Today’s memory challenge is inspired by the fact that I am still waiting to finish the day job and get on with the rest of my life. My actual last day of work is 10/31. I only work 4 days a week so that means 15 working days left. (I get depressed if I count actual days.) And because my term date is a Friday and normally I don’t work Fridays, I will instead take that last Monday off having a 4 day weekend before the last week.
What all this means is I am very impatient for one phase of my life to end and the next phase to begin. I suppose I am impatient for the old to be done and excited for the new to begin,
I think many of the sleep problems I have now as an adult stem partly from my impatience/excitability as a child. I would be so excited before an event, any event, that I couldn’t go to sleep. I would get up out of bed at least a dozen times and go find my mom and ask if I could get up yet.
Birthdays were the worst. I would be so excited that I would actually make myself sick. My mom worked during the day so my birthday was never celebrated until she came home from work. That made for a very long day that built up and up and up until usually I was too sick to enjoy my birthday. One year my mom decided to let me open one present when I got up in the morning. Just one. She told me that the night before but when I got up in the morning there was no present in my room and she was gone to work. My grandmother told me to call her and ask her about it so I did. That’s when she gave me the first clue. I spent the day following clues, some of them time-based (and my grandmother was the guard) that led me around the house and the yard to find a variety of little gifts. Barrettes for my hair. Socks. A clear vinyl tote bag that had pink polka dots on it. An umbrella that matched the bag. And so on. When my mom came home we had dinner and the birthday cake but by then there were no more presents to open. Knowing me, I probably threw a selfish temper tantrum at the time but I remember it as one of the few birthdays where I wasn’t constantly in the bathroom being sick from the anticipation and excitement for the day.
Your turn. Tell about a time in your childhood that you impatient or excited.
Okay, first, are you going to wear your new “work” clothes (pajamas!) as your Halloween costume for your last day?!
What a wonderful gift from your mother. I can just imagine you going from the down of disappointment when there was no gift just sitting there to the excitement of the all-day hunt.
I did not look forward to things when I was a kid, at least not that I remember. Anything different/new/upcoming was change, and I just remember that anticipation was not a good feeling. It wasn’t horrible (until I hit twelve, of course!), just a bit off-balancing, out-of-my-control feeling. At least this is how I remember it, but that might be false hindsight.
LOL on the PJs as a costume. (I’m late on answering these…missed them somehow in the craziness that is my life.)
Oh, wait! Bookstore visits!!! Those were a sure bet. 🙂
I never, ever went to a bookstore as a child.
Ever.
Isn’t that sad?
We had very few books in the house.
I was 11 1/2. (Yes, I remember that) I’d been in physiotherapy for almost a year. The therapist kept telling me I was close, so close to being on crutches full time and out of that damned chair!
I wanted it so bad. I worked my tush off, doing everything by the book, not pushing, going just as fast as the therapist (who was like my third, because the first one hated kids, and the second left for some reason that escapes me right now) would allow me, and slowly rebuilding all the muscle strength that I’d taken for granted.
So, one day, we go into therapy, and there’s a set of crutches that I’d been working with for a month or so. We go through the entire session, she says nothing at all.
Finally, someone came to pick me up — I want to say it was Gabriel, the eldest of my elder brothers, but the only thing I know for certain was it wasn’t Mike, because he was in the service at the time. I was heading back to my chair, and she stopped me.
“No more chair.”
Those three words just… everyone says they hear angels singing, to me those three words sounded better. She did a final adjustment on my knee braces, but kept the chair, and sent me home, on crutches. I was so damned proud to get out of that chair. I was free and that was what counted.
*sigh* Of course that fell apart when I got home, but I was out of that chair. To this day I have an irrational terror of ending up in one again.
Wow, you’ve probably already been told this a bunch of times but you have enough material for several lifetimes of writing. I hope you are using it.
Your Mom was very cool, Susan!
I am very emotional, and had my fair share of anxious-stomachache, but I don’t think anticipation of a ‘fun’ event ever made me sick. I was always hugely anxious to get to the Cottage, which was where my heart lived as a child, but I loved the preparation, anticipation, and daydreaming, as well as the journey, almost as much as the arrival. I still do — milk as much fun out of every event as I can!
Before a recent reunion weekend, a grown buddy and I were texting each other ‘4 more sleeps! 3 more…2 more…etc.’. so I haven’t changed at all. Of course, I can remember a few selfish tantrums of my own when my plans were interrupted at the last minute — and I always have a little ‘down’ when all the fun is over, until I have something else to anticipate…
She was cool that one time. Not so much the other times but she thought she was. 🙂
My sister and I routinely woke up at about 2 a.m. Christmas morning. We weren’t allowed to come out of our room until 6. It was excruciating. We’d stay in there and play games and work puzzles and look at the clock and three minutes would have gone by. And every year I’d pull back the curtain and hope to see snow, even though we lived in San Francisco where it has only snowed like once in the history of the world.
I used to wish for snow in Concord too! we got it once but not until I was in high school.