Being orphaned for Tufts parents' weekend made me miss home. Then I thought: Wait a minute, where the heck is my home?
During my happy childhood of saxophone lessons, basketball practices, and carpooling to Wednesday night Hebrew school, home was Charlottesville, a small town nestled in the rolling hills of Central Virginia. This is where I learned how to play "Hot cross buns" on the recorder, how to ride a bike and tie a fly, and where I finally flushed thirteen chronically depressed goldfish down the toilet one by one, effectively ruining my younger sister's chances of ever getting a puppy. One time my friends and I tried to dig a hole to China in my backyard. That ended quickly, around dinner time.
For me now though, Charlottesville is just where my parents live. There is a new generation of kids digging holes in the neighborhood. The town has changed. I no longer fit into its rhythm, flow and ebb. But I still have close friends there. I know the sweet, crisp smell of the air when the Blue Ridge Mountains turn yellow, orange, and red with autumn. And when planning for Thanksgiving, I still talk about "coming home."
Three years ago, I moved to Boston. The transition to college was not quick and easy, but after two years at Tufts, I had finally built a strong social support network. I was familiar with the extended campus to Davis Square. I had good friends. I had discovered comfortable spaces where I could think clearly and be myself. Boston was becoming my home.
Then I voluntarily chose to abandon what I knew best and everything I had just built, all the friends and familiar places, to study abroad in Oxford for my junior year. The transition from New England to Old England was not quick or easy, either. But it was almost because Tufts was so comfortable and familiar that I wanted the challenge of rebuilding life abroad.
The summer before Oxford was an uprooted time of travel and transition. I was no longer living in Boston, but I wasn't quite yet in Oxford. My family was in Charlottesville, my friends dispersed. Bouncing around lightly from place to place, I felt homeless.
I identified this feeling of homelessness on a flight from Geneva to London that summer. Lost in the clouds both literally and figuratively, at the same abstract level as my big picture philosophical questions, I felt weightless, independent, and finally at ease. Oddly, there was something familiar and unchanging in change itself, something constant and reassuring about sporadic transition. I felt light and wonderfully liberated, but also homeless and insecure.
When I arrived in Oxford, I immediately started to explore the cultural, physical, and social environment, trying to fit in. I could not get to know the whole city, but I carved out my own personal niche, a path that connected my college, Lady Margaret Hall, with a few other particular points around the city. Everyday I would ride my bicycle down Parks Road to the library reading room near the central square, read for the morning, pick up a Brother's chicken curry baguette, and meet a friend for lunch. I enjoyed long runs along the Thames River Path as dusk settled over Port Meadow and walking along the small, quiet path behind college leading back to the river Cherwell.
Routine inspires familiarity. Familiarity instills comfort. By the end of the year, I was finally feeling at home in the place sadly I was about to abandon.
This year I live in a Latin Way apartment on campus with three friends. Our common room is a little sparse, and there's no Welcome Home mat outside the door. We don't share milk but we do share music, cleaning responsibilities, and a love of hummus. Sometimes we gather to watch Family Guy if the Red Sox aren't playing.
There can be a lot of transition and change in college. Our lives are in constant flux - changing friends, classes, dorms, outlooks, maybe even values. We may be spiritually, intellectually, socially, or even physically homeless. That is not to say that we are without any place to go, just that we may be without a place to call our own. We can go everywhere and anywhere. One day we're in Medford, the next in Madrid. The great challenge is to build new friends, families and, wherever you go, a place where you can feel comfortable, a place you can call home.
Next year, I could move to San Francisco, New York, or Sydney - anywhere really. During the transition, I would expect once again to feel homeless, weightless, ungrounded, uprooted. But for now, this place in Boston is my home. Tufts is where I live, work, study, and play. It takes a long time to feel really comfortable somewhere. Home is right here. This is where I belong.
