Going home was weird
My older brother used to tell me that when he was at college, home was our house in Kansas, and when he was in Kansas, home was at school. At the time he told me this, I was still in middle school and had never slept in a bed other than my own for more than a week at a time. I had this vague sense of what he was getting at, but it didn’t really kick in until I went home for fall break. Fall break was a weird time for me. Maybe it’s just that I’m a freshman, and Wash.U. only just recently stopped feeling like summer camp, but returning to the house I’d lived in all my life almost felt like visiting my grandparents.
The walls weren’t repainted or anything. Actually, my room was still a cluttered mess from my last-minute packing in August. Still, there was this undeniable sense that the house I grew up in was no longer my house-was no longer my home. Apparently my subconscious still recognized where I was because my little rituals that I never used to notice stayed the same, like the way I tap the cabinet shelf twice before grabbing a drinking glass.
There was a new dog I didn’t recognize, my old dogs didn’t recognize me, and my parents were just a little unsure how to act.
We talked about the new diet my mother is starting, whether or not I’m gaining the freshman fifteen, elderly relatives’ health problems. There’s an unspoken need to keep talking, as if to prove we’re still involved in each other’s lives.
The next day I visited my old high school-something of a tradition where I’m from. Things there seemed even more off. The kids I did recognize were my underclassmen acquaintances, not my real friends-the ones now scattered across the country. My favorite former teachers asked me the typical questions: how do I like college, what classes am I taking and why have I gained so much weight. Missing was the amicably effortless back and forth that was an everyday occurrence only months earlier.
Therein lies the cause, I think. It’s too early to act like old friends and too late to act like nothing has changed. Trying to move past a mentor-pupil relationship to an old friend-young friend one is almost as impossible as calling former teachers by their first names. Everything is too soon and too late all at once.
That night I set off for Kansas State University to visit my closest friends from high school. There’s a lot of truth in saying that some things change and some things stay the same. Despite the fact that we now live 400 miles apart and are lucky to talk once every two weeks, much less everyday, the friendships still fit. And they still fit in the same ways they always did. Every other relationship from home has been complicated by the fact that I’m no longer in the same stage of my life as on which those interactions were based, but my friends-they still call me stupid when I’m stupid, and they still don’t laugh when I’m not funny. There’s indescribable solace in that. Everybody else acts with a certain degree of reservation and formality that I don’t like and don’t understand. When did everybody decide I’ve grown up?
Greg is a freshman in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]
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