Comptine d'Un Autre Été
It had snowed all night, leaving a fresh blanket of white evenly covering every surface from the front walkway, to the windows of the car, to the bench chained to a telephone pole across the street. Because of the weather, the night was spent in domestic isolation, heralding back to the late-winter evenings of middle school and the torturous sounds of "All Things Considered" and "Marketplace" gently wafting from the darkened living room. The night was also spent in a parentless state, but through no fault of the weather. Dirty dishes from a dinner of chicken and over-cooked broccoli lay piled in the kitchen sink next to a bowl scraped clean of brownie batter, the rest of which was slowly solidifying in a pan in the oven. She lay on the couch, hair newly shorn, and wondered along with the boy in the movie at exactly which point in time her parents' house would stop being "home" and be replaced by another residence. It was a depressing thought.
It was late in the night when she finally remembered the piles of clothes on her bedroom floor that were still waiting to be tightly packed into a purple duffel bag. With a feeling of dread she realized she would have to comb over the entire house looking for her belongings that must make it back to school with her the next day. An hour of creative packing had passed before she decided to leave the last remaining bits of packing for the early morning. An unwelcome early morning that she hadn't seen but once or twice during the entire month of being home.
The horrible earliness of the morning found a pristine coat of snow still covering the landscape that could be seen through the north window in the bathroom. She first saw the winter scene through this particular window because of an old habit left over from grade school when a glimpse of white under the blinds possibly meant a cancellation of her daily academic obligations; for some reason she never allowed herself to look out her bedroom windows on winter mornings, and since the bathroom was usually the first place she went upon waking, it was usually from its window that the glad sight of bare trees covered in white was first beheld. However, on this particular day her academic obligations had to be met, and the snow meant only hazardous driving conditions. Groggily she stumbled into the shower, relishing in the privacy and cleanliness of it all before hurriedly stepping out, remembering that she was expecting a phone call. In the next hour she had time to dress, change her sheets and make her bed, throw the last items she found around the house in a backpack and shove numerous pairs of shoes into an already over-full laundry bag, and eat a last home-made breakfast of eggs and potatoes. At 10:04 there was a knock on the door, and she began loading all her bags into a green car parked in the driveway. The purple duffel bag, the powder blue laundry bag, the navy backpack, the white and green pillowcase (filled with a pillow and random loose items), the long cylindrical cardboard tube containing a sexy picture of Johnny Depp, the white Wal-Mart bag of left over items, and the new heavy winter coat all went in the car. Later, after hugging her parents good-bye, she remembered her fish. He sat uncomfortably on the bottom of his bowl, nestled in her lap, for the entire trip north past all the now-familiar landmarks.
After her roommate had transferred to her hometown college at the end of the last semester, her room looked depressingly empty and desolate. Throwing her bags on her side of the room, the only half that looked remotely welcoming, she proceeded to spend the next hour or two helping one of her few friends (all left-overs from high school) unpack. There was a four or five hour intermission of reuniting with the internet and unpacking one bag, during which time she left her door propped open in the hopes of socializing with her housemates, whose names she did not even know, despite having shared a hallway and a bathroom with them for an entire semester. But only her SA came by to say hello, and later to introduce Amber, who had transferred in for the semester and lived three or four rooms down the hall. After that it was back to the dorm across the street to watch the horribly unconvincing and quite annoying film Wimbledon while sipping a cheap beer from large and purple plastic cups. A short walk back to her room froze her boogers and fingers as the temperature sunk toward zero degrees Fahrenheit. But her bed was warm and inviting, and she soon fell asleep thinking about the beautiful crescent moon she had seen setting, large and orange, on her way "home."
The sunlight and uncomfortable warmth from the heater woke her in the morning. She was used to going to bed before her roommate came in, but waking up completely alone was unusual. Taking her first shower back at school, she was greeted by the familiar smell of sweat, steam, morning, and shit that inhabited the bathrooms. Several hours of doing nothing later found her bundled up in her ridiculously poufy winter coat with an empty backpack, trudging to the bookstore off-campus where she figured it must be cheaper, in the hopes of spending no more than half an hour picking up her books, paying for them, and returning to her room. Alas, she was much dismayed when she arrived to a scene of chaos. As some motherly figure piled more and more books in her arms, she noticed that the line for check-out ran all the way from the counter to the wall, looped around several displays of University sweatshirts, ran to the joining wall where it looped around the staircase, passed the front door on its way to the back of a deep alcove and doubled back again, stopping in front of the entrance. With a whopping $423.51 worth of books in her arms, she stood in this line for close to 45 minutes, trying desperately to not drop her load as she felt the muscles in her arms begin to shake. When she finally slammed down all her books on the counter by the register, she could barely hold a pen to write the check, much less write in legible characters. On the way back to her dorm she stopped by her friend's room, went out to lunch with the people down the hall, and returned to her room with her friend to do a little rearranging.
She is now sitting in a drastically changed room, but one that is nonetheless still incredibly empty. It is a mess. After unplugging her computer in order to move it to the opposite side of the room, and replugging it in, she discovered that the final plug had three prongs and would only fit into the socket on the other side of the room, where it was originally plugged in. So the next hour was spent repeating the process. She is waiting to go home in order to borrow a screwdriver and kidnap an extension cord. Preferably with a female end that accommodates three prongs and a male end with only two. Mimicking last night, she finishes off a box of crackers for dinner, lamenting the fact that the dining halls do not open until tomorrow morning, the fact that she doesn't have a car to go to Wal-Mart or Hy-Vee with, the fact that no one wants to eat dinner with her, and the fact that the crackers are the only food she has in her dorm, and have been sitting in a drawer for two months. She wonders what her classes will be like tomorrow, the first classes of the new semester. She listens to depressing Parisian accordion music and plays repeated games of minesweeper, reminiscent of the way some people she knows chain-smoke their cigarettes in all kinds of weather. Tomorrow morning must be spent finding all her classes.
Tomorrow morning is the beginning of a new semester, a new routine, a new paragraph in this chapter of her life.
It was late in the night when she finally remembered the piles of clothes on her bedroom floor that were still waiting to be tightly packed into a purple duffel bag. With a feeling of dread she realized she would have to comb over the entire house looking for her belongings that must make it back to school with her the next day. An hour of creative packing had passed before she decided to leave the last remaining bits of packing for the early morning. An unwelcome early morning that she hadn't seen but once or twice during the entire month of being home.
The horrible earliness of the morning found a pristine coat of snow still covering the landscape that could be seen through the north window in the bathroom. She first saw the winter scene through this particular window because of an old habit left over from grade school when a glimpse of white under the blinds possibly meant a cancellation of her daily academic obligations; for some reason she never allowed herself to look out her bedroom windows on winter mornings, and since the bathroom was usually the first place she went upon waking, it was usually from its window that the glad sight of bare trees covered in white was first beheld. However, on this particular day her academic obligations had to be met, and the snow meant only hazardous driving conditions. Groggily she stumbled into the shower, relishing in the privacy and cleanliness of it all before hurriedly stepping out, remembering that she was expecting a phone call. In the next hour she had time to dress, change her sheets and make her bed, throw the last items she found around the house in a backpack and shove numerous pairs of shoes into an already over-full laundry bag, and eat a last home-made breakfast of eggs and potatoes. At 10:04 there was a knock on the door, and she began loading all her bags into a green car parked in the driveway. The purple duffel bag, the powder blue laundry bag, the navy backpack, the white and green pillowcase (filled with a pillow and random loose items), the long cylindrical cardboard tube containing a sexy picture of Johnny Depp, the white Wal-Mart bag of left over items, and the new heavy winter coat all went in the car. Later, after hugging her parents good-bye, she remembered her fish. He sat uncomfortably on the bottom of his bowl, nestled in her lap, for the entire trip north past all the now-familiar landmarks.
After her roommate had transferred to her hometown college at the end of the last semester, her room looked depressingly empty and desolate. Throwing her bags on her side of the room, the only half that looked remotely welcoming, she proceeded to spend the next hour or two helping one of her few friends (all left-overs from high school) unpack. There was a four or five hour intermission of reuniting with the internet and unpacking one bag, during which time she left her door propped open in the hopes of socializing with her housemates, whose names she did not even know, despite having shared a hallway and a bathroom with them for an entire semester. But only her SA came by to say hello, and later to introduce Amber, who had transferred in for the semester and lived three or four rooms down the hall. After that it was back to the dorm across the street to watch the horribly unconvincing and quite annoying film Wimbledon while sipping a cheap beer from large and purple plastic cups. A short walk back to her room froze her boogers and fingers as the temperature sunk toward zero degrees Fahrenheit. But her bed was warm and inviting, and she soon fell asleep thinking about the beautiful crescent moon she had seen setting, large and orange, on her way "home."
The sunlight and uncomfortable warmth from the heater woke her in the morning. She was used to going to bed before her roommate came in, but waking up completely alone was unusual. Taking her first shower back at school, she was greeted by the familiar smell of sweat, steam, morning, and shit that inhabited the bathrooms. Several hours of doing nothing later found her bundled up in her ridiculously poufy winter coat with an empty backpack, trudging to the bookstore off-campus where she figured it must be cheaper, in the hopes of spending no more than half an hour picking up her books, paying for them, and returning to her room. Alas, she was much dismayed when she arrived to a scene of chaos. As some motherly figure piled more and more books in her arms, she noticed that the line for check-out ran all the way from the counter to the wall, looped around several displays of University sweatshirts, ran to the joining wall where it looped around the staircase, passed the front door on its way to the back of a deep alcove and doubled back again, stopping in front of the entrance. With a whopping $423.51 worth of books in her arms, she stood in this line for close to 45 minutes, trying desperately to not drop her load as she felt the muscles in her arms begin to shake. When she finally slammed down all her books on the counter by the register, she could barely hold a pen to write the check, much less write in legible characters. On the way back to her dorm she stopped by her friend's room, went out to lunch with the people down the hall, and returned to her room with her friend to do a little rearranging.
She is now sitting in a drastically changed room, but one that is nonetheless still incredibly empty. It is a mess. After unplugging her computer in order to move it to the opposite side of the room, and replugging it in, she discovered that the final plug had three prongs and would only fit into the socket on the other side of the room, where it was originally plugged in. So the next hour was spent repeating the process. She is waiting to go home in order to borrow a screwdriver and kidnap an extension cord. Preferably with a female end that accommodates three prongs and a male end with only two. Mimicking last night, she finishes off a box of crackers for dinner, lamenting the fact that the dining halls do not open until tomorrow morning, the fact that she doesn't have a car to go to Wal-Mart or Hy-Vee with, the fact that no one wants to eat dinner with her, and the fact that the crackers are the only food she has in her dorm, and have been sitting in a drawer for two months. She wonders what her classes will be like tomorrow, the first classes of the new semester. She listens to depressing Parisian accordion music and plays repeated games of minesweeper, reminiscent of the way some people she knows chain-smoke their cigarettes in all kinds of weather. Tomorrow morning must be spent finding all her classes.
Tomorrow morning is the beginning of a new semester, a new routine, a new paragraph in this chapter of her life.
posted by Emma at 7:13:00 PM
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