As I type this Kimiko is on an airplane headed to her family in Kansas because her mother is ill. Really ill. We hope for the best and there is room for optimism, but even so… she’s on a plane that left Newark airport at 6am.
This is not the only serious health issue my pack is dealing with, Flagg is in a hospital today as well recovering from a second surgery to lock down all the leaks from his double organ transplant surgery. His own house is working at capacity making sure he has what he needs… and those of use slightly outside that inner circle offer the help we can and look for the best. Others in the pack have similar issues – but I won’t take it upon myself to discuss them in detail.
If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you know that I have a point here. I don’t bring this up for drama value. I bring it up as the evidence for something that has been rattling around in my mind. A response to an odd accusation that occasionally I face, and that others around me deal with fairly often.
When push comes to shove, everyone I spend any time at all with can be counted on to stand. This is not to be taken lightly.
We (the collective we) play paintball. We start companies. We play endless hours of Xbox and we still watch cartoons. We nap. Laugh a lot and we are experimenting with a seemingly endless series of relationship permutations – none of which look like “real” relationships from the outside. I have friends who indulge themselves with tractors or lawn mowers only slightly less complex than the space shuttle. A fair number of us engage in dangerous sports. We number among us aspiring authors and filmmakers. We still play D&D when the mood strikes us and the occasional LARP is not at all out of the question. We play with puppies and cuddle with cats*. And oh, the comic books… don’t even start with me about those.
We didn’t “settle down”. We didn’t “get serious” and we most certainly have not given up on the things we love because they are somehow supposed to lose our interest at 20.
Time after time I have heard that somehow these traits make my generation doomed, or frivolous. Somehow our penchant for keeping the things we love in our lives marks us as eternal children. Presumably the mark of adulthood is to work a job you hate and give up the things you enjoy for the dubious pleasures of after work drinking binges.
Screw that. And screw those who feel they can sit in judgment of us.
The problem is they have it backwards. Doing a job you hate doesn’t make to an adult. It is being able to do a job you hate when you have to that is a mark of maturity and will. See the difference? There is no inherent virtue in misery, no moral authority for being unhappy.
These were the thoughts in my head as I watched Kimiko head into the airport at 4:05am to do what she had to do. A girl who 45 minutes before had been laughing over the antics of a group of computer generated minions wearing soup pots on their heads for armor. A girl who it is all to easy to forget hides inside her a spine of steel and a pair of balls the size of a large Rottweiler**.
I am intensely proud of that girl. I am immensely proud of us.
Moments after I pulled away from the curb I called Tatsumi. Kimiko’s sister*** and another pillar of my own life. At 4:15am Tatsumi was instantly on the phone, offering insight and perspective. Comforting in her unspoken assurance that if the word is given she too will move heaven and earth to do what needs doing… possibly with a teddy bear backpack on.
You make a mistake judging us lightly simply because we choose to live our lives with joy instead of misery, with the things we love instead of the things we would hate or with the people we choose instead of those you would choose for us.
Just a thought.
* sometimes a bit too hard, it might be added 🙂
** Not literally. And yes, in my social circles this is worth pointing out to avoid confusion.
*** Again, not literally.