Once Upon a Time...

I was talking to Santa Maria yesterday about this music test-of-sorts we just took. (We both did well, by the way, and have advanced to the next round of testing. Yes, that's right. Our reward for doing well is yet another test.) Anyway, while she was talking, I found myself thinking about next year's test and then realized, to my dismay, that there isn't going to be a next year. We will be off at college, and will not be participating in silly little high school music theory and sight-reading tests. We will not be concerned with such minor and trivial grade school affairs.

I'm sure we'll still be worried about something. That's our nature, after all. To challenge ourselves. Santa Maria, Pinta, and I are all like that. It didn't bother me too much to realize that this particular test would not matter next year. What bothered me was the realization that, whatever we end up worrying about, we'll be worrying about separately.

Pinta will probably be somewhere very far up north, stressing about some class I don't have. Santa Maria will be in a neighboring state, caught up in the level of mathematics or science or what have you that I have nightmares about. And I will be here, in the South, no doubt finding some exam to wring my hands over. We'll all be separate and our lives will be very, very different.

We will have new sets of friends. I am not very comfortable with this idea. I am quite attached to the friends that I have. But as much as I'd love to scoop them all up and cart them off to college with me, they don't seem to be very compliant. We will scatter to the four winds.

I will probably bug them a lot the first few months. After that, I don't know. I'd like to think that every holiday, we'll all end up back home, and we'll make a point to spend time together and catch up. I'd like to think that we'll still have a lot in common, and we'll remain close. All of us. I tell myself that we'll stay in contact all through college, and beyond. That Pinta, Santa Maria, and I will continue to write together. That I'll still be in that first wave of people that receives phone calls delivering exciting news.

But hey, the future is unclear. Who knows what will happen? It's scary being right here. On the brink of extreme change. You can hear this distant roar, and you're braced for it. Anxiously waiting, with only a shadow of an idea of what is coming. It's the anticipation that kills me. I'd rather not think about it.

So I think I'm done contemplating it for now. :)

On a lighter note, I just sang Christmas music for 3 hours. Good fun.