It takes a little bit, but a considerable amount of 12 hour-nights, mid-afternoon naps, and odd meal-times later, I am (mostly) over jet lag. I felt there somehow should be a conclusion—one last bittersweet post about life-lasting friendships, unforgettable experiences, and impatiently awaited returns to a city that changed my life…or something. The seamlessness with which I slip back into this side of the world doesn’t allow for that clear cut between a there and here.
In fact, as I sit in a small wooden green table, Greer’s words capture the thought bouncing in my head: “It’s almost as if the last three months didn’t happen.” I know they happened, but there is a mythical quality to their reality. I’m here just like any other Christmas break. I am rejoicing in cold weather and wishing there was less ice on the floor. The air is still and days pass, but I’m searching for the words to make the chaos in my mind achieve some clarity. That’s how I know they happened.
I think about how I need time to process. How this concluding post would be better in a few months. It will all come at some point. Later on, looking back through pictures, sharing stories, and reading over the journal entries, I know something will trigger a reviving of a semester suspended in fiction. As I walk into a room that looks just like the one I left, and walk into a coffee shop rearranged and confusing, I know I am lucky. From airport hugs, heartwarming smiles, and loads of love, I am dropped into a soft, welcoming blanket. The fact that there is no clear ending or beginning marks a special continuation of one long, constant experience that started before September and goes beyond now.
And yet, there is a soft hint of resolution. It happens during a white and effortless run across a different body of water that is no longer Le Lez, but something just as familiar. A whiteness of flurries that I’m happy to claim from Will’s accusations: “We'd had a mild winter here until you showed up. I had not associated these things at first—the mildness, your absence—but now, as I look out the window and drink my morning coffee, I remember how the cold follows you…”My feet step on cushioning snow that crunches and whispers its low chant.
In silence and stillness we remember other runs from other winters. My body moves forward just as it did before. I see the words of a conclusion writing themselves in my brain, but they are the words that fit a narrative that is not mine. There will be no sad goodbye, or constant yearning to return somewhere. What remains (and yes it might still be too soon to really know) is a gratefulness for a change of perspective and a change of panorama that further reinforced things I suspected, and that forced a reranking of my priorities. I am as grateful for each lovely face that slips back into my life as much as I am thankful for each joyous face that I met and that I hope to see again.
And just like that, it is December, almost January, and like the invisible, eternal, and gradual fall of my snowflake accomplices, my tentative first steps around the Lincoln airport are quickly transitioning into a more stationary state of being. Same purpose. Different (or same?) postal code. Cheers!
