My Last Day

Its my last day in the United States for the next year. Wow - that's a sentence I never thought I would be typing. My plane leaves tomorrow morning at 7 am - I will be leaving for the airport bright and early at 4. I have such a melange of feelings right now - excitement, nervousness, nostalgia, sadness, and uncertainty. I have never been outside the US, so right now I am not sure what to expect - other than a lot of people and not being able to understand much of what is said to me.

Last night around 6 pm the Fed - Ex truck pulled up in front of my parent's house. I was expecting a package and needed it before I left, so the postal service cut it close. I was relieved to be in possession of 4 tickets for Olympic basketball on Sunday August 10th! Now that I am excited for!

Vacation

My family recently returned from a weeklong vacation on the beaches of New Jersey. It was a refreshing, invigorating week - and one filled with warm memories. It was the first vacation I can remember where everyone was relaxed - my dad has no more deadlines now that he is retired, and my sister and her boyfriend had the week off. My mom was in high spirits and all of this added up to what seemed to be the perfect week. But the week was not without family drama. On our third night in NJ, my mom, aunt, sister, her boyfriend and I went on a sunset cruise of Barnegat Bay. Unbeknownst to me(my mother apparently knew :) ) my sister's boyfriend had a little surprise planned. As the sun was setting over the bay - he and my sister went out to the bow of the boat. And I got to witness one of the more poignant moments in my sister's life - her engagement.
There have been few times in my life where I have been truly floored - but this was one of those moments. I don't know how many brothers get to see their sister's engagement - but I count myself lucky to be able to share in the moment with her and her fiancee. Its a memory I will take with me for the rest of my life.

Perspective

Two events I have attended recently have left me with a interesting persepective on my current station in life. One was last month's graduation at New Trier and the other happened yesterday, July 5th. I was my grandmother's date to her 57th high school reunion. Why they choose to celebrate the 57th year I was unable to discover - but its beside the point. High school graduation is about the future. The speeches given at the graduation reflected on the past, but focused mostly on the future of the new graduates, and correspondingly, our country.
At my grandmother's reunion, where I was one of the youngest people, at the ripe age of 31, most of the talk was of the past. How different things were during the late 40's and early 50's, how much things had changed, etc.
As I was standing in line at my grandmother's reunion - it struck me how a line connects these two celebrations. Graduation was marked by a line of people standing, waiting to get their diploma, waiting to move on to their future. The line moved fast, crackling with excitement, potential energy. On the other hand, the line of the reunion moved slowly, haltingly, almost as if it were trying to go backwards, and giving ground, grudingly, to the inexorable march of time. I know that I am part of this line - somewhere between my students and my grandmother. And I realized that this line was moving too - whether I liked it or not - and before it gets to the end, I've got some things I want to do.