July 5, 2006 12:24 PM
Independence Day
So yesterday was July 4th, and most people I know had the day off from work, and spent it having fun with family and friends. We did that around here too, although since my dh had a four-day weekend off, we hardly knew what to do with ourselves by Tuesday.
Anyway, when I woke up yesterday, I started thinking about independence, and what it had meant to me at different times in my life. My first taste of this fabulous concept came shortly after my 18th birthday. My parents drove me north five hours from our hometown to the university town where I would live for four years. After they left, I was busy meeting my roommate and other girls on the hall, and doing a lot of unpacking. But later that evening, I got the urge to just walk around campus and take in my new surroundings. I ended up at a pond behind the student union building, watching ducks and eating a giant chocolate chip cookie, tossing a few bits to them now and then. It occurred to me that for the first time in my life, absolutely no one--no family members, no friends--knew where I was and what I was doing. Like most kids and teens, I'd always checked in from time to time to let my parents know where I was. But at that moment, I felt independent for the first time. Ever. It was a sweet feeling.
Four years later, I realized that when someone pays your bills and you live in a dorm and you spend most of your waking hours studying and working internships, you're really not all that independent. You just have a little more freedom and make some of your own decisions. My true, first moment of independence came in 1986 just after I turned 22, a few months after college graduation. My parents were going through a very ugly divorce, and I wanted to get out of their house. So one day, I quit the newspaper reporting job I'd just landed in my hometown, packed up my car (a gift, already paid off) with my clothes and a few other things, and began to drive north. I had a loose plan of ending up in either Georgia or Washington D.C. or Alabama, because those are the places where I had family and close friends. I had no job, but I did have a few thousand dollars I'd managed to save thanks to brief stint at a newspaper and some generous relatives who sent gifts when I graduated. So I just left one day--I had a place to stay for a couple of nights a few hours north of my home, but other than that, my life was one big blank canvas. I remember getting on the interstate that day, and out of nowhere, I let out a big, happy, scream. I thought it might just be the beginning of a happy new adult life for me. And it was.
