|
He lifts it into the cart, and we make our way to the front. There are huge lines, and it takes us over twenty minutes to check out. By the time we get through, my feet hurt and my head’s starting to throb.
Our next stop is Wal-Mart, where we can buy things in smaller quantity. Scott pushes the cart through the crowded isles, and I load stuff in. Face creams, shampoos, new sheets and towels, a table runner, a framed picture of birch trees. They all seem nice and important when I put them in the cart, but when we get back into the Grand Am and I add up our receipts, I realize that we’ve spent almost half of our new credit card’s thousand dollar limit on our new credit card, and I don't know if it was worth it. Sure, the stuff is fine and will work and all that, but I don’t think any of it’s worth an extra four hundred bucks in debt. I’ll have to work hard for six or seven waitressing shifts to earn that much. And when the twenty-nine percent interest gets added on to it, it’ll be even more. I brood silently all the way home.
We have to make three trips from the car and back to get everything inside. When I finally go into the living room, I find the answering machine light blinking. It’s my mom, asking me to call her right away.
She answers on the second ring, out of breath. “Guess what? I have some news. I’m moving to England next month.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really!”
“Why?”
“Because I want to. I have for a long time. I’m finally doing it.”
“Wow,” is all I can say.
“So I’m wondering,” she says, “what would you like me to do with your boxes?”
“What boxes?”
“The boxes you left here when you went to Fort Frances for the summer. They’ve been in my basement all these years.”
“I don’t even remember what’s in them,” I admit. “Are they heavy?”
“Yes, they’re big and heavy. If they were light, I’d just mail them to you. But these would cost a fortune to mail.”
“I can’t afford to pay for you to ship them right now,” I tell her. We have less than six hundred dollars left on our credit card balance, and I don’t want to use that to ship boxes I haven’t seen in years.
“Don’t you still have that thousand dollar bond?”
Oh yeah, the bond. I’d almost forgotten about that. “Yeah, I have it, but I don’t want to use it. I’ve had it since high school, and I don’t want to cash it in unless I really need it for something. Once I cash it, I know it’ll be spent. It’ll be used on bills and stuff.”
“Haven’t you guys been able to build up any savings?”
“Are you kidding? We live paycheck to paycheck.”
She’s quiet.
“Can you open the boxes for me?” I ask. “Open them all up and tell me what’s in them, and I’ll tell you what I want.”
I wait while she opens each box and names off the contents, piece by piece. Trinket boxes, candle holders, photo albums, books, clothes, a stained glass butterfly, old schoolwork from high school, a fleece blanket.
“Can you pack up the stained glass butterfly, the photo albums, and the Catcher in the Rye and send them to me?” I ask. “Send it C.O.D., and I’ll pay for the shipping when it arrives.”
She says she will, and she’ll give the rest of the stuff to the Salvation Army before she leaves for England.
“Well,” I tell Scott when I hang up, “my mom’s more adventurous than I am these days.”
It’s true. Somehow, I’ve gone from living with a bunch of people in an old farmhouse on Salt Spring Island and traveling around the country to being a full-time straight-A student in Duluth, Minnesota. I can barely imagine taking off like I used to, shirking all responsibility in pursuit of new experiences. I can hardly remember what it felt like to be so carefree.
“It’s because you’re in pursuit of something different now,” Scott says.
He’s right. I'm not just trying to experience things anymore. Now, I’m looking to make something out of myself. There’s opportunity here, and I want to rise up to meet it.
So, as the country buzzes on around me, obsessed with terrorism and war and the economy, I invest everything I have in my personal path. It takes discipline, I must admit. It’s hard to tune it all out and remain focused, opting for my assigned reading instead of TV. But it’ll be worth it in the end. It’s the only way I’ll make something of myself. Hard work and dedication is the American Way. It’s the way things are accomplished and achieved here. This hard work, I remind myself, will pay off someday.
33/83 首页 上一页 31 32 33 34 35 36 下一页 尾页
|
