Off-season: Reflections on the road
There is a strange peace to the sight of a beach town emptied.
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There is a strange peace to the sight of a beach town emptied.
There was a window nook in my bedroom growing up, a cold ledge about a meter wide. I filled it with pillows and a throw blanket. For months in high school, I’d wake up early just to sit there before school, reading by lamplight for a dim hour, then watching the sun leak into the sky with my forehead against the glass. I’d play music, quiet enough not to wake anybody. I’d listen to the building’s pipes and watch the street lamps blink off. Sometimes, I’d make myself a cup of tea.
My grandfather has been asking me to write his biography for years. A tome, he said. Something hundreds of thousands of words long to capture his every struggle and triumph. I brushed it off as a joke, and though he would laugh along, there was always a somber undertone to his request. He wanted to be heard. He wanted to be remembered and seen and celebrated.
The other day, I watched myself age by scrolling through my camera roll. Picture by picture, video by video, I saw change and growth in ways I hadn’t expected. It spurred a little reflection.
I spent the beginning of my sophomore year in a bit of a tizzy.
Chances are you’ve been faced with the college question — “Will you or won’t you go to university?” — posed by (hopefully) well-intentioned guardians, mentors or friends. Otherwise, you might be like me, someone from a community where college was never seen as an option, but as an imperative.