Back from Home

The week at home was absolutely magical. In fact, it was honestly too good - if I can make a comparison to people being shipped overseas for various purposes, it feels like it was actually that much harder to come back once I remembered all the comforts and pleasures of home. The four days spent in Columbia gave me a taste both of what next semester might hold, as well as what this summer could have been - both a tragic and incredibly comforting realization. I won't lie, I'm struck by the same panic that hit me right before I left. Maybe worse, even, because I have even slightly different priorities than the ones I left with.

Obviously the most striking difference between New York and South Carolina is the people (my people, if I can be so bold). But besides that, I think the thing that I find most different is the struggle to be in New York. South Carolina has an ease of existence for me - both because I've grown up there and because the city itself is just structured differently - and one which is entirely lacking in New York. Just the fact that I can drive places in South Carolina is a major time and energy saver; waiting on the train, waiting on a connection, walking from the train, waiting even longer on the train on the return journey . . . although I really enjoy the subway, spending an hour getting somewhere that would be a 15 minute drive is a little inefficient. Getting places outside of one's own neighborhood is just generally difficult, in my mind, being as I am the product of a regular-sized city where you could drive anywhere on a whim with little or no effort. Traffic? ha. Maybe some of that has to do with the apartments I've occupied in South Carolina as well, with their full kitchens and roommates/neighbors and puppies and on-street parking and close restaurants.

And now that's enough whining. Because I may be scared and lonely, and I may feel like I've lost my adventuring spirit (did I have one to start with?), but I'm in the most exciting city on the East Coast, and I'm making good money (assuming I ever see any of it) - I'll be fine. Anyway, here are a couple of moments over the last week that I thought were worth sharing, in no chronological order whatsoever.

When I went through security in Charlotte (coming back to NY from home), they had me walk through this crazy X-ray machine. You have to stand, hands raised over your head like in a cop movie, feet spread shoulder width apart, and wait for seven seconds while the machine scans you for God-knows-what. I'm a fairly innocent looking person - Sarah would probably dispute that with her patented Sarah Allen eye roll, but most people don't know any better - but apparently something looked odd in my general chest area. This middle aged woman walks up to me with a stern look on her face and says, "you have anything up in here?" and gestures towards my breasts. "Umm, no," I say, confused but already amused at this situation, "that's all natural." She lightens up and laughs, but then tells me she's about to feel me up ("check you over" was her particular terminology, or something like that), and does so with great thoroughness. She turns to the woman operating the machine - "her back?" she says, and makes a special point of rubbing between my shoulder blades - and then shrugs and sends me on my way. The bra I was wearing must have confused them. It's got an odd clasp, I'll give them that: it's a large single clasp off to the side rather than the regular double-clip variety. Maybe they saw that and thought, "tiny crazy white girl packin' heat gonna kill us." Or maybe not. Who knows.

There were swallows in JFK. Mind you, I'm walking out of the terminal with my jaw set against any quivering, just keeping my head up and my mind on my bags. Just as I shifted my eyes up towards the ceiling, I saw a couple of swallows racing above me. As much as I realize that those swallows were probably hopelessly trapped in the airport, and their situation was somewhat dire, it was a little like the moment with the coyote in Collateral - it was like a brief interlude in the rush of emotions and disappointments, like a lapse in the normal function of time for just a split second. If you've seen the part in Collateral that I'm referring to, you understand the poignancy of that moment. Kind of melancholic.

Breaking into my family's house was a lot of fun. I made Sarah come get me on Wednesday, and after bumming around Columbia for a few hours, I finagled her into taking me out to the parents' house. Smart kid that I am, I forgot to bring my keys. We get there, and I'm like, "oh snap, Sarah, we can't get in," and I'm feeling really bad because I dragged her all the way out there. She goes, "girl, just get the spare key!" And I'm like . . . spare key? She then proceeds to not only show me the spare key, but then inform me of my family's whereabouts at the time and tell me why I hadn't gotten a response e-mail from my dad. My faux-sister now officially knows more about my family than I do. They'd totally adopt you, by the way, Sarah - ask them if you can steal that guest room whenever you need a break from your own family. I bet they'd say yes.

I experienced the perfect morning last week. I woke up slowly for the promise of coffee and Honey Nut Cheerios, then curled up on the couch, lazily switching between Wimbledon and the World Cup. With the window AC blowing cool air on us, and light streaming in the windows, and a cat padding around behind us, those few hours were spent in absolute bliss. If this is what summers can be - if this is what next semester will be, then I'm sold. It's a beautiful laziness, and these memories will keep me strong until I can come home to their reality.

Anyway, I'm sure there's a lot more to talk about, and I'm sure I've left off a lot of the last week that will stick with me or come back to me later. It was lovely to see my family again, to get to hug my nieces (even though they didn't really want those hugs) and pet my puppy. I was thrilled to see my closest friends again, who were troopers and came to pick me up and drop me off and ferry me around. Absence, in this case, makes the heart even more grateful.