a class, and wiping my paint- and glue-covered hands on my pants is easier than washing them every two minutes. The paint doesn’t wash out. So these jeans have become designated outfit for messy things.
I was wearing them today to work on a project, and I needed to go to Michael’s (for the fourth time this week!) to grab some supplies to finish said project. I pulled my barely-brushed hair up and threw on a shirt that was not covered in paint. I was pulling out of my apartment complex when I realized I was still wearing the pants, but I figured if I was going to go anywhere in paint-stained jeans, it might as well be Michael’s.
No one at Michael’s seemed to care much. I saw several husbands bored out of their minds following their wives around while they picked out Christmas decorations, parents ushering kids past the row of discounted stocking-stuffer toys and candy. It’s still Thanksgiving weekend, things are still on sale, so if you want a Christmas tree at 40%, check out your local Michael’s. I grabbed the two things I needed, checked out with the same cashier as last time I was there, and headed back out to the car. It was less than 15 minutes, all told.
I also bought a root beer, because hey, why not.
And then I drove home. It was golden hour, warm and glowing, but a little bit overcast. The roads were a little quieter because most people on this college side of town are still home for the four-day weekend. The parking spot I left in the front row was still open when I got back home. My laundry was done and needed to be switched over. It was almost time to make dinner. It was a good, unassuming day.
Most of my days this semester have been like that. Not boring, certainly, just simple. Rhythmic. Predictable, in the good way. It has been, all things considered, one of the best times in recent memory. Things click, and they are good.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week. It’s Thanksgiving, after all. It’s my second-favorite holiday, because fall is my favorite season, I love good comfort food, I like being forced to slow down, I like being intentional about gratitude.
I’ve had a complicated relationship with the day itself for most of my life – good Southern food and the ingredients to make it are hard to come by where I’ve lived, and sometimes feeling in good community was a struggle too. But there is always so much to be thankful for.
This Thanksgiving, I went home. Home, here, meaning the town where I was born, where I lived until I was six, where my handprints were immortalized in cement on a sidewalk some 15 years ago. The church I was baptized in. It’s a place that will always feel familiar, and at heart, I suppose I am a small farming town type kid. And I ate off a paper plate and drank sweet tea from a red Solo cup. People played cornhole and rode ATVs and went fishing. There were more people I didn’t know than those I did, and even then, I hadn’t seen them in a while. They asked about my family (my brother is a senior now! my parents are moving again!), school (it’s going great, classes are usually super easy or super hard), what exactly do I do (theatre. stage management), what do I plan to do with it (stage…manage?) and do I have a boyfriend (nope). We talked a lot about football, because that’s easy and my team is literally, actually, definitively the best.
And it was good. It felt right. It was so normal, so un-special in so many ways. Like almost every other day.
Like doing a show that you like, with some of the best people you’ve ever worked with. I don’t write about theatre much, because I haven’t quite found the words to describe how it feels, but I love it so much. I’m so excited to spend the rest of my life doing this.
Like the rush of being at a football game, and watching your team win. every. game.
Like friends who show up at night with ice cream. Like friends who offer to come with you on long drives. Like friends who say, “I’m bored, let’s do something” so you do. Friends who give up lots of their time to help you. Friends who make plans with you to do something epic. Friends who know your food order at all the usual places and bring it to you. Old friends who you call late at night to trade stories. Ones who share in the both the saddest and most exciting things that happen. The ones that ask hard questions and demand good answers. Friends are my favorite.
Communities that are growing. Slowly, but surely, and you get to watch.
Even the things like running errands in the middle of the day when the sky is bright blue listening to a podcast you like. Voting for real for the first time, making decisions that sometimes even surprise you, but proud of your choices. Loving a class you thought you’d hate. A good, greasy pizza. A funny meme. Laughing really, really, hard.
The list goes on.
One week from tomorrow, I’ll be a concert, for which buying tickets was the most young, dumb, college thing I have done to date, and I am so ready. Two weeks from now, I’ll be on a plane. I’ll be on my way to somewhere I more readily claim as home, but it’s also not home at all in other ways. It’s not the same as when I knew it, and maybe I’ve outgrown it. I don’t belong there anymore. I’ve grown past it, but I owe that growing – and so much of who I am now – to it. I miss the people and the place more than pretty much anywhere else in the world. I have been itching for months to be there again. I am so, so excited.
There are lots of other really cool things happening over break, and next semester, and next year. They are so good. This new season of life that I feel like I’m headed into is insane. There are so many wonderful things happening that I can and more that I don’t know yet, I’m sure. It is dream come true on top of dream come true. They are the kind of things to scream from rooftops about.
But I’m going to save my voice, clean up my living room that looks like Michael’s threw up all over it, and go to bed thankful for sunsets and good parking spots.
So, Um...Yeah 