Moving to college was the first time I had ever truly left home. It was two hours away, but initially, it felt like it was clear across the country. My parents drove me down the night before the beginning of Welcome Week. We stayed at a sweet B&B and ate at the Stagecoach Inn, but all I really remember were the two rocks in the pit of my stomach, the rock of beginning and the rock of end. I couldn’t help but feel as if my childhood was over. I was no longer going to be a daughter, granddaughter, or sister. I was no longer allowed in the DFW area. I was cast out to set sail on this new chapter of my life during which I would receive an education, marry my husband, and begin my own life separate from all I had previously known. The past had served me well, but as soon as my parents unloaded their car and drove away, it would be just that, the past.
My roommate and I decided to unpack on our own, so my parents were on the road faster than they would have cared to be and I was on my own. The rock of end began to clang against the rock of beginning just as heavy in my gut, but not quite as wistful. Where would I put my things? What would I wear for my first walkabout campus? Who would be my friends now that I was alone?
Days past and my phone dinged with a message from my dad that simply read:
“Call your mom.”
I replied,
“I can’t. I’ll cry.”
And I did.
Through the heaving sobs of tears, I released the rock of end. I realized for the first time that there was no morbid finality to my leaving home. It was there waiting for me. I had not been cut off from it. In fact, my home was the foundation on which I was now placing the bricks of my life. That tearful phone call insured what I needed to know, that home was always going to be there and it was. It was never the same, but always welcoming and exactly what it needed to be for the layer of bricks in which I was laying at the time.
Thursday, We watched a massive truck fill to the brim with bricks, our bricks, bricks that composed the life we have built over the years. I directed the parade of boxes and furniture into various spots. The days of cleaning, hauling, nailing, and breaking down boxes that followed gave way to familiar pangs in my stomach. Again, the distance was not exceptionally cavernous, but space isn’t always calculated in miles. Again, I have left home and rocks clang in the pit of my stomach. However, now as I slather mortar on a new row of bricks, I know what I did not know before:
You can go home again.
