To go back to my one-square-mile hometown for Thanksgiving is to buckle my younger self into the passenger seat of my mom’s red Kia and take her for a drive. At every stop sign in my old high school parking lot, there is a new wave of nauseating nostalgia.
My best friend picks me up for school playing the same Harry Styles song she always blares at 7:09 a.m. to wake me up for AP Chemistry. My senior class lies on the pavement to watch the stars until police officers kindly ask us to get off of school property. I find out that I have gotten into a college I can finally afford while I’m sitting alone on the curb by the main entrance; my reaction is one of instant tears.
Now that I am back, I will let my 17-year-old self do exactly what she wants. Alex and I get smoothies at the diner and then drive to the waterfront. Tessa and I walk my dog in the amber autumnal shadow of the cemetery across the street. Madison, Megan and I get bagels at our teeny tiny local shop (sorry THB, I’m from New York and these are the best).
Everywhere I go, I am also confronted by a surreal future that unfolds in the town that has watched me grow up. My 80-year-old neighbor is walking his dog three paces ahead of mine. In CVS, a grandmother asks us for help using the self-checkout to get a jug of apple juice for her grandchildren; Madison clicks the buttons and the woman calls her amore, which Madison’s own Italian grandmother will be thrilled by.
At Sunshine Bagels, I watch four elderly women indulging in Sunday morning gossip over hot coffee and sesame seeds. Some are losing hair, some are missing teeth — they are all manicured to perfection. It’s good to know we can do this forever if we want to: pouring our hearts out in this fishbowl of a shop where the whole town of Ardsley can hear us giggle. There is no expiration date on these sacred rituals.
Like many, going home makes me think about getting older. I have written about aging before; it is this taboo thing that absolutely fascinates me, maybe because the women in my family do it so well. It is inevitable to fear the future, and I have always looked to those already living in it to comfort me. Watching my grandfather lose himself to early-onset Alzheimer’s planted the thought that the terrifying part of aging can hit earlier than you expect, but the love my Zeide was surrounded by in his final months made me realize that the important people never really leave you (and it goes both ways).
Every Sunday, I visit my buddy at the Keswick nursing home, five minutes away from campus. She has limited mobility and cannot move around without her wheelchair. Due to a chronic illness, she has trouble speaking. The first couple times I visited her, I definitely felt the language barrier. Each week, the routine is the same. I soak and file her nails and paint them with clear polish. We talk about God and psychology and our families. Afterwards, she has me clean and organize her room. “People come in here, and they just mess everything up,” she explains.
I am happy that I can bring back some sense of ownership to her space; under her meticulous direction, I pin up her sprawling pothos plant and color-code her trinkets. Pink and green in one corner, blue and yellow in the other, of course. As I leave, she tells me to thank my mother, and each time it is the sweetest thing anyone has ever said.
Getting older is scary, but there will always be people to love you if you are living your own life with intentional love. Going home isn’t all pleasant reminiscence: there are certainly uncomfortable memories that my 17-year-old self begs me not to relive.
Sometimes, instead of going on a drive, she wants me to burrow under the covers in my childhood room and pass the time as quickly as possible until I can return to the safe haven that has become Baltimore. Even on those days, though, I am learning to pull myself out of bed and go to the bagel shop with my friends. I want to be like the women at that table beside us someday. I have to be purposeful about this time home now so that in 60 years, I will still have my Sunday morning rituals.
Hailey Finkelstein is a sophomore from Ardsley, N.Y. majoring in Medicine, Science and the Humanities. Her column shares miscellaneous prose on current issues, the collective Hopkins experience and growing up with a pen in hand.
