Picking up the pieces
Moving away without forgetting where you came from
SHAWNA SWEENEY VOLUNTEER STAFF
When I fi rst moved away to college, I must have driven home fi ve times in the fi rst week to pick up things I had forgotten. My original moving list was not comprehensive at all, and I overlooked many items that it turned out I really needed. I got all the important stuff like my toothbrush and clothes and school supplies, but it seemed like every day there was something else that I forgot.
My parents were pretty glad to see me every time I showed up to retrieve my lost artifacts. I was the fi rst child in my family to go off to college and I think they missed me desperately after I was gone. But their feelings were almost an afterthought as I explored a bold new universe of friends and ideas and independence. I was busy writing a
But slowly it crept in. Th e days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months and gradually I realized that I had forgotten more than a few books and CDs. By the time winter break rolled around, I was glad to spend a couple weeks at home in a familiar setting.
Th at fi rst Christmas, I had lunch with an old friend from high school. She had gone to school in a city that was many hours away compared to my own. She couldn’t drive home every day to pick up things she had forgotten. She couldn’t access her old life as easily as I could.
After we shared stories and pictures and talked about old friends and new friends and classes and futures, the conversation turned to distance. I asked her if it had been hard to move so far so suddenly without being able to return and get things she needed.
She, like me, had lived in the same small town her entire life. She was surrounded by the same people and the same routine and the same situations for all of the years we spent growing up. It was a world that existed with minimal change. Until we changed everything.
She looked out the window for a long time before she said, “It’s very hard because if you’ve always been somewhere then all of the important people in your life are in one place. Once you move away there is a sharp break and suddenly your world is cut in half. Th ere are people you care about in two places instead of one. After that things are never the same — you’ll always be missing somebody somewhere and you can never put the pieces back together again as long as you live.”
I thought about that for a long time. Th e meal eventually ended and so did our conversation, but her words lingered on in my memory, like a key to everything I was feeling about the new life I had started and the old one I had left behind.
When I moved away to college I shattered the dimensions of my entire world. It felt like something totally diff erent and so did I, but the thing I overlooked was that this new life was built over the bones of an old one. Th at the place I started from held important clues to the places I was going.
Now moving is old hand. I’ve done it so many times that it seems like second nature. I don’t have to go home a dozen times to retrieve all the things that I left behind, but I’ve long since realized that there are other things that I missed. Th ings that I need to continue picking up the pieces and move on.
