in my life

“you’re smiling. is that because you’ve had a few glasses of wine? or because you’re being nostalgic and indulgent?” my mom inquired as i sat reading the st. olaf magazine on the couch after dinner. it was a moment when i didn’t realize i was smiling at all. i was proud of chloe, one of “my” first-year students in kildahl, who attended the u.n. commission on sustainable development. and happy for one of my favorite professors, charles taliaferro, for publishing a book on, above all, love. re-living late-night conversations with chloe over chips and salsa, bouncing a ball against my fridge in my junior counselor dorm room. and long-winded, seemingly crazy classes with charles, clothes covered in chalk, hair standing on end from his sweaty hands, with his dog, tiepelo, at his feet. class culminates with an invitation for all of us to his office to discuss theology while listening to the love actually soundtrack with a backdrop of christmas lights. how can a place elicit such unintentional bliss?

this post it both nostalgic and indulgent. since we graduated a year ago this week, olaf and moving on, etc. have been on my mind. these are some of my favorite pictures from senior week, graduation day and the weekend at my cabin. there’s this part of garden state that always grabs me,

“you'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. and you can never get it back. it's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. i mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. you won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. i miss the idea of it. maybe that's all family really is. a group of people who miss the same imaginary place.” (LARGEMAN, GARDEN STATE)

i haven’t been wandering the world without a sense of love-home-family-place. but i know that there’s something that some of us left in our imaginary places. or some part of ourselves that we have given to each other to keep safe. the moments when the phone rings before 8 am, signaling only an international call, and i leap out of bed to interrupt the recorder and the subsequent pure elation of hearing the voice on the other end. finishing each other’s sentences or verbalizing muddled emotions. reliving moments, days, years and laughing, crying, or both, with the same intensity. inadvertently smiling while reading a college quarterly. you know. the moments when nostalgic love breeds gratitude for the things we carry, or let each other carry for us, from the past.

“there are places i remember
all my life
though some have changed
some forever, not for better
some have gone… and some remain
all these places have their moments
of lovers and friends
i still can recall
some are dead and some are living
in my life i’ve loved them all.”
(THE BEATLES)