A Pocket of Memories
In lieu of watching the first presidential debate, my two friends and I, one of whom I live with, marked our heights on the door frame that separates our kitchen/dining room from our 'living area'—a lame euphemism for the room that separates our two bedrooms from the place where we keep and eat food. First, it was Anna Hubbard's turn, the guest and shortest among us. She stood against the frame, I set my Moleskine notebook on her head, and Francis Huntley marked her height with a pencil at the bottom edge of the notebook.
The next morning, after Huntley and Hubbard left for their respective obligations and the marks on the door frame were left in my custody, or I in theirs, I began to think about the inevitable severance of the three of us. I have plans to move back to Boston in the spring after this remote fall semester. Huntley, who graduated from Smith College last spring with a degree in Studio Art, will be left to fill my vacancy with another roommate, and Hubbard, who also graduated in the spring with a degree in Environmental Science from Colby-Sawyer College, well, she will figure it out.
The expiration date that looms over my time here has pushed me to appreciate this period with more reverence than I have any other period of my life. Sure, trips and vacations inspire a similar feeling, but the situation I am in now is the result of an unforeseen sequence of events. I am home because of a pandemic, but unable to actually stomach staying at home, so change forced my hand. I rented out a place in southern Vermont a quarter mile west from the Connecticut River with a friend using the money I made this summer, a decision I now consider one of the best I have ever made.
The marks we drew are in no way permanent. We deliberately used pencils, because we are, after all, renting and still holding out hope to one day welcome the security deposit back into our bank accounts—$450 will feel like a lot once I move out and my savings are woefully depleted.
After making the three lines to mark our heights, Hubbard measured them using her well-boasted-about field skills—Hubbard is 5'3, Huntley is 5'7, and I am 5'6.
We had known our heights. Hubbard's measurements only corroborated what we’d already known before we threatened our security deposit. Huntley was the only one who's vertical claim was refuted. They lost an inch, but we expected that; their proclaimed height, 5'8, was the point of contention that inspired our fact-checking.
"Well," I said, grinning. "At least we know your field skills work."
Just for fun, we also measured our heights while standing on our tiptoes.
Later that night, after the debate, Hubbard climbed the same door frame, and clinging to the crown molding with her toes and fingertips, she hung down like a sloth, dangling the brown hair that Huntley would cut one week later in the parking lot under a street light, while I assumed the role of idle spectator and wayward photographer—an amateur memory catcher, effectively
Humans and change are in a constant tug of war. The logic goes that if we are content or satisfied with what we have, we resist it, and if not, we welcome it. But, while that way of thinking may be consistent with the thought process preceding Hubbard's haircut, it is often more complicated. After all, I could stay longer. Remote learning is an option for next semester, our leases are month-to-month, and I have not made any binding decisions that would guarantee my departure. But, I have made a resolute decision to return to Boston in the spring.
Photographed by Xinyi Gao
I have lived everywhere in the area—the area being about a school district and a half in southwest New Hampshire that probably measures 30 miles in diameter. My mom and I wandered, sure, but I never felt deprived of roots. Each move did not conglomerate and later reveal itself as a constellation of past traumas. On the contrary, I relished in digging my feet into the ground and planting roots each time we found another place to stay. And each transplant provided me with a new place to grow and explore, like a philodendron that is repotted or a morning appetite for cereal that calls for a bigger bowl.
My return to Boston will be bittersweet. It has only been one month since Huntley and I signed our lease, and we have already established our routine, roamed empty streets barefoot, emptied glass bottles of water and soda so they could hold candles and flowers, and eaten good pasta with people who are valued members of our air-tight COVID-19 bubble. This weekend, we have planned a themed gathering of five—a soirée, you could say, or a stifled prom: the highschool event none of us particularly enjoyed.
On the other hand, Boston is brimming with professional possibilities and friends I left behind who I am thrilled to reconnect with. And, when December nears its end, I will hopefully have another cheap place lined up, this time in the greater Boston area, and change will force my hand again like it did in September. The place on Grove St. will no longer be ours, and Huntley and I will negotiate what is mine and what is theirs because we furnished the 500 square feet together. And then I will leave. We will keep in touch and see each other during breaks, but little compares to the relationship one has with the person they live with.
Life will commence and this period we are living through will become a pocket of memories we recall later. It was that sliver of time when our tracks intersected and we dipped our toes into adulthood for the first time while still acting like teenagers, when we bought checkbooks and Drain-O and a cast-iron pan, complained about prices and responsibility, and cried about politics.