This is all a big mistake.
Really, I'm supposed to be rocking the summer. I've pictured it since spring: my Manolo Blahniks pounding Seventh Avenue pavement, me and my new blonde streaks streaking through the wind. I was going to make it after all. I was gonna do it my way. This summer, I would take Manhattan.
That is, until Manhattan took me, and my budget, and laughed us all the way back home. "Oh you poor thing," soothes an Upper East Side friend into her Nokia. "I can't believe you won't be here. And I had this guy I wanted you to meetÉ." As she ticks off the usual suspects of smart, funny and loaded, I catch my mother stretching in the other room. Once she was a dancer, and she still uses the dining room table as her barre.
I used to hate it when my mom danced in our kitchen. "Can't you be normal?" my seventh-grade self would grumble while watching My So Called Life. Back then it felt weird, but now my Capezio-clad mom looked kind of great. Not nearly as great as a Madison Avenue apartment, but heartening nonetheless.
I was so engrossed in my mom's movement that I totally forgot the girl at the other end of my phone. "And yesterday? He wore this Ben Sherman suit from Barney's." Apparently she hadn't forgotten me. "Listen," I said listlessly, "don't worry about me living here. Really, I think I'll be fine." The truth is, I didn't think I'd be fine, but I was willing to give it my best shot.
For those of us moving home this summer, and that seems like most of us, the season of internships and itsy-bitsy bikinis may be more than we bargained for. Sure, we're the kids with free rent, free food, and, with a little strategic pouting, extra shopping money. But then there are those awkward moments that make a sweltering summer on Central feel like paradise. It's uncomfortable to doze in our childhood beds, and it's virtually impossible to sleep between Rainbow Brite sheets with someone else between them, too. I never understood those people who liked having sex in their old rooms. Personally, the thought of snuggling up to a guy in the space where I once sucked a pacifier is beyond revolting. It's just plain "ew, gross."
Living at home is all about the trade-offs: We give up our privacy in exchange for a home cooked meal, and switch an all-night frat party for a late-night freezer raid. But along with the smaller swaps, we're switching something much more special, and sometimes much more scary. By crashing on the family couch all summer, we're turning in our worn-out memories for a new reality check that we may not be able to take.
College kids living at home are a lot like adults watching Disney movies. All of a sudden, we notice sophisticated jokes, subtle grown-up references andÉ wait a second, is that S-E-X spelled out in the clouds above Simba? Sending ourselves back to our roots makes us notice things that we didn't understand as kids and things that we acutely understand now.
As we backed out of my driveway, a friend of mine told me how much she loved my house. "I always leave laughing," she said while slipping in a Shakira CD. I used to think that my parents were just goofy. But this summer, I noticed that their sense of humor is what they share in common, and they use it to communicate. It was a cool moment when I realized that my parents aren't really just Comedy Central wannabes.
But some discoveries are less heartening. "My parents hate each other," said a friend of mine in a gravely voice, hugging himself on his hunter green couch. "I never noticed it until now, but I'm pretty sure it's true. They just don't interact anymore." I try to smile, but my friend assures me he's okay. "It's good," he says, Peregrino in one hand and X-Box controls in the other. "I've learned so much from living home this summer. I've learned what I don't want my marriage to be."
T.S. Eliot wrote that "home is where one starts from." Sometimes moving home feels like stepping backward. Our independence gets linked to a leash, and looking around at the faded wallpaper, it's easy to think we've tumbled back to 10th grade. But maybe a summer at home can show us just how far we've come. I don't have a curfew anymore, I can drink in the house and now I finally see my parents as adults instead of caretakers. That lesson is something no internship, or West Village walk-up, could ever teach me, and something tells me it's paramount in that little black book of things I should have learned sooner.
Last weekend I crashed with some friends in Manhattan. I wielded my MetroCard like a native and bar-hopped with the best of the NYU crew. Late one night I sat up with them, picking at a cake as they picked apart my life. "I am so sorry you're living at home," a lighting designer moaned, pouring me a cup of Earl Grey. I took the tea, but not the sympathy. "Don't be sorry," I said. "I'm doing great."
The next day, my Manolos pounded Seventh Avenue pavement. I looked down the crowded street and saw my future life stretched across New York City. We'll always have Manhattan, or Chicago, or Los Angeles, and the rest of our grown-up selves to enjoy them. Maybe this summer those of us who are homeward bound can enjoy something totally unexpected instead.
Faran Krentcil is a Trinity senior and senior editor of Recess.
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