Finally, Friday. My day off from the glamorous career of a Bob Evans’ hostess. Yesterday, my day involved cleaning the restrooms, sweeping the floors, listening to my fellow hostess talk about breast milk for an hour (quite literally), and getting my hands smacked for keeping them in my pockets. Sigh. I like my job, I really do. Although mundane and menial, work provides an opportunity to escape from my bickering household and time to think. During those lazy hours between 3 and 5, I create to-do lists, grocery lists, and schedules: in other words, I provide structure to my chaotic life by organizing the few constants in the multi-variable equation of my life.
To further purge myself of life’s clutter, I have been cleaning my room to an extreme degree for the past few days. Sorting clothes for goodwill, throwing away bags upon bags of trash (how does trash accumulate so quickly?), but more importantly sorting the remnants of the past 18 years. Within 5 rubbermaid under-bed boxes, the memories of my past 18 years now reside: band trophies, theater awards, old pre-cal tests I can’t bare to part with, American girl dolls, horrifying troll dolls (why on Earth do children play with these naked, Einstein-haired gremlins?), and photos of old friends, some come and gone, some, hopefully, to stay forever. Perhaps by boxing these memories I can give up on my old life and attempt to prepare for my new adventure: college, adult siblings, and a fragile family.
Aren’t the most fragile items the most beautiful?
