Returning

        On the bus ride home from speech, I have been writing about my day in my notebook. It's not a journal, per say, but more just an attempt to remember things from the day that I found worth note. It has been a good day and I want to capture some of these feelings, in graphite strewn across paper, to look back on some nostalgic day, and even to concrete them in my head. Despite the best efforts of "daylight saving's time", the light has been steadily dimming and at some point, ten minutes ago or so, I decided the blue evening light was becoming deep enough to make writing challenging, and so I pulled my surprisingly utile miniature flashlight from my purse, and I hold the little pink metal tube in my left hand now, its soft, somewhat weak golden glow smoothly laid upon my paper, where I continue to scratch down memories. Someone mentions that we're almost to school, and looking up I see it is true, so I cut off mid-story, scrawling "bus draws nigh school must pack" in the middle of my sentence before snapping off my little golden light, folding closed my black and white patterned notebook with blue and purple flowers swirled about its design, and guiding my various scattered things into my bulging bag, which I have fondly referred to as my 'bindle' since we read Of Mice and Of Men in American Literature class some time back. (I learned that a bindle is like a pack a traveller makes of a blanket and sometimes a pillow rolled up with things stuffed in it. Though I only roll my pillow inside my blanket and stuff it along with my other things into a bag, I still like the term. It was about the only good thing to come out of that depressing book.) As the bus pulls to a stop in front of the mostly darkened school, I pull on my overcoat and shrug my bindle up, first onto my shoulder and then resigning myself to the fact that my bindle wants to sit down on my elbow instead and will not be reasoned with. I double-check behind myself that I have not left anything on my seat as I will probably never be on this bus again, and then I join the end of the line filing off of the bus. I murmur something to the lines of "thanks" to the bus driver and then stand on the sidewalk in the unfortunately wintery air which dances with a cold evening breeze and look around the parking lot for my mom. She has not arrived yet and so I proceed towards the deserted school with not quite half of the group that rode the bus back.
        There is a little general conversation with the other kids waiting about things like how they did and how tired we are. Once they leave I converse with my teacher and speech coach, who stays to wait until I go. The school's dark, eerie emptiness prompts me to mention sensational rumors of hauntings in a school nearby the one I attended before we moved. My teacher mentions her hopes for what dinner her husband will be making. Just as I am calling my mom's cell phone, she pulls up, and I tell her I summoned her by calling. My teacher laughs and comments on the perfect timing. My mom apologizes for being late, and we all wish one another good nights. I toss my rather large bindle in the back seat of the car and hop in the front. I talk about many things, not least of which is my great fatigue, and Mom talks about things she watched at speech that I didn't and things she did later with Grandma. We discuss dinner; Mom suggests the small pizza place in the downtown. Oddly, I note, I'm not exceedngly hungry, despite the fact that it is after 7:30 (as supporters of daylight's savings time would have us believe, that is) and I had a relitively early lunch. I suppose it is because of the snacks I enjoyed that afternoon.
        As we pull up to the main stretch of downtown, we notice it is already blocked off for the St. Patrick's day partying. We pull down a sidestreet and park there and begin walking towards the little pizza place. I decided to leave my heavy overcoat in the car because I was hot and I thought surely the fleece sweater, leather jacket, and shawl I am wearing under it will be plenty, but as we walk the breeze is colder than I had anticipated and I wish I hadn't left it in the car. There are already people bedecked in various green apparel ambling about the streets, most of whom appear to be in some varying degree of drunkenness. We go into the small pizza place, which never seems to be busy. I decide to get pasta, despite the fact that it is a pizza place. Typically, I would also get a soda, but as I've been consuming a great variety of mostly sugary things all day, I don't. My pasta is fairly good. I tell Mom among other things about a beautiful, poignant musical theatre I saw, which started out seeming like this sweet, lighthearted song about a girl meeting a guy and falling in love and then getting married, and then gave little glimpses of their lives together, but suddenly and abruptly turned to be about 9/11 and her husband dying in a flash, and I think nearly everyone, audience and singer alike, was wiping their eyes by the end of it. I also talk about how tired I am. As we leave the pizza place, I am cold again in the breeze, though while in the restaurant I had gotten warm enough to remove all three of my coat-type coverings (though really my shawl hardly counts as one). We see a lovely patch of vomit on the sidewalk near a bar. "You know it's St. Patrick's day weekend when..." I comment. We avoid it and head back to the car.
        On the drive home, I nap. It feels wonderful and I wish I could just continue 'til morning, but suddenly I am awakened as we are home. I lumber into the house. I would very much like to just get ready for and go to bed, but I still have blog posts to do. I do change into my pajamas first, though. It feels good to take off my traveling clothes, which is what I have been mentally referring to my abnormally abundant layers of coats as, and yet I am filled with the satisfaction of a good, full day. It was truly a full day, and a very good one, too. I saw many good performances, had the opportunity to perform, didn't have any bad incidents, and even made a friend, as described in the post after this one. I love the full days of speech and the beautiful... speech-ness with which they are filled. There is such a joy to them, and a warm, community feeling at the contest. The many pieces one may watch are diverse and wonderful, especially at state. It is a fulfilling and colorful day, and it is made even better when one gets to perform, to luxuriously express those stories on which one has been working for so long and which one knows inside out, to savor each beautiful word as it is precisely formed by one's lips. And so as I put away my coats I feel they have been used for an adventure and travelled a great distance as they are meant to, and at the same time it is a beautifully relaxing feeling to don my comfy pajamas, picking up my laptop and diving beneath my soft blankets to write my blogs with as much speed as I can manage so that I can, after brushing my teeth and whatall, I suppose, return here to finally slip into the sweet sleep that has been calling me, in all honesty for most of the day.
        We beyond the violet mist offer you all this tale of our return from another glorious day of the display of the art of the carefully crafted spoken word.