When do I grow out of this?

On Monday nights I talk to a delightful young lady who I love like a little sister. Only last night I was a jerk and fell asleep and forgot to call. To be fair, it's a new tradition that we are developing to stay connected now that I live five hours away and she's just starting college this year. But even being a new thing, I still dropped the ball. Anyway...

So today I called her to tell her what a jerk I was. She just laughed and loved me anyway. We talked briefly about our days, what was going on in our lives and the most important subject, boys.

It's so funny, exhilarating and heartbreaking to listen to a young girl talk about boys. The hope in her voice, the excitement and the anticipation of what may or may not come. This is a beautiful, healthy, happy, brilliant and friendly young lady whom I know the magic will happen for sooner than later, so I'm not too worried about this for her overall in the end. It's wonderful to get to see though, even in an odd way the tribulations as much as the triumphs, because they are all part of the process and all very normal.

Anyway another teacher, a guy, overheard part of the conversation. He waited until I hung up and then did that staring waiting thing to find out who I was talking to and about what, but with out actually asking. I told him it was a good friend and that she had asked me about my romantic life (or lack there of) and he laughed and said that was all young people think about. I chuckled with him and went on with what I was doing. But then I started to think about it.

No, it's not just young people who think about it all the time. (Oh and by the way, both he and I are only thirty and I am most certainly not old yet!) Being single, I think about "it" a lot. When I am out and about I think to myself how it would be nice to have someone with me, holding my hand. When I am sad I think of how it would be nice to be held, and when I am happy I think how it would be nice to share that with someone. But I also am thinking about whether or not I paid the water bill, whether or not I reminded Nana to take a shower before she went to her doctor's appointment, whether or not I have fed the dogs today and most importantly did I put on deodorant this morning. So maybe it's more that there is less room to be filled with just the issue of that someone. More like the thoughts kind of float around over us just waiting for us to focus one them, but even when we don't they are still there.

Many of my friends are married. They spend a lot of time talking (and most likely thinking therefore) about their husbands/wives, children and family issues. Those conversations take the place of the "who I'm dating and where is this relationship going" conversations we used to have, but they are basically the same issues, being with the someone we so longed to find before. In their cases, the issues of marriage and family almost become more consuming than the issues outside, because the issues blur together in a lot of ways. A friend of mine came to school the other day, late from dropping off her son at daycare, because her husband is sick, and said to me, "I'm so busy and tired, I can't even remember if I put on my panties this morning!"
(TMI!!!!)

So I don't envy my young friend her moments and daydreams, I still have my own too, I just have to schedule time for them, or at lest not focus on them as much. And someday, she'll say to me as she rocks her children and walks around the house with some wonderfully perfect husband that I know she will have, "remember when all I thought about was some boy?" and I'll smile and say, "yeah, cause you never think about that stuff now."

Of course, that in itself is something I look forward to anyway.