Dreams UN-deferred

It's been an eventful week. Lots of things have happened: mountains have been climbed, dreams long put on hold, but not forgotten have been re-activated.

I had my interview with the head of Special Education last Thursday and by Wednesday I'll know if I got the job at the local elementary school. I don't like waiting. I'm ready to jump into a new year, a new job. And there's the added suspense that if I don't get this job, I'll have to start all over in square one searching for another.

I have a countdown for the much anticipated arrival of my hubby. I was expecting him in December, but I must have been a bad girl, cause Paki-Santa didn't come to my house. He says he's coming in 20 days and I hope he really means it this time.

This week daughter Owl climbed a mountain... in the shape of the 10k run in the Dubai marathon. It was a huge feat for her because she is asthmatic. We are all really proud of her for the effort she put into training and running the event. She's flying on cloud nine because she beat her expected time by 5 minutes. I wonder how long joggers high lasts.

I started to climb my own mountain this week. I enrolled in college for the final push to get my teaching degree. I have two classes and both seem really interesting and EASY! Hopefully that first impression is accurate.

It almost didn't happen. One day I was a newly enrolled college student with 4 classes on my schedual, the next day Mr. Hubby feeling lonely and depressed by the recent sell of the family restaurant, his new "retirement" and move to the UAE, and the prospect of missing me for 2 years decided to withdraw his support from my college bid and call me home to be his retirement buddy. I dutifully canceled all my classes and sulked the whole day in my jammies. I was torn between wanting to be with him, knowing how lonely he is and how poorly he handles loneliness and "down-time" and knowing if I didn't persue my dream now I would never have another chance or an adequate supply of aging brain cells to attempt it in the future. I moped around all day in a depressed daze, sleeping and reading a poem by Langston Hughes, A Deam Deferred:

What happen to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crustt and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?


By the end of the day I realized that day that a dream is a wonderful thing you have while you are asleep, but to make a dream become reality you have to wake up and work hard. I have to protect my dream from people who tell me I don't need it, I can't do it or I should forget it. I've worked hard to climb the college mountain all my life. I re-enrolled in two of my classes. Since then I've talked to Hubby and he's agreed to continue his support of my decision.

I've made it to base camp. Now I have to carry on alone to the summit. Who wants to be on my support team?