I wrote this a while back, but I figure it doesn't really matter since I don't exactly have a regular audience. If I did, they would be deeply disappointed by the pace at which I write new posts. Also by the fact that this is actually pretty repetitive. I really don't know how I manage to have touched on the same topic twice and not have noticed it...
I remember that last winter in Providence.
When the heat broke before Christmas and we spent a day or two half-frozen, writing papers and studying for finals. One of those days, we went to some sort of Christmas market. I got impatient when you spent too long looking at home goods that your mother would like. It made me a bit fearful of moving in together - that you would take on her sense of style - a sort of French country that always seems just slightly dated.
In January, the first snow storm hit, and we camped out in your sunroom, watching the snow huddled under blankets with port in our hands. In the morning, we cleared the driveway with your roommates and the nice, young couple from downstairs. Spending time in that neighborhood always scared me of what my life would be after college - a return to a near-suburbia, so geographically close to campus, but so far from the hustle and bustle. In place of the constant, anonymous contact, there was the accountability to neighbors, comparing their garden, asking for baby-sitting, looking after the dogs.
The new place is drafty too, and our bedroom sometimes reminds me of that old house when it’s cold outside. “Reminds,” though, in the sense that I can see it, but the only visceral connection to that time is the cold wood under my feet. It isn’t an emotional flashback. Our lives have turned out so differently than I envisioned on the days I hung out at your place in Mt. Hope. We seem to have found ourselves on a permanent campus, of sorts. It’s an urban campus, but with the same anonymity mixed with serendipitous encounters with friends and loved ones. It’s home, and yet somehow never too comfortable.
- - - - -
I remember seeing you through the window as I approached your dorm, wearing a brown hoodie and slogging through homework. The basement window put you out of one’s normal line of sight, but still easy to see if you were looking. I always looked and watched you as you answered my call and ran out to get me.
Now, as I approach out home, I look through the giant subterranean window to see if you are in the living room. I wonder if you hear the sound of me coming up the stairs and recognize the sound of my gait. You will soon enough, I expect.
