10:25pm And Rain Will Make the Flowers Grow

Dear A,

Something about cold weather makes me want to listen to classical music and lately I've been listening to Henry Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas." I have a special place in my heart for this particular opera because it is based on Virgil's Aeneid which I painstakingly translated from Latin to English during my junior year of high school. But regardless of the sentimental connections I have to it, it is a beautiful piece of music. And it's in English! Okay, I know you don't really care about this... moving on.

I hate that I'm afraid to talk to my father. I hate that I'm nervous about telling him how I feel. I just don't want to potentially make our relationship even more rocky than it already is. I know it doesn't serve us in the long-run for me to hold back like this, but I feel like I've had to be the parent in this situation and after two years of taking the high road and being the bigger person, I'm tired. I always looked up to my dad and I just want to go back to feeling the respect I used to feel towards him. But that is not something I can make happen... that's something he has to earn back all on his own.

Oh man, I'm at the part of the opera where Dido throws herself onto a funeral pyre because Aeneas leaves and she's so in love with him she can't bear to live without him. Such sadness.

I just tried to read some of the original Latin text of The Aeneid... I can't do it. I spent so many years studying this silly language and now all I can do is read at about a 3rd or 4th grade level. What a shame. Someday, when I have more free time, I'm going to dig out my old Latin books and re-read them all.

"Youth is wasted on the young" (George Bernard Shaw) and I think that education might be wasted on the young, too. I realize this is a strange thing to say coming from a teacher, but I think there's some truth to it.

100% chance of rain tomorrow, which makes me 100% happy.

Love, M