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Volume CXXXII, Number 10 |
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Going back to a different home
LARA JACOBS
STAFF WRITER
For the first time, I understand how the Pilgrims felt. No, I'm not going to Plymouth for Thanksgiving or exploring the "New World;" this is not my "first Thanksgiving" in technical terms. However it is my first Thanksgiving as a visitor in my home. Thinking about this "first" brings up the question of what it really means to go home. I tend to think of home as encompassing not only my actual house, but also my family, friends and city; I may leave, change and grow up-but home, and all of its associations, are permanent.
Boarding the plane, you can't help but remember wearing flannel pajamas and cooking Cranberry sauce, while "It's a Wonderful Life" plays on ABC. Who could forget the annual game of Twister that became more and more difficult as we grew less flexible. Thanksgiving is all about feeling that for one day there is no change-everything is predictable down to the midnight run to Blockbuster for a movie and the eating of the same traditional dishes year after year.
Nevertheless, at some point after the salad, but before the pumpkin pie, this illusion of stability is broken, and you just feel let down. Maybe it happened when your sister told a story you weren't part of, or when someone made a private joke that you're out of the loop on, or perhaps it's the fact that although your room looks exactly the same, all of the drawers are empty. Suddenly you realize that the home you carry around with you every day as you cross the quad is different from the physical space you're embodying right at this moment. Perhaps it once was that way you remember, perhaps not, yet the point is that it never will be that again.
It's at this point that you look around and comprehend for the first time the profound connotations and meanings four walls can assume. Home is much more than a location-it's the driveway where I learned to ride a two-wheeler after many scrapes and bruises and later where I crashed my dad's car my first time driving, it's the staircase where my sister and I slid down on our stomachs and later where I walked down for my first date, it's the loft where I spent hours living make-believe camp that now holds pictures and winter clothes. The realization sets in-home and the people there aren't arbitrary, as we change so do they.
Nonetheless, while it's okay to watch yourself grow up, it's sometimes poignant to see others change. Perhaps the greatest paradox of getting older is that you want your parents to stop brushing your hair out of your eyes and let you make your own decisions, yet always be there to give advice when things get rough, you want to go away and create an independent life, yet be able to come back and fit in to your family at anytime, you want to straddle two towns, time zones, coasts, worlds, and ultimately, two lives. And then, when the dishes have been cleared away and you're putting on a coat to go for a family walk, it hits you, as Thomas Wolfe wrote, "you can never go home again".
So the question you ponders while sitting through this year's film selection, "Office Space", is how to reconcile the home of your memories that you carry with you each day with the house that you inhabit. No one says it better than Oprah, before you laugh at me I must say that her magazine is great, "Home isn't just a residence you purchase or a place you retreat to at the end of the day-it's the sense of yourself that you carry with you no matter where you lay your head."
Thus, this year when the turkey's wrapped up for tomorrow's sandwiches and the movie credits appear on the screen signaling the end of this year's Thanksgiving, look around at your house, your family and friends, and think about what elements of home will be making the trip back to campus with you-what do you choose to keep?
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