Home. The dear old place. I have finally returned to Stillwater after two weeks of going wherever the wind took me. It's very nice to live spontaneously. I think I'm getting better at it. But it is now nice to be home.
Here's a story in my life that hints of a lack of spontaneity (and a lot of inner tragedy too). Five years ago I went to Glacier National Park in Montana, and I was offered a job on the spot at a little cafe overlooking the nicest place I've ever seen in my life. They needed help, I was there, and I had half of my fellow travelers telling me to take the job, and the other half reminding me of home. (And my stupid job at the bead store, counting beads all day and listening to Norah Jones and watering the plants because I wasn't good at helping artsy people find their next new inspiration).
With the job: It's not even to say that I would take the job now (I didn't back then either) but I think that at 27 I wouldn't have to have such a conflicted walk around the lake before saying no to the offer. You make your decisions differently at different ages and stages. I believe this fully. I was facing the bitter truth at that time in my life that maybe I didn't have such a spontaneous heart after all. And why did it matter anyway?....I always built up a life in my mind that revolved around some serious and thoughtful elements of living, and then, all at once, all cares thrown to the wind and the wide open road before me. And for a long time instead it felt like I forgot the second half of that. I was piecing together the hows and whys and whens of car insurance and interest rates and lesson plans that take longer than you think if you want something to be really, really good. So spontaneous changed.
Then there was a time when spontaneous just seemed irresponsible. What was the earlier me thinking? Sometimes it wouldn't even be RIGHT to jet off into the wide blue yonder without a thought in my mind. People were depending on me, and it took a lot of my time. And I wasn't even living the half of it, but I could see it right in front of me. Navigating the 20s can be really thrilling, and other times it can just suck. You sometimes know more than ever what you don't know, but you don't always know how to get to the next place. (Until suddenly, you just know.) And I think no one tells you that when you're younger, or they do, but they're masking it with certain words that inspire faraway views of reality. Or you just aren't listening.
There was a time in my life when I thought about my coworkers' lives past 6 pm and marveled at their fortitude. And I would say, to the ones I was closer to, 'How the heck do you do this job all day, teaching middle school, and then go home and think about what to give your kids for dinner and help them with their homework?' It seemed astonishingly 'too much'. And for me then and there, it was. I could barely figure out what to make myself for dinner. And they would say things about growing into your life and how having your kids from the time they were babies helps, and that they froze a lot of meals and sometimes life was in shambles and that was ok too. I believed them when they said these things, but I still didn't understand. And now I kind of do, at least a little more, even though I'm not yet helping someone with their homework that another teacher assigned.
Now I think that spontaneity is very possible for someone like me, especially seeing my place and situation in life. I have not put this kind of sudden changes living on any back burner, but I have modified my view of it. I can get to a fuller understanding of it faster than I could before. Being more spontaneous, and faster, makes life more fun. Recently this meant that I packed the car with essentials (and also non-essentials) and started down the road. What I didn't have before was a GPS (there is a lot less swearing in my car now, and I get to where I am going on time) and a belief that the good and bad could blend a lot more when considering this word.
For me, at this age and with the current shape of my life, it means I can get into the car and go somewhere else right away, barely thinking, and it's good. And I'm not walking out on a family or losing my job or being too hard to get to. It means a fresh perspective and time with people I love and seeing small things in other parts of the world that don't always open up as grandly at home (until you get back and see it all again and they DO) and even more than that, it means life happening differently. You don't get back moments either, and that's what is bittersweet in life. Why not be all there? Why not let spontaneity wind its way to you and see what comes next? I find this balances my utter dependence on bell schedules for much of the work week all year.
Thankfully this sense of living is not just marked by summer schedules. I like this in the middle of class too. There is nothing more thrilling than realizing, right about the time you're going to point to the Swahili coast on the map again that it is high time to stop and move all of the desks around. Or blowing bubbles together in the classroom and making a mess. Just because we can. I love stuff like that. But, classrooms are not things I want to dwell on overly much in June. Let's move on.
I think spontaneity is also more about the inner landscape than it is about booking a wildly expensive trip to the Andes, just so you can be anonymous and different for a few weeks. This eventually occurred to me when I was driving all over Iowa and South Dakota and Minnesota in the last few weeks. Hello, Midwest. A lot of what was spectacular and fun and outright life was in all of my favorite people. And in living other peoples' schedules. I will say, I have lived in this part of the world for a while, and there are comforting and long-abiding and very good things around here. But usually people don't find Iowa to be very glamorous. (Iowa people? That's another matter entirely.)
For now, in short, it is this: my recent adventures have been very rich and fairly fun, and currently, home is very sweet and 'just right' too.
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