i. on reaching

It's the summer before you leave for college, and you're not scared of anything.

You're young, free, and newly released from the shackles of high school APs. In the endless days of July, 18 is a blessing. You have all the time in the world.

So you fall into a routine. Sleep in until noon, spend hours driving and blasting Dominic Fike, race down hiking trails with sweat dripping into your eyes. Watch every horrific movie reboot at your hometown theater, eat all the In-N-Out you can, hold hands with your friends, and leap into the ocean until the tips of your hair are bleached blonde. 

The weeks rush by. Life is good.

Sure, on occasion you find yourself fielding a dozen questions at once from your parents’ friends and your friends’ parents—“So far away!” they fret. “What happens if you get sick? What happens if you miss home?” And you assure them that you’ve had all your COVID-19 booster shots, that you’ve always preferred cooler weather anyway, and you flash them a smile with all your teeth.

And sure, every day your still-empty suitcase seems to yawn a little wider, and your packing list flashes a little more urgently on your smudged laptop screen. (What should you bring in case it snows? How many clothes hangers do you need? Which one of your dozen raggedy stuffed animals should you pack? What happens if you miss home? What happens if you miss home?)

But you’re too infatuated with the moment to worry about any of this.

ii. on grasping

For the hundred-thousandth time, you’ve found yourself in your friend’s driveway.

The two of you have known one another for over a decade, grown up intertwined. You’ve been here many times before: to meet her for snacks before racing to the playground, labor over middle school geometry worksheets with the rest of your friends, get ready for tenth-grade homecoming.

This time, this sunny August afternoon, is different. This time is a goodbye.

Today, there’s four of you: you, her, and two other friends sitting in the car. You’ve grown up together, seen each other at your bests and worsts. She leaves for college tomorrow, and that collective awareness seems to put a crackle in the air.

The group lingers in the car for far too long, bantering and laughing. And then you’re standing at her front door in a circle—“Can we just stay here for a little longer?” someone asks.

So you all stay for a little longer, make feeble jokes that die quickly on your tongues. Somebody starts crying, and then everybody else does too. You hug each other tightly, hands clutching desperately at shoulders. This love rends your chest in half.

And then she’s disappeared behind her front door. You drive home in silence.

The next two weeks, you find yourself beginning to seize at all the small details of home: the sound of doves calling in the morning, the lilting cadences of your parents’ Mandarin, the squirrels tussling in the backyard, the familiar faces you spot around every corner and streetlamp of your small town. August 28th looms closer. Sadness begins to become a physical thing, perching on your chest when you try to sleep, filming over your eyes each time you say another goodbye.

The night before the flight away from everything you’ve ever known, you crawl into your parents’ bed, pull their polka-dotted comforter up to your chin, and bawl your eyes out.

iii. on holding

Your hands are cold as you clutch the handles of your suitcases close to your body. Em-Wool looms in front of you like a brick-red Mt. Everest. The trees are so green here that they make your eyes water.

Every single street on this campus seems to be swarming with people on move-in day: hundreds upon hundreds of jittery freshmen, parents hovering just behind them, mounds of luggage everywhere you look. Surveying what is to become your new home for the first time, you feel a bruising ache in the bottom of your ribcage.

The morning passes in a blur of staircases and sweat, bags and a bare new dorm—the whiteness of its walls almost oppressive. You and your parents wrangle the sheets onto the mattress, Swiffer the floor, smooth out your wrinkled posters, and tape them haphazardly above the bed. When you finish, you step back to admire your work; your mom puts her palm on your back, and you find yourself leaning into it, hungry for the warmth.

You spend the rest of the day roaming the campus, both with your family and without, learning this new roadmap and the shapes of the paths across the grass. So different from the rolling yellow hills of your hometown, the sleepy quiet that blanketed every street. Everything here is green and bright and soaked through with an unfamiliar energy, quicker than the airplane that brought you here, quicker than the wind chasing through the trees.

iv. on lingering

And then your parents and sister are off to explore New England for the next few days, and you find yourself alone on campus, adrift in seas of “What’s your name? Where are you from? What are you studying?” 

Orientation is like nothing else. You strike up conversation with anyone you can, beam at strangers-turned-acquaintances until it feels like your face is frozen in a smile, think of home, exchange names and Instagrams and jokes and phone numbers, think of home, fight with the laundry machines and attend ice cream socials and stay up until 3 a.m. and think of home, and think of home.

You’re not homesick—you’re exhilarated—and yet you find yourself searching for hints of California wherever you go. The way the sunlight on the Main Green pools across your shoulders feels just like the warmth of your backyard. The cerulean sky, even studded with gray clouds, is an all-too-familiar shade. Your laugh begins to grow louder, broader, just as it sounded before.

Four days after moving in, you meet up with your family for the last time before they board the plane back to LA. You can tell this moment will live forever in your mind, that you will spend hours poring over your memories of the emerald-green trees in front of Emery and the breeze tousling your hair. You know their voices will soon fade to an aching echo in the atrium of your heart.

Most of all, you sense that you will replay their hugs, the way you hug back, hands sliding behind rib cages and between shoulder blades; four becoming one for just a moment, four becoming three and then one going, going and gone.

v. on letting go

It’s not until a few weeks into the year that you realize things are beginning to feel familiar. You can suddenly swipe into the SciLi on your first try every time. You always skirt around the seal on the Pembroke steps for completely rational reasons. You can trace your way from Jo’s back to your dorm without even thinking about it.

Oddly enough, the very realization makes all of it seem new again.

Some nights you still find yourself thinking of the warmth of your childhood bedroom, the sounds of the crickets along the main road. Some nights you compose yearning love letters in your mind to the town you left behind, the people who raised you, shaped you, and then, and then—

The crackling of new autumn leaves underfoot as you walk past the dancing statues, your fingertips gliding across the ragged piano in the basement of the campus center, the sunset over Sayles, the weight of an acquaintance-turned-friend’s head on your shoulder, their hand in yours.

You’re a month into this strange new life, and it feels like an embrace.