Home

Since I was a very small child, the refrain that plays in my head and on my lips when I am heartily distressed goes, “I want to go home,” regardless of where I might be.  I can’t imagine what it must have been like to parent me when I was little, when I might be in my own bedroom, surrounded by my own toys and clothes, and to hear me wailing about wanting to go home.  Where did that little girl think that home was?  Why didn’t she feel she was there yet?  Early last week, some time in the space between Monday morning and Wednesday afternoon, I was walking the two blocks between my residence hall and my car, a little before 7 AM, and I was thinking about all of the work that goes into teaching.  As I walked and thought, I began to cry from the weight of the profession I am so excited to enter, speaking the words aloud that I’ve been whining since I was little: “I want to go home.”

That feels like a lifetime ago.  Wednesday night, we found out that the University of Delaware would be implementing a soft close, keeping residence halls and dining options open, but encouraging everyone who could to leave campus for an early spring break, and announcing that classes would begin online on the 23rd of March.  By Friday, we learned that the University would be shutting down residence halls, requesting that every on-campus student have their possessions removed by the 22nd of March (at the very latest).  As of this coming Sunday night, all on-campus spaces are to be completely restricted.  The state of Delaware (along with many other states) has closed all dining locations to eat-in patrons, and gatherings of over 50 people have been discouraged by the CDC and WHO for the next eight weeks.  My college commencement has always been scheduled for ten weeks from now.  

A global pandemic has been named.  The world is attempting to come to a stand-still, businesses and personal lives are to be halted for the sake of safety.  The cracks in the foundation of our world are showing more-so than ever.

Uprooted, without grounding – that is how I feel.  Throughout the past several days, there were times when I thought I was going to lose my job, my student teaching placement, and (most difficult for me to comprehend) the last few months I would have ever had to be a college student.  

And once again, all I can think is that I want to go home.  I feel so much less grounded than I did only a week and a half ago.  My mind, wont to play cruel tricks on me, keeps saying that the world (a macrocosm) and my world (a microcosm) are ending.  Though these are not new thoughts, they feel more pressing, more troubling.  Through it all, I want to go home, want to go home, go home.

I know that it might seem absurd to some, this extravagant reaction to an early end to the school year.  I saw someone earlier today writing about how anticlimactic their graduation had been, that we should all just be grateful for the time that we’ve had with our friends and with our education.  Please do not mistake me, I am not under the impression that my undergraduate commencement would have been the best day of my life.  A graduation cap and gown are not so flattering that I am desperate for the experience of wearing them.  May is too hot, and the ceremonies too crowded (even without a highly contagious virus silently taking hold of our bodies and the global population).  

No, I am not crushed over graduation photos and parties.  My heart breaks most for the tween days.  The days that could have been after now and before then.  The times when I could have stayed awake too late laughing and crying with my dearest friends in the world.  I have wept for the afternoons I could have sat out in the grass one more time, waiting for and dreading the setting of the sun in equal measure.  

I am a frustratingly sentimental person at the best of times.  Even before anyone (myself embarrassingly included) was taking the threat of this genuinely terrifying illness seriously, I would shed a tear as my friends laughed at dinner, I would stop and take photos as I walked home from class on a Tuesday evening, my breath would catch in my throat as I listened to my residents tell me about their days.  I miss moments long before they are over, even when I know I have time yet to spend inside of them.  

Friday afternoon, now four days ago, all of this sentimentality amplified itself tenfold.  I spent much of that day with tears streaming down my face, my heart beating erratically, my head throbbing as all of the hydration left me and sobs wracked my body.  I was not crying because commencement might be cancelled.  I was not crying because I am ungrateful for the time I have had on campus.  I was not crying because I think that the world is ending (regardless of how many songs I add to my end of the world playlist).

I had hoped for better goodbyes.  That is what made the ache in my body so resounding.  That is why I felt so much fog in my head. 

I am fanciful, some would say whimsical, and certainly, as I have already mentioned, sentimental. I spend my time, all of it, thinking about my life and what I love, how to thank those who make it whole and good.  I had wanted there to be time to write letters and thank you cards to friends and professors, those I haven’t spoken to much recently, but whose impression on me has made me who I am.  May was supposed to bring photos taken in sunlight and warmth with all of the people I have loved over these four years.  There was supposed to be the stress of planning floor meetings and grading papers, the weary joy of staying up until four in the morning just to talk, walks through a sun-soaked campus and many, many more coffees.

I do not want a silver lining.  I do not want to find the good in this situation.  Love and joy feel like they are tattered in my grasp, and in the world around me, people are ill and dying (and the numbers of the sick are rising fast).  This feels like a time to be solemn and frustrated and angry.  A silver lining seems inappropriate.  But as it turns out, those things are not mutually exclusive, however much I might want them to be.  There are strange and happy moments woven into the chaos around me by chance or by nature or by divine intervention — golden threads shining in a gray garment.

In the last week, my friends and I have stayed up too late, written notes and awards, drank wine, read tarot cards.  People I have missed for months and years have reached out, and people who I’m lucky to have in my life regularly have made it clear that they aren’t going anywhere, and even in their digital form, these kindnesses have meant more than the world.  I’m lucky enough to be forced into isolation with some of the most cherished people in my life, simply by the design of the place we live, our own strange found-family unit.  We’ve shared meals and we’ve had sleep overs and every night there is a movie to watch.  We’ve laughed and cried, all while dreading what it means for us to be together, or to go home, or to even leave the building where we all live, fearing illness and our propensity to carry it, and  finding ways to distract ourselves from that very fear, even if for only moments at a time.  I have somehow been more wholly present in these past few days than I have ever been before.  This time feels stolen, precious, too-good-to-be-true, as the rest of the world seems on fire.

One of the textbooks that we are using in my senior methods class is Practicing Presence by Lisa J. Lucas.  In one, small section, she discusses the concept of home: “Home is a place we all must find.  It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep; home is a knowing… If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.  We know ourselves best when we are living in the present moment” (15).

One year ago exactly as I write this, I tweeted, asking whether I would always feel as though my youth was misspent, regardless of how I felt about my choices as I made them.  I have often warred with myself about whether or not I should have been more involved on my college campus.  Should I have joined Greek life?  Should I have been president of something?  Should I have gone out more weekends, spent fewer nights turning in early or staying up late in my RA office? 

One magnificent and unexpected (least of all by me) result of the abrupt and confusing end of my senior year is that I have realized that I feel no regret when I reflect on the last four years.  I think of all of the laughter and tears I have spilled, of all the lessons I’ve learned, the classes I’ve taken and loved (and hated).  Hours (and hours and hours) spent sitting in dining halls, singing loudly, stopping by others’ tables just to say hi.  I remember how many nights I was woken up by a knock at my door or by the duty phone ringing, how many times I complained that the building I worked in was un-air conditioned.  How many times I simply did not sleep, for one reason or some other.   I have loved it all, wholly and without inhibition.  I have been so filled with joy that I could not breathe, and I have been so heartbroken that I could not stand, and from the vantage I have now, it has all been so, very beautiful.

I have been home.