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So my big (and pretty much only) gift was a Nintendo Wii – and playing it has been amazing.
While I am personally in love with Metroid Prime: Corruption for allowing me to fully appreciate Wii-mote + nunchuk abilities (Loves opening doors by pulling lock out, rotating and pushing in LOL), it’s playing other games with my parents that has been the best part. My dad really hasn’t played a video game since he and my mom would take turns on Pac-Man at bars way back before I was born. But now, he’s playing Wii Sports with my brother and I like a crack addict. He laughs as he plays because of the fun and because he’s just blown away by the technology. My mom and I used to have marathon sessions of playing Galaga back when we had an NES. So, I downloaded it and it’s like we never stopped. She also can’t stop laughing, in great part due to the cussing fits that are induced as I play – I swear she’s almost had three asthma attacks.
So thanks Nintendo, for getting the family together. And possibly killing my mother with laughter. Thanks.
I’m home! Finals are done, and the ick that was Fall ‘08 is behind me. A month of no class, with only studying o-chem and working when I want to fill the time in serious ways. While I’m happy too have so little on my plate, I am also thrilled that I decided that I would work for part of break, because I can no longer handle spending so much time at home.
I love home. I love my family. I do not like being kept after as though I was ten-years old, and getting scowled at when I raise my voice at my brother (even if he was being an ass). Maybe it was just a long week for them… but if this is how it’s going to be, then God bless promoter fusions that must be analyzed.
On the other hand, if all goes as planned (and desired) this will be my last big homecoming. The last time I can take off as much time as I like during the holidays to visit home. Having a real job across the country will make that more difficult, so I’m going to appreciate it while I have it, because real life is around the corner. wow.
The beginning and end of my trip felt like the board at a train station (or airport). My mom arrived at 13:55, and although I left in a cab a while earlier, I left her in Paris at 17:24.
The trip was great, and I loved showing my mom and aunt the city and country I have come to love. It is different, in small but significant ways.
At the same time, when they arrived, it was like an intrusion on my world. And while I felt that feeling coming, when I first met my mom, I had felt it to a lesser degree when Mike came. This place, this experience, my life here had really been mine, and only mine. And I was selfish. I didn’t want to share it, and honestly it’s changed me. Not just my approach to research, not just the way I want to change my dress. But me. Those little, subtle things that make a person the person you know. I’m free here, completely. The expectations people have are fresh, no baggage.
I noticed when Mike came, that certain things I had let go (notably, the cussing) came back. I became who I was. I don’t want to be that. I like who I’ve become, I like the way I live my life here, and I hope to bring much of it back. And as much as that’s true, I don’t want her to know that, to have this feeling that she’s missed. But that’s life – I’m my own person now, and one of the greatest things about this is that it will help her allow me (and let me allow myself) to really – as cheesy as it sounds – become an adult.
So, she was right, the first comment I made after ‘I love you, how are you,’ when I saw her was something along the lines of ‘your purse is too high, you look like a tourist’ was wrong. I was mean, I was childish. But as soon as I said it, I was sorry. She thought I said it because I was embarrassed by her, and it was tough to get through to her that that wasn’t it. Although my mom is the one that taught me to see the many sides of a story, when I act this way to her, it’s just over. Unless I talk, unless I explain, and unless I outright ask her if she understands where I’m coming from and forgives me, she just shuts down. She won’t talk to me, and at most, just says, ‘ok.’ And I think I’ve finally learned to actually do this, even if I have to do the reaching out – and I’m glad, because the rest of the trip went quite well.
We ate great food, we saw amazing things for the first time – together. She got to experience the public transportation, amazing bier & brezels, and cleanliness I’ve had for the last two months.
I think we both know that I arrived and will leave a different person. I just hope I can hold on to that. And I hope that even though it was only a week, she will experience the same.
