Home(sick) for the Holidays by Allison E. '27

Here’s part two of my “I wrote this but procrastinated on editing and now it’s going up months late” series! Today’s topic: winter break :D

On Wednesday, December 20th, I took my last final of the semester. I grabbed dinner with friends at the dining hall in Simmons⁠01 a dorm on campus that you might recognize from Wakanda Forever! , and then we walked over to Next⁠02 another dorm, where a bunch of my friends live! to hang out for a while. Around 10, I left to pack for my flight home, but instead ended up walking out into the big field in front of dorm row. I played some Christmas music out loud in the dark—at home around this time of year, my dad tunes into Christmas music every morning on the drive to school, but I haven’t heard much this year. I sung along where nobody could hear me (hopefully), and laid down in the grass. It was 30˚F, and there were a few stars visible through the Boston light pollution. I let myself pretend to be the main character for just a bit.

After about an hour, I trudged back into my dorm to pack (for real), only to discover that my one and only functional earbud had disappeared. I was not about to take a 12 hour flight with no earbuds, so I trudged back out into the field to begin strip searching the grass with my weak phone flashlight.

And that’s when I discovered that the field was COVERED IN GOOSE SH!T. Put your hands out, palms up. Pretend they’re a patch of grass of the same size. One of your hands has a piece of goose sh!t in it. Which means that I had been lying in a LOT OF GOOSE SH!T. And I still had an earbud to find, somewhere on the GROUND.

Well, sh!t. Pun intended.

Fortunately, after about fifteen minutes staring at goose sh!t, find it I did. I found my earbud, and cleaned my shoes, and washed my clothes, and Clorox-wiped the entire floor of my room. In fact, I did all my laundry, just so that I’d return to campus with a clean slate. I made my bed for the first time in months (sorry, roommates 🫣), packed my suitcase as quietly as I could, and made myself a second dinner(?) at 4 am. I felt very adultish and accomplished⁠03 and also very tired, because I did not sleep .

At 8 am, I caught my flight without issues, and twelve hours later I was home!

A view of Koko Head (which one of my aunties called “Cuckoo head” and I believed it for 10 years). It’s an old tuff cone!

A bit of Waikiki (the most touristy part of O‘ahu) at sunset!

This rainbow actually goes *below* the horizon line!

we had a bit of loadshedding and our neighborhood went dark, but downtown (whose light you see) was still very bright!

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78˚F, aggressively green from the winter rain, and humid as all heck. But somehow, it felt like I never left.

It’s been about a week and a half now, and I’ve fallen right back into old routines. I take my shoes off in the house⁠04 although to be fair, i did gash open my heel on a floor tile—so i guess maybe four months of imprisoned feet does mean something LOL (no goose excretion to worry about), listen to Christmas music around the house, and look up at a much clearer sky during night time walks with my parents. I sleep from 10:30 pm⁠05 compared to… 3 am during the semester to 8:00 am—although I only actually roll out of bed when the blazing sun heats my room to the mid-eighties—and most importantly, I eat my parents food :D

Everything feels the same as it was four months ago. Heck, even I feel the same as four months ago, almost like I’ve regressed to a past self. It’s not a big difference, but I’m slightly less bubbly, slightly more quiet⁠06 not with my parents tho. with my parents once i start talking i will not shut up. thank you parents for listening to me jabber on and on and on 🫶 . I forget to drink water, and to eat at semi-appropriate times. I’ve completely lost my ability to make small talk, which is something that I thought I’d gotten better at, and I’ve been struggling to have deeper conversations with the people I care about at home.

I think back to just a couple weeks ago, with the freezing temperatures and the late nights with friends and the kinda-almost-self-sufficiency, and it feels like I imagined it all. Like four months of massive life changes have all melted straight into the fuzzy distance of half-imagined memory, or like I’ve just come back from two-week summer camp. As much as I’ve tried to psychoanalyze myself, I don’t have any interesting theories about why that is. Maybe it’s the environmental contrast. Maybe it’s force of habit. Maybe it’s just the comfort of home. Who knows.

But let’s fast forward a couple weeks. It’s January 7th. I’m flying back to Boston soon, and now that I have two days left at home, I’m starting to really realize it. And I feel like that comfort—that numbness, perhaps—came at the cost of not relishing the time that I had. Everything felt so normal that I didn’t savor the moments alone in a room all to myself, or the carpet beneath my bare feet, or the drives with my brother to school, or the nighttime walks with my parents. I could’ve finished their Christmas presents before I got home, and then spent less time holed up in my room working on them. I could’ve taken my earbuds out during my runs, or soaked in the energy of my high school for longer, or asked friends more than “how’s senior year going?” And yeah, sure, I guess looking back we always feel like we could’ve done more, but that doesn’t mean the regret isn’t there. 

There’s something weird about missing people while you’re with them, or missing a place that you’re still in. I didn’t feel homesick for all of the fall semester, but now that I’m here, I feel it acutely. I miss lying on the couch watching TV with my mom, while lying on the couch with her. I miss my dad coming outside to congratulate me on my (pathetically short) runs, while standing outside with him. I miss eating poke from Foodland, and sitting on the benches at my high school, and debating leadership strategies with my brother, while doing all these things. 

May feels so much further from January than December felt from August, even if it’s just a week or two longer. It’s probably partly because there’s so much less “great unknown” to distract me than at the start of the year. The novelty and its several months of accompanying adrenaline has worn off, and I’ve been reminded of how much I love home. But at least I’m headed back to the comfort of friends and the excitement of many shenanigans to come. More importantly, because of a wonderful thing called IAP⁠07 Independent Activities Period, in which MIT students spend the entire month of January doing cool things, taking cool classes, and/or traveling to cool places , I don’t have classes til February. Here’s to 2024!