Dust on the Bookshelf

sick day musings

When I first came to Harvard I was unprepared for the culture shock. I was unprepared for how nothing there would remind me of home. A year later, I was equally unprepared for how Dunster House would begin to feel like home. How could I expect a place so large and grand, with hundreds of people, many of whom I would never meet, to become my home? But it did. And like all homes I had to leave it for my own sake.

Maybe some of you saw, on the coldest cold days, a girl about my height running down DeWolfe street, her bag swinging violently back and forth threatening to pull her crashing to the icy sidewalk. That girl was me.

I told myself that I was running because it meant less time in the cold, in what Faulkner called the “iron New England Dark.” I told myself the exertion would warm me up and I would feel my toes again. But really I was just a girl running home from school.

Home to a warm meal prepared by friendly faces and endless supplies of hot chocolate. Home to my friends on the phone and my room. Instead of overalls I wore wool socks and instead of Dear America books I carried Civil War histories. But the pursuit of hearth was the same, and I find myself still running today.

9 Comments so far
Leave a comment