...... and it has been there for well over a month. Sitting, rarely moving. A mother, no doubt, keeping her eggs safe and warm. She sits relaxed in the tranquility that is our menagerie of a garage, as chipmunks, squirrels, bats, and I think even a small kangaroo come and go as they please.
Even when I rustle through her area to take out the trash or roll in late at night with the car's headlights on, she sits, calmly yet with a watchful eye. No matter the ruckus or the apparent danger, she sits, protecting, just waiting.
Poor thing. Just sitting there. I understand the necessity for parental sacrifice to ensure the safety of her young, but how mundane. Sitting, sitting, sitting, and our garage is really not all that much to gaze upon. How she must long to be free, hop off that nest, spread her wings again, and fly.
I finished my final summer course today, and with it's completion, I've reached the finale of my classroom purgatory. I am a college graduate. As I sat today in those unforgivingly uncomfortable desks drowning out my professor with my thoughts, I could not help but to feel like that bird. The end of my wait was a couple hours away, I could already feel a draft under my wings.
The past four weeks of sitting in that classroom had been the longest classroom hours I have ever suffered through, and I've had some professors who can make an hour seem like you're the one strapped to Ixion's wheel. The way I see it, if I did not gain anything from the crappiest of classes, it's my own fault, my own waste of money. Well, my parents money in all honesty. But that is all the more reason why I knew I had to take advantage of every opportunity over the past four years. Because the past four years truly have been an incredible opportunity, and whether I slept through a class or strived for success, a sacrifice was made for me to be there.
Once those eggs hatch, mama bird will teach her young lings to fly, then off they go. All that sitting. Then one day she is left watching their tail feathers as they all flap away. I'm spoiled, bottom line. But I give myself some credit because I know it, and I will never take for granted the amount of time my parents spent warming my egg, catching worms and regurgitating them into my mouth... well, none of their cooking was really that bad.
Huh, I started writing this blog thinking I was that bird, and in a way I am. Freed from iron bars of term papers, grade point averages, and exams and ready to get caught in a wind current that will take me God knows where.
But that bird is also a glance back 22 years ago, when I had to be protected and kept warm. Thanks mom & dad, I'm ready to fly.
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