The View From Grandma's Guest Bed

I'm in Grandma's basement, sitting on the guest bed closest to the nightstand. It's not really late yet, but I'm under the covers anyhow--it's cold down here. On the other guest bed to my left are stacks of folded laundry because we're leaving on Wednesday, so I washed all my clothes today in preparation. This means that my purple suitcase is sitting open and sadly empty. Actually, the whole downstairs in sadly empty. Or perhaps simply nostalgic. Do you know that in all my years of coming to Grandma's house, this basement has never changed? The beds are the same, the sheets are the same, the stuffed animals are arranged the same ways, the same movies and the same little trinkets on the windowsills, the dolls and empty bottles.

Everything is wonderfully constant here.

But I'm not--after all, it's impossible to stay 7, 10, or 15 forever. But sitting here I can see phantom versions of me all over this room and it's like watching my life in fast forward--there I am on the fold out couch, there I am at the puzzle table, here we are watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, there we are hiding in the closet, and now we're building a fort. There I'm reading a book, there I'm playing with stuffed animals, and now I'm arguing over who gets the "good beds." Do you know that these past two weeks have been the first time that I've ever been at Grandma's on my own? Before this, it was always with my cousins or my sisters, following the little chore schedule on the wall, leaving notes on the top of the bookshelf, and trying to convince the older cousins to play hide and seek with us younger girls.

I remember one of the last times, before we all got too old to go to Grandma's house for a week during the summer. It was just two of us that time--my cousin and I and we must have been around fifteen.  In the middle of the night I got terribly frightened and I knew that my cousin was still awake, so I whispered, "Are you scared? Because the light from the window is makes the TV look freaky and I can't sleep."

"Actually, I'm sort of scared too." she confessed, "Want to turn on the lamp?"

So we turned on the lamp and I sat on my bed and she sat on hers and she pulled out this little book of psalms and Bible verses and she read aloud to me. We must have talked and read out loud for a half hour, maybe an hour, and then once I felt at ease, the lights went off again and we fell asleep. At the time, I supposed that she was as frightened as I was, but looking back, maybe she just pretended so that I wouldn't feel bad about being fifteen years old and scared of the dark. It seems like something she would do.

You know, about a month or two ago, while I was still at school, I had this absolutely terrifying dream. I was too unsettled to wake up my roommate, so I got out of bed at 5 in the morning and went to the empty lounge with my bible and my journal. I sat there for a long time, but after a while other people started getting up and moving around, so I finally went back to my room and the thought occurred to me that maybe not so much has changed since fifteen.

It seems like a lot of change, you know. So much change that I get frightened sometimes--am I the same person at all?  But maybe not as much has changed, and maybe, after the lights go out, I'm still fifteen on the inside. Perhaps the dark is the great equalizer, one of only a few things that never change, never grow. The dark is sort of like my grandma's basement--perilously constant, always ready to trip you up with the same things that tripped you years before.

But no matter how much it trips you up, you can always count on it to be the same.

Wheaton in... Wheaton?

When you’re part of a study abroad program called “Wheaton in England,” you assume that you’re actually going to be in England. But you’re not. Or at least I’m not. Not yet, anyhow. They tell me, “Don’t worry, you will be soon! But first, you have two weeks on campus in Wheaton as preparation for your time overseas.” Which sounds legit until I find out that these two weeks of “preparation” are actually a hellish concoction of significant sleep loss mashed up with 400-page books, intensive literary analysis, at least 25 hours of class time a week, plus at least twice that many hours in out-of-class work, and an absurd variation of bagged lunches. 

And I’m paying money to do this.

Thank God they provide the tea (of which I’ve consumed an ungodly number of cups).  

Most of the students in the program are living on campus in apartments, but I’m staying off campus with my grandmother. She goes bed early, so I am often left sitting alone on the couch, papers and books strewn about me, waiting for the sentient lamp to turn off of its own accord as it does every night a little after 10 pm. Sometime before midnight, I creep down to the empty basement and fall asleep on one of the guest beds, tossing my homework on the unused bed beside me. Then the next morning I begin all over again—classes 10:10 to 3:40, with an hour for lunch. There is no time for anticipating adventures in the UK, no time for anything but packing lunches, studying late, speed reading articles, and drinking tea in between classes and trips to the bathroom. There is, at the very least, the entertainment of seeing the same mess of people doing the same things as me day after day—learning the color scheme of their clothes, deciding if their jokes are actually funny or not, and finding out if their taste in books matches mine.

I’m told that our time on campus is busy so that our time in England doesn’t have to be, which makes sense, I suppose. But honestly, I doubt I’ll remember much of this week at all beyond vague memories of a black VW bug and the pristine rows of Blanchard 139. Everyone complains, making bad seventeenth century puns about being so “donne,” but while watching hand after hand go up during class, I suspect that they don’t really mind. 

Heaven knows that I complain to anyone who will listen, but the truth is, I've realized that I enjoy 400-page books, think literary analysis is sort of fun, don’t mind the long hours, and could eat boiled eggs every day for lunch and never tire of them. Of course, I hope that the time in England will be more relaxing than the time here in Wheaton, but as long as the complimentary tea remains complimentary, I have good reason to believe that the remainder of the preparation time will be satisfyingly exhausting in all the ways I love best. And I'm perfectly alright with that. 

Sunday Stupe

The only thing that matters is chicken or beef
and do you want tomatocheeselettuce in
balance with this life this death
smile at every person even the
indecisive ones who hold up the line
because white or wheat bread and
I’m sorry can you speak a little
louder yes sir that was a funny joke one
I’ve never heard before and
do not go gentle into that good
condiments and gluten free yeah we have
some of those although might I
warn you they taste like sawdust you poor sucker
beloved we are always in the
Stupe line and reality is biodegradable boxes that
smell like saving the planet no we don’t do
salads on Sundays and here have my swipe it’s extra and
we have slipped the surly bonds of
Saga and who forgot to cut the buns
is Geoffrey back from break yet I’m doing
fine thanks for asking and the philosophy
paper needs 5 sources due at 10 am
Nature’s first green is
mold on this cheese throw out the pan
hi what can I get for you thanks for
waiting I’m out of ketchup where are the
size medium gloves and smile
night and whirling worlds afar in all encircling
eye contact don’t be sarcastic patience is
poetry is faces I recognize mixing with rhymes
I memorized once upon a shift—
I gave you a burger last Sunday and
you don’t know my name

Wheaton

Beloved, we are always in the wrong

Handling so clumsily our stupid lives

Suffering too little or too long

Too careful even in our selfish loves

--"In Sickness and in Health" by W.H. Auden

So what have I been doing for the last nine months, eh? Reading, of course, and writing essays and serving burgers in Saga and pouring coffee at Sam's and drinking afternoon tea with my friends at 4:00 every day and getting 8 hours of sleep every night because this may be college but I believe in being both coherent and caffeine-free.

Is it a good life? Yes, it is a good life. The bulletin board  in my room is covered with drawing from my younger siblings, and the same beat-up speakers I had at home are sitting on my desk with even more dents than before. 

Or rather, they used to be sitting on desk. It's the last day of finals, though, so my desk is cleared now, and the bulletin board is down and my closet holds nothing but 30 empty hangers. It's pretty depressing, actually, which is why I've spent most of today avoiding my room and sitting in other people's rooms, using their computers to write my blog post.

I'm pretty much a pigheaded idiot, which means it's pretty hard to teach me anything at all, but if I've learned anything at all this year, it's that friendships are really really important and also super complicated. My New Years Resolution was to memorize poetry, and I actually didn't do a half-bad job at it. One of the ones I memorized was a portion from Auden's "In Sickness and in Health" and I think it pretty well sums up how I felt about friendships for much of this year: incapable and inexperienced.

Floundering, desperately trying to figure out how to do everything right and how to not be selfish and still get good grades at the same time. Honestly, I don't know that I did a very good job, but maybe that's one of the best things about good friends--they give you room to make mistakes and don't ditch you simply because you are insensitive and irritating. And I, despite all the odds against me, managed to make some pretty good friends this year. 

You know, they always talk about how in marriage, love is a choice, right? But this year, I think I've learned that friendship is a choice as well. In the past, I've viewed friendship pretty selfishly, like "these are the people who make me laugh" and presto, friends. And I mean, I guess that's how friendships often start for me, but in order to move beyond that, you make a choice. You say, "Okay, these are my people. And I'm going to care about them and let them care about me."  

And maybe sometimes you don't do a very good job or they don't do a very good job, but that's alright because you made a choice. And that means that you've decided to keep caring about them no matter what.

So yes, beloved, we are always in the wrong, but through my failed attempts at being a good friend "comes a voice which utters an absurd command--Rejoice!"

Rejoice. And so I do.