Passing

 
In recent years I have felt there is something seriously lacking in my life. Hijinks. It has been forever since I jumped in a fountain in the middle of the night, pulled a prank, talked in a public place with a fake British accent about my billionaire father, etc.

My first year out of college, a friend of mine had a motorcycle. She parked it in her building's lot and someone kept coming and knocking it down. (Don't ask me how, but it was somehow obvious that the bike wasn't falling over on its own) This drove her nuts, so one weekend the two of us spent our Friday and Saturday nights crouched in the bushes next to her parked bike. We wore all black, and she kept a digital camera at the ready. We never caught the vandals, but my whole reason for doing the two-night stakeout was hijinks! Woo hoo! It had been forever.

This same desire led me to agree with Oliver and my brother last summer that yes, we should indeed sneak into Detroit's Central Station. 18 stories of abandoned wreckage... sounds like prime turf for hijinks! I was breathless with excitement the entire time we were inside, and practically bouncing off the walls once we finished our tour and came out.

The motorcycle stakeout and the abandoned railway station represent the exception to the rule though - it has been forever since I've done things in that spirit on a regular basis. I don't think about this change in lifestyle too often, but when I do it is with regret. It always makes me think that I've lost something, and that as the years go by I'll lose even more. The giddiness of my younger years was intoxicating. I still love telling some of those stories or, even better, enjoying the memories myself.

I got an email from an old friend the other week, out of the blue. She and I used to do all sorts of ridiculous things together. On a school trip to Disney World we jumped off a ride and ran out the emergency exit, just to see where we'd end up. Bored out of our skulls one summer evening, we made cupcakes, wrote an acrostic poem to go with them, then drove around town and delivered them to our friends. We went to Mike's Great Skate one Friday evening toward the end of high school (and if you're from Kenosha you know how out of place we would have looked there), just to see what sorts of looks we would get. Hearing from her reminded me all over again of the things I used to do... and don't do any more.

When I started to really think about it though, my perspective shifted. Yes, I used to do silly, fun things and now I don't. What were those silly things though, if not attempts to live a life that was nice to look back on? They were small adventures, and once I was old enough they faded out and bigger ones took their place. Interesting jobs, wonderful trips, diverse cities to call home, etc. If some of my youthful exuberance had faded, couldn't these things at least be passable substitutes?

And then I was hit with another memory, again with the old friend. She went off to college a year before I did, and she left Wisconsin to do it. A few nights before she left we ended up in her kitchen, taking pictures with all the dairy products we could find in her house. (Keep Wisconsin in your heart!) I seem to remember her mom passing in and out of the evening's frame, smiling in at us from time to time.

That's what I want now. I want to be the mom, passing through the background on my way to read a book on the porch. I want to laugh to myself at the silly, fun things my kids are doing. I get it. Life changes, and if you let yourself change with it, it can be really good. Who I was at 17 - that's not who I'm supposed to be now. Sometimes now, mine is a supporting role. That's cool. I'm content - no, excited - to raise my kids to dream up ridiculous shenanigans of their own.