thoughts from a college student's christmas holiday
South Texas has become so different.
When I was a little girl running around in my backyard, the only thing visible was the vast western expanse of the King Ranch, flat plains and faraway low marshes sweeping over the horizon as far as the naked eye could see. I’ve always dreamed of the big city but now that I remember being able to just run with my friends and the unadulterated joy of building forts and playing in the outdoors until the sun went down, I realize that there’s something to be said about a childhood in the sticks. There’s something about climbing a tree that’s just good for the soul. (If you’ve never done it, try it sometime.)
Now Lauren, my little sister, has a girlhood in which the landscape is studded with more familiar American landmarks—Chili’s, Pizza Hut, the Super Wal-Mart. It’s endless. South Padre Island is lined with beach mansions skinny as stilettos selling for over half a million dollars; new condo complexes marketing to the Mexican internationals. The Rio Grande Valley, my home, now has a Starbucks chain. Starbucks! This would have been unheard of five years ago. Now it’s just another place to drive your SUV.
She doesn’t remember when cattle would break through the barbed wire that separates our backyard from the King Ranch and run around our land, until we called the cops who called the ranchers and got them the hell out of there. She doesn’t remember spotting ocelots roaming in the mesquite; the occasional armadillo. Nor does she remember what it’s like for the only “real mall” to be over an hour and a half away, for anything resembling culture to necessitate an airport. Or even what it’s like to have nothing better to do than sit on the roof and look at stars, and then realize that is the best thing you can do sometimes. I guess one thing I took for granted as a kid is wide open spaces. In the Northeast there isn’t much of that at all. Things aren’t so vast, so endless. So… looming.
But this is OK, because she still climbs trees and runs and plays soccer with her friends. She still has beaches and her backyard and her puppy and birds which nest in the tree and sing syrup sweet outside. Still has. And she’s happy. It’s just different.
Yesterday Lauren asked me if she could have my bedroom. I said yes.
Today Mother asked me to begin managing my college fund, and suggested that I take a small low interest loan so I will graduate with a bit of a nest egg, rather than a bundle of credit card debt or zero money in the bank. This money will now be truly my own to myself, to manage, to waste, to spend—or to invest wisely. I said yes.
No more childhood bedroom? No more idyllic pastoral Texan town? Paying my own bills? Managing and investing my own money?
Growing up is fun, but it’s also really confusing sometimes. Yet I do think everything is happening the way it should, and even though things are changing they are changing for the best eventually.
bubba, Jan 4, 12:25:
Yet another sex blogger?
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