Lost in Translation

The light are on in my room.

Not my room, E004 Metcalf Hall, but my room – the one that carries the weight of the past five-odd years, and with it the memories – of my sixteenth birthday party, of countless all-nighters, of changing schools and learning things and growing up and falling down. The same room that carries the books that have been a part of my life since elementary school, that still holds the mark from that one time when I smashed a spider on the ceiling.

At first it felt like slipping on a glove – everything still fit. There, on the second bookshelf, are the boxes whose contents I know like the back of my hand. And under the desk, yes, those are my piles of sketchbooks since sixth or seventh grade.

And there, by the door, lies my big blue suitcase, waiting to be filled up again one mid-January shakes me awake from my homebound stupor.

I’m still feeling the loose threads, the little gaps in comfort in the seams of this glove. Here are all these piles of books and my giraffe measuring spoons and the movie I still need to return to Michaela but somehow something got lost in translation. Because moving location is like translating languages. Please translate, sir, “home” from California to Massachusetts, please translate your definition of privacy please translate your sleeping schedule translate your habits translate your interests now muddled and confused with the possibilities of a future that four years alone seems not enough to prepare for.

I breathe over the dust settled in on the shelf over my desk. Four months of quality dust collecting, this is. Four months suddenly doesn’t seem like much. Life is now counted in increments of home-time and new-home-time. Here’s Boston, here is the T here is the LEAH Project here is responsibility and finals and laundry and waking up to Leah’s alarm. Here also is sleeping in and tulips on my desk and my books, god, my books – here is my whiteboard and my ice skates and my bed that somehow feels much lower than I remember it being. Home.

Sooner than I think (but it will feel like forever), the lights are going to click off again, the suitcase is going to roll out the door, and a new four months of dust is going to collect on the shelves. We’re moving forward, always moving forward.

 

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