Saturday, September 09, 2006

Changes

After a week of nothing special, comes a weekend that looks like nothing special as well. I've started classes and I'm taking them on Saturdays so that they do not interfere with work, it's a choice. Apparently the professor was told only a few days before classes started that he would be teaching it (that's Hunter for you) and so was not available today. Next weekend I'll miss class because I'll be in Spain, and the week after it's veteran's day weekend, meaning I won't being going to school until my birthday, how appropriate.
The course seems interesting enough: Child Development, encompassing psychological, biological and learning theories that, knowing me, will have my mind reeling as to the whys of whats. The professor was kind enough to e-mail us all the readings we will be doing for the semester. I don't know if it serves the purpose of making us save money or to try and convince us to drop the course. There are loads and loads of reading to do. I'm going to be up to my elbows in Freud, Piaget, and the likes. Hopefully my rantings will not become psychobabble and make you all run for cover. I do enough two-cents analysis as it is.
The trip to Spain. My grandma is not doing too well and so I'm going to see her and lend a supporting shoulder to my mom. The strangest thing is to go unto the unknown. It's not like taking a vacation, or going for a specific purpose. It's just going to be there, and I've never done that before. It will most likely be the last time I go to Spain and so it gives it a different kind of feeling.
As children (here we go, and it has just been a class!) we tend to see everything as permanent, as going on forever. Your grandparents' home will always be there, there is no reason for you to think that it might not; the trees will grow and you'll remember how tiny they were, but will always see them, no reason to think that maybe they'll become someone else's trees one day.
We have no problem thinking of ourselves as mobile, ever-changing beings, but those that represent our childhood stability are incapable, to our eyes, of doing it.
It was strange enough that my grandparents moved from the north of the country to the south, the change of scenery was welcomed but awkward at first. We all have memories of that first (for us the grandchildren) apartment we spent our summers in. The fact that when my grandmother goes there will be nothing to attach us to the country is even weirder. I, for one, feel closer to Spain than I do with France, and so it will become like being a stranger in my childhood's land.
Sort of like Mexico. After 12 years of living there I could not go back (and haven't since 1986). Nothing worse than feeling like a tourist in your own home.
It's funny how ready we are to embrace the future but have problems letting go of silly things of the past. It's a balance that should, when done properly, make us whole, but when confronted with it can become a fearful moment to conquer.

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