Snow Globe Home

For the past two years, the main form of communication between my brother and I has been random phone calls and Facetime calls, usually mid week and only for about ten minutes.  The exception would be every few months when it seemed like so much more had happened and the conversation packed together for a continuous hour or so.  There was a phase around last summer when I was calling every other week out so- at that point in the summer the heat had drained me and left me in a lazy haze that didn't provide me the energy to much else after coming home from my summer job.

I should mention the reason for the phone calls, as they replaced random shopping trips or Dunkins' dates that were principal aspects of the flourishing friendship my sister and I shared- he was across the country, literally in the exact opposite corner of where I was.  He had three more years of vet school at that time, and he had practically gone straight there from enduring three months doing fieldwork.  I missed him; another reason for the consistent phone calls.

During these mid summer weeks he mentioned a few times this feeling of daze, amazed at his own life, how he ended up where he was: in a small townhouse office for more hours of the day than not.  He was on such a strict schedule with studying, but caught up in reflecting back upon his adventures in Costa Rica and Madagascar, the locations of his fieldwork.  He viewed his life now through the lens of a snow globe, the scene now being him going crazy in that shoe box of a room.  He described this snow globe scene numerous times to me; each was followed with a vague response on my part, as I could not relate nor imagine that feeling, only empathize.

It wasn't until this past week I found myself hurriedly walking out of the dining hall in between classes that I felt the same way.  I had found my snow globe scene.  My first class that day had gotten out ten minutes early which left me just enough time to rush to the dining hall to replenish my coffee supply.  Walking out, I was still going to be early for my class, and after seeing a teacher in a wheelchair in front me, I felt the urge to not rush.  I took slowly strides and tried to enjoy my cold walk.  Snowflakes were calmly falling, they floated down softly touching the ground before I stepped on them.  At that time the chapel bells started chiming a Christmas tune I could not place; the bells slowed the melody down, it seemed to be in sync with me; both trying to contain the speed of our natural pace.  And in that moment, I was in a snow globe.

I thought about my past year and a half.  My mind raced through the events, each flicking through my head quickly as if my life were an old film roll and I was quickly skimming over the pictures: from coming home from Panama, to hiding a relationship from most of my friends, to going to Mexico with my best friend, and coming back from Asia puking through the whole fifteen hour plane ride.   I thought about all the people I encountered in the past year: from my new head basketball coach who cared so much he even fixing a girl's flat tire last year, to the gas station worker in LA who opened the store just so we could grab some cookies when we snuck out of our hotel, to my tour guide in Asia who had survived the Cambodian genocide, to the professor in the wheel chair in front of me.  My mind skipped over to moments, moments that stimulated all my senses, moments I knew I wouldn't forget.  Tasting Mexican hot chocolate with the cool breeze of the Caribbean running through my hair and my bare legs, as I modestly crossed them under my flowy dress, entering a bake shop in DC and smelling the fresh cookies and sugar, hiking with my mom in the White Mountains after a rainfall and smelling the fresh scent of trees and dirt.  Walking on a snowy day to class with church bells ringing in the background as I try to slow my pace to not put pressure on the professor in the wheelchair to move faster.  The hot coffee staining the top of my travel mug as it bounces with each step I take.  How did I get here?  How did I get here?

A name of one of the freshman seminars offered here is "Place and Placelessness."  I didn't take it, I almost took it.  I didn't understand what the concept of 'placelessness' would be.  I don't even think it's a real word.  Yet somehow I was feeling it, I was feeling placeless.  I was not homesick, I did not want to be home, but this new place isn't my home yet either.  It was my snow globe home, for the moment.

J