It's been an eventful week here in the Carpenter household. Okay, so it was only one event that happened,
but it was a big one. On Tuesday my
niece, Alicia, shipped out to Air Force basic training.
It was a bittersweet time for Auntie Shell. (That's me, by the way.) I was happy that she was taking her first
step into adult life, and I was proud that she was following in her
grandfather's and my footsteps, but I was sad that my buddy was leaving. I was sad that she was growing up and
wouldn't need me to cart her around, or give her advice, or just watch movies
with her. I was also kind of sad that
the epic arguments we used to have would come to an end.
Alicia and I have an interesting relationship. We regularly get on each others' nerves, but
we also give each other the best hugs. I
can't call it a love/hate relationship. We
don't love to hate each other; we just love to aggravate each other. We love to push each other to our furthest
limits. Then we love to wipe it all away
with a random act of kindness. Maybe
this happens because I moved in with her and my brother as she started high
school, and we both had definite opinions of what my role should be. (Our opinions did not match.) Or maybe it's because we're so much alike, it
hurts for us to see our own faults in the other. I tend to think it's the latter.
For her entire life, I have called Alicia "Mini-Me." She bears a striking resemblance to me. She has a fiercely independent streak, like
me. She's pretty smart for her age, like
I was. She played the clarinet and was
in the high school band color guard, like me.
And now she has joined the Air Force, like I did. We're also very stubborn. Yup.
Neither one of us likes to back down.
And while we've both made strides in the admitting-when-we're-wrong category,
it's still a struggle to do so. I can't
tell you how many arguments would drag on for days because of our stubbornness. I also can't tell you how many times during
those arguments thought that I couldn't wait until she had a little experience
under her belt and realized that a lot of the things I told her, that caused
the most friction, were actually little jewels of wisdom given to her to help
make her life easier. (Like attitude and
tone of voice. I won't go into it
further, let's just say that Al always sounded like she was defending herself
in a WWF smack down.) But that stuff is all gone. She's growing up, so I guess I have to, too.
Alicia called us on Thursday and provided her mailing address, and I immediately hand-wrote a two and a half
page letter to her and mailed it the same day.
I remember what it felt like at mail call when I didn't get a
letter. It was like I had gone off to
this summer camp for sadists in which everyone yelled at me, never let me get
any sleep, and tortured me daily with exercise - running, to be more exact, (I
hated running. Still do.) I felt
forgotten, neglected, and unwanted. I
knew that none of this was true, but that's how it felt. When I did get a letter, all of these
feelings left. Blue skies and rainbows
appeared on the exercise tarmac. I only
got a couple of letters in basic training, so I didn't feel this way often. I want Alicia's experience to be completely
different than mine. I want her to have
that happy-puppy feeling as often as possible.
There has to be something to balance the TIs yelling at her like she's a
pile of dog pooh. I've decided that I'm
going to be that balance. I'm going to
use all of my writing abilities, my knowledge of her, and my own basic training
experience to help her succeed as much as I can. Of course, writing letters is a balancing act. If I don't write enough, she'll feel
bad. If I write too many, her TIs will
give her hell. So, instead of writing a
daily letter, which I dearly want to do, I'm going to keep it down to 1 a
week. Okay, maybe two.
**on a side note, I finished a filet crochet project I've been working
off and on for the last few months. It
started out as tapestry-type wall-hanging project, but I quickly realized it
was going to be way to big, so now it's an afghan. (That's a full sized bed it's on.)
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