Saturday Afternoon

I worked this morning and did not catch up. Catching up at AVID Center is a concept similar to running a race on a track with no finish line. At least I can go in to work on Monday and feel like I accomplished something more than if I had not gone in. But I will wake up Monday morning and feel like I did not accomplish enough at home because my weekend was shortened.

After work I went to a strange event. It was the Rite-Aid Convention downtown. Free admission (not really because it cost $8.00 to park) and free samples. I went because I was curious and thought it seemed like a strange thing to do and it was. Most of the people there looked like they lived off free samples. Several had missing teeth and body odor. A few looked tired past their age. Kids were barefoot. It was trick-or-treat for adults. Lines of people wrapped around the booths with their hands out. Families came and each person was filling up a large shopping bag with packs of peanuts, little-sized lip gloss and lotions, sample snack foods common candies, and coupons. There was a movie star on the stage that I had never heard of, and free healthy screenings on the opposite side. Each booth had one or two automatons repetitively filling reaching hands. If a booth did not have anyone monitoring it, people would take handfuls of what was left.

One of the people who had her hand extended got tired of saying thank you and stopped saying it. She didn't bother waiting in the lines; she would stick her hand between people and it would get filled with a disposable package of something or other. She looked around and had to realize that she was also one of these convention beggars, trying to fill her bag to brimming before she went home. She felt lucky that she did not have to carry the bag that was now very heavy on the bus. She was able to pay the $8.00 fee to park below. She wondered why she came.

Mikayla was supposed to go with me but she had a rehearsal with her choir for tomorrow’s show. That is what we are doing on Mother’s Day…going to a concert at Copley Symphony Hall. Although the choir is not religious, the new choir director this year has chosen almost all Christian songs. Mikayla has not liked singing these songs. At the last concert, which was held in a church, Mikayla and a few other kids sang the songs like automatons at the Rite-Aid Convention, but instead of filling hands with samples, they filled expectant ears with unenthusiastic singing.

Copley Symphony Hall is a beautiful venue. Maybe it will inspire the group to try to make their voices reach the exalted ceiling. This is Mikayla’s last concert with the group.

Aside from this performance, Mikayla will be wrapping up many things in the next few weeks. She will be doing taking her AP tests and presenting her senior portfolio. She will be completing childhood and move into the almost-adult portion of her life. (She will be able to vote but she cannot drink.) She will go to the prom and then this crowning event of the senior year will be behind her. She will sit for her finals and finish high school. What is familiar will become foundation for her to spring from as she plans her move to the Pacific Northwest and gets initiated as a college student.

It is also a transition year for me, as I face a home without her, without any kids at home. But that is for another blog entry.