The weekend before our final day of college classes, my friend Kate and I hopped on a bus to Brooklyn to volunteer at a literary ball. I’d been so excited to hear one of my favorite writers give a keynote speech (and Lauren Groff’s words on the importance of blues and all shades of life to the creative process were, we decided afterward, our perfect commencement speech). We spent the next day catching up with our graduated friend Ruvi, watching The Great Gatsby on Broadway, visiting bookshops and shopping, eating delectable ramen in piled hexagonal cubbies and getting soaked to the bone in spring showers. Though Kate also loves books and writing, I know that she would’ve come to New York with me for anything, ball or not. So, on the bus back to Baltimore, past those lengths of plunging tunnel shadows out of Manhattan, and on some tree-lined highway in New Jersey, I write on friendship.
Freshman year, I was housed with the perfect roommate. Isabel and I were both five-foot-something in a closet-sized AMR I dorm, which was, though in no world ideal, a logistical windfall. But more importantly, we bewildered each other throughout the year with how similar we were. We were from opposite sides of the world, her desert to my ocean, but we’d never before met anyone we shared more in common with, in temperament, friendship and family. Though also fundamentally opposite in our studies, her Computer Science to my Writing Seminars, we’d both dedicated ourselves to the stubborn joy of puzzling out difficult questions in the hopes of finding in our own language a solution. She epitomized what I have come to admire in so many here: a restless curiosity to figure the world out, an absence of ego, an earnestness to ask any question and the serious grit to hunker down and get work done. But perhaps what I admire most about Isabel is her dignity and honesty, how she holds herself in every conversation and commitment, in every room in such a way that makes it immediately known that she is worth the world, which she is.
I told Lilah, my next Computer Science friend, that she reminded me of sunshine, and she laughed in my face. But Lilah is the only person I know who would land in any weird situation, however terrible, and wonder aloud if a stranger was just having an off-day. We acquire phrases and words from the people we spend time with and something so canonically Lilah is “[Blank] would do that.” We were talking about this one day when we realized I’d adopted this in the opposite direction, drenching it in sarcasm where Lilah had meant it genuinely. Her version was one of joy at the wonderfully strange creatures we are, an excitement at having someone’s actions line up so perfectly with what you’d predict based on their character. She’s the only one who would go out of her way to try a nasty-sounding flavor like chicken-kimchi-cabbage milkshakes just because she can’t imagine it and wants to figure out if she likes it. Few people find such delight in empathy toward people and things alike. So, sorry to say it again, and in writing, but Lilah, despite your excellent taste for grungy raw unproduced indie music, you are still full of sunshine.
Gabby, my Computer Engineering and not Computer Science friend (this, I’m told, is an important distinction), is the first person I text when I want to grab coffee or food. We’ve had more than our bargained share of morning Kitsch runs, afternoons spent languidly not studying at Good Neighbor and impromptu Tamber’s dinners. My time with her is always the highlight of my day. There is something so grounding and safe about being around someone who you can trust to be honest and accepting no matter what. She’s the first person I run off to a movie with after any inkling of a bad day. I scared her in the kitchen in the early morning a couple weeks ago, stumbling in for a water with an antihistamine in my mouth and garbling something incongruent, trying not to startle her and startling her all the more — and as I went back to bed, I could not stop laughing. With her, the world feels awfully simple; it’s one where we deserve fun and patience and a listening ear, where there are such things as the kindness of people and hard work paying off, and after spending any amount of time with Gabby, I find myself leaving with much more faith that there is good in the world.
And now Kate, who is sleeping across the aisle from me as we drive beneath cloudy Delaware skies. I didn’t have a single writing friend before studying abroad in Rome, and I came back with a Writing Seminars family. There is no one whose life has mirrored my own quite as much as hers, from family structures to books to riding the hyphen of science and humanities. To share time with anyone at all is a gift. But to be present with someone, to be able to bring your whole self and know there will always be space and grace for you, is the wildest stroke of luck.
We just came through another long tunnel. Silvery, overcast daylight fills the bus once more. We’re almost back to Baltimore now, and how lucky am I to say, at least once more, that I’m almost back home.
Kaitlin Tan is a senior from Manila, Philippines, graduating with a degree in Writing Seminars and Cognitive Science. She is a former Magazine and Voices Editor for The News-Letter.
