Every time I go home, I feel as though I’ve entered a different world entirely.
The first signs of this alien existence appear at the tail end of my eight-hour drive home, after I’ve exited the highway and find myself tracing the winding roads that snake their way to the entrance of my neighborhood.
On my left, I pass the looming form of Exhibit A: the Eiffel Tower—well, Mason, Ohio’s version of the Eiffel Tower anyway. As the centerpiece of our local theme park, this fraction-sized replica of the real thing reminds me of countless summer afternoons I spent in its shadows, licking drippings of blue ice cream from a sugar cone and planning my next afternoon of dizzying fun.
Then, as I ease my car up the driveway and cut the engine to the quiet of a Midwestern suburb, Exhibit B rushes from the front door, where (if his whines are to be trusted) he’s been standing guard for almost half an hour waiting for the beam of my headlights to brush past the stop sign at the corner of my street. Say hi to my brother: 4 ft. 3 inches tall, white belt in karate, likes chocolate ice cream and yelling. A charming creature that makes appearances only between the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.
My house smells like the meal about which I’ve been dreaming for months. My mother recites a series of questions she’s asked countless times before; I dutifully recite my answers. My father shows me his newest gadget, a steal he no doubt found scouring the recesses of the Internet during another one of his insomnia-ridden nights. Exhibits C, D, E.
I hold back a smile as I push open the door to my room to find a jumble of sheets and stuffed animals on my bed. Voila, Exhibit F. I never quite learned to tidy up in the morning. Some habits die hard. Others never do.
It’s not just that I know what to expect when I go home—not just the comfort and layers of deja vu I feel as I step through the rooms of my childhood. If that were all, I’d be free to relish my trips back home as a welcome reprieve from my frenzied life as a Duke undergraduate.
Instead, an unease taints my perceptions of home and its gentle constancy. Lulled by the ease of each day melting into the next, I drift through my hometown, frittering away the hours at coffee shops, bookstores and late-night movies. I become a copy of who I once was, taking the same shortcuts, having the same conversations, sinking into the same habits.
I am once again pulled in by a routine and philosophy that I forget during my time at college. At home, regularity is not only expected but essential to the functioning of life—nightly family dinners, weekly soccer games, the pencil markings of a growth chart etched annually on a wall.
On the other hand, college life demands transitions and continual progress. For the perennial nomad (which every undergraduate student must be), existence is a journey—everything fresh, transient, never-before-experienced. High school is over, and college is a brief four years. Then what? Then where? As the story goes, we will eventually find ourselves, settle down, start homes of our own.
For the time being, though, our rallying call echoes behind us as we rush into the future: change! change! change!
In truth, during these breaks I feel like Odysseus returning at last to Ithaca after the Trojan War and a decade of treacherous wandering. Home is a concept grown hazy with time and distance, a goal that offers the reassurances of familiarity. But whereas Odysseus had the luxury of treating home as his final destination, I can afford to only see home as yet another temporary resting point. When my odyssey of self-discovery beckons me again, I must depart from the cyclical existence of my hometown with the strange knowledge that as I change, everything back home will invariably stay the same.
Chalk my wistfulness up to nostalgia, then: a homesickness that paradoxically presents itself only when I’m at home, surrounded by reminders of a way of life I’ve been forced to leave behind, both figuratively and literally. Chalk it up to in-between-ness, that muddled and indefinite space of young adulthood that rests—or rather, fidgets and worries—between periods defined by stability, comfort, shelter, home.
For now, my so-called home has become just another stop in my travels. At the end of a stay, I’m always left with one last Exhibit: my suitcase, packed with the essentials of a life on the go. I haul it into the trunk of my car and think to myself that someday, I’ll come home for good.
Just not today.
Shining Li is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every Tuesday.
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