Success? Who Needs It?
I went to a graduation ceremony today. I doubt the valedictorian had an impact on anyone in the audience except me. That's because - I am receptive, if nothing else. At 50, all I know is, whatever choices I've made, they've been made sans thought. I'm lucky, is all I can say.
But the valedictorian quoted J.K. Rowlings.
Now, I read the first three Harry Potter's aloud to my kids. I stopped at some point during the fourth because I was having nightmares and the kids were avoiding having nightmares by reading Archie comics under the covers. Also, my marriage was falling apart. And oddly enough, although I don't remember yelling, my voice was giving out. And the book was too big. All of which is irrelevant, because, of course, J.K. Rowlings can give non-magical advice, too.
So we called it a day. I declared everyone old enough to read on her/his own - although s/he didn't much after that - and everything marriage-wise went the way it was destined to when I first said, "I do".
The quote, and I'll have to paraphrase such that it's quite possible J.K. Rowlings said no such thing, "you haven't succeeded if you haven't failed". Whatever. I like THAT quote. Because I've worked really hard on my personal life (in the way that only Scottish Presbyterians can) and thought I'd always be married (even though I went into it with one foot out the door and have an absolutely pathological fear of permanence) and I was very smug about success while it lasted, too. But somewhere along the way, choices were made, all by me, and I live a life completely different than the one I thought I was destined to live (after I'd married, of course, because before I married, I'd have thrown myself in front of a bus in had I thought I'd be living in suburban Ottawa, married, to the man I was always kind of hoping would, mercifully (for me) be hit by that very same bus I might have thrown myself in front of had he not been hit by it first.)
He wasn't hit by a bus. So, we got married. He didn't get hit by a bus after we got married, either. I'm starting to think he might never get hit by a bus.
And today, packed into my American Apparel teenaged wear (it's a black dress and I'm slim, so - what the hell, eh?), Ellen Tracy sandals my mom bought me from Winner's, and a scarf from the Sally Ann tied around my waste, I had lunch with my ex (still my husband, but when you don't care but still care, who cares, right?) and his girlfriend, bald from chemotherapy but otherwise no different than she's been these past six years or so, and our second of three - who is so not involved, in that cool teen way, that she didn't know she'd won a reasonbly presitigious award until they announced it on stage. I had lots of "look at you"s (I'm blond now) and "where ya bin, girl?" (because black suburbanites live in my old 'hood now, too - not that the greeters were black) and "hey - did you hear that the school might be closing?!" (I was the co-leader of an elementary school closure battle that eventually saw the school close).
Where have I been? Well, I've been being that same good girl I've always been. I can't not be a good girl. I saw them step up on stage, good girl after good girl, receiving an award for something or other, and I thought, "Been there, done that, and I actually have the tee-shirts". Anyway, to make a three hour introspection short, at some point, maybe during the always emotional graduation march, I realized I was going to quit a perfectly good job. A perfectly good job, that is to say, for somebody else.
When I do - and it's not an if, thanks to J.K. - it should make a nice counterpart to my failed marriage, which has been surprisingly successful ever since I leapt out of it.
