And then he came home for Thanksgiving. I arrived in Philadelphia an hour after him, and by the time I stepped in the door, he looked as confused as dog did to see us both home at once. "It feels so weird," he said. "It's so quiet." Hours later, he admitted that he missed his friends at college.
What my brother was shocked at was not how different everything seemed, but rather how identical it felt. He had longed so much to return to the way he used to live in the house, and had forgotten that although it's still the same here, he was the one who changed while he was away. "It felt like I was never there," he kept saying about college. His friends at home were the same, they did the same things, they looked the same. They drink more now, and they're better at beer pong; but they make the same jokes and have the same relationships. They love each other the same way.
What's different are the things that are hidden: my brother went to school and started working out everyday, he's taking his school work seriously, he has all new friends. He feels different, I know he does. His friends do too. And yet they come home, and nothing has changed.
I'm three years ahead of my brother. Two nights ago, I went to a bar with a bunch of people from high school. We've changed more than my brother has. We're fatter or thinner, either more or less beautiful, we've traveled, we speak other languages, we hold ourselves differently and we're not as afraid of each other and ourselves as we used to be. And yet my friend laughed to me when I pointed out how different we all are now, "Yeah, but we all interact the same way. We all have the same roles in our group; we're all the same people," he said.
When I think about change, I think about time. I think about how we all move through our lives independently, growing and making choices. Each day in New York, I learn new things, I meet new people, I branch out more and more into the world and into myself. But somehow when we reconvene, we find ourselves unchanged. Home is no longer a haven that moves through life with us, but rather an island in the background that provides us shelter and comfort when we choose to take a break from the real world.
And then there are our friends: those people who will always engage with us the same way. There is that group that, no matter how old people get or what they do or see in life, will always have the same jokester, the same leader, the same type of predictable moments. I find that beautiful, and I find it comforting.
One of my other friends is moving to California when she graduates. Some people seemed angry or upset when they heard, but I told her merely how proud of her I am. And we agreed that our relationship will be the same as it has been in recent years: we will talk on the phone and through email, and we'll visit sometimes. We will never leave the others life, but we won't be in it everyday as we were in high school. Perhaps at this point we're so used to coming back to each other, we aren't afraid to be so far away anymore.
I don't have an answer here; I have no explanation about how to weigh an unchanging past with a nostalgic, yet rapidly growing present. I don't know how we can explore the world and always get back to that same tiny island. I don't know. But I find it beautiful. And I find it comforting to know that it even exists at all.
posted by iliza @ 12:12 PM
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