Homecoming
Edited by Marina Crouse
I’m missing my college’s homecoming this year. As many of my former classmates gather in central Pennsylvania to celebrate our belated five-year reunion, I’ll be spending this weekend on the island. I won’t pretend that I’m above sipping watery beer, revisiting haunts for which I’m too old (I’m sure current students would agree), and reminiscing about escapades with friends I don’t see often enough. Perhaps you’ve gleaned this from a few of my earlier posts, but I’m nostalgic to a fault. Visiting the alma mater would’ve been nothing short of a hoot and my absence from this year’s festivities has more to do with logistics than maturity. Regardless, a mellow weekend here is certainly not punishment. My anticipated FOMO has dwindled a bit and been replaced by lots of musings about home.
The changing of the seasons - which I can only detect from crisp mornings and a gradual quiet settling over the area - first evokes memories from my hometown in upstate New York. I’d meander into the house after raking leaves, hearing my mom’s pick, Rondò Veneziano (Italian orchestra + 80’s synthesizers + robot costumes), blasting from the CD player. Then “Sinfonia Per un Addio” morphed into Ron Pope and Kid Cudi thanks to my roommate at boarding school, a place I unironically call home. September meant traveling through canopies of orange and red that rivaled the Gilmore Girls set, detangling and sharing iPod headphones while playing The Best of 2009 on the JV soccer bus.
Shin guards were later exchanged for spirit jerseys, and home took on the form of The Commons, my college’s cafe that hosted many a lunch date and Econ 101 cram session. Bastille quickly ascended the Top 25 Most Played on iTunes and became my soundtrack to lounging in Adirondack chairs on the quad (we called it a lake due to frequent flooding), Sundays spent in the library, and strolls through the historic battlefields adjacent to campus. In the dance studio, another manifestation of home, my friends tested out their new bluetooth speakers during Thursday night rehearsals. Whenever security forgot to unlock the dance space - leaving a wooden two-by-four positioned between the doors - we could always find the equivalent of a key under the mat: sliding a binder through the gap to dislodge the offending barrier.
The concept of home became muddled during my first few years in the real world. Teaching in boarding schools - different schools than the one I attended - meant living where I worked, so it unsurprisingly resembled more of an impersonal dwelling when I conducted dorm duty or fire drills at 2am. And yet there were brief moments of hominess via Jackbox games and pub trivia with colleagues. Folk, rock, and soul from the likes of Leon Bridges, Kaleo, and Brandi Carlile became familiar rhythms that transformed industrial dormitory walls into cozier spaces. My first job presented a hard-hitting contradiction to my high school experience, as I was tasked with making the atmosphere feel like home to students ,yet I could scarcely do the same for myself.
Though the scenery and soundtracks have differed, there has always been a unifying factor among these homes: food. Few things compare to peeling Cortlands for Mom’s apple crisp, filling up on the crumb topping before the dessert even goes in the oven. Feasting on ramen and hair-dryer s’mores (no microwaves in the dorms) is as good for the soul as it is catastrophic to the digestive system. Pad Thai from my college town’s crown jewel, Thai Classic IV (the whereabouts of the other three stump me to this day) may be mediocre by Jet Tila’s standards, but magical when scarfed at 2am. Whipping up paninis on a tablet-sized George Foreman grill - because the dorm parent apartment has no kitchen - may seem irredeemably fucking sad until shared with a pretty neat girl met on Bumble.
It was through pork cheek sauerkraut that I not only developed a more adventurous palate, I connected with my Swedish heritage at fourteen. Trying an iteration of that same dish in my great-grandparents’ hometown of Jönkoping four years later made me feel more bound to my roots than actually visiting their gravesites or former church. Learning to make Danish meatballs during my semester abroad in Copenhagen helped break the ice with my host family and develop a sense of home across the Atlantic. As I’ve reflected on and attempted to broaden my western-centric perspective, food was and continues to be a valuable ally. There is something remarkable about encountering ingredients and flavor profiles completely out of one’s comfort zone, yet finding home in their chemistry and heartfelt preparation.
Tee and I have quite literally followed our guts in this new home, using gastronomy as a tool for navigating the Vineyard. During one of our date nights in July, we found more than just a fantastic meal up island. Upon arriving at the restaurant we discovered that the hostess was also our coworker, sharing an entertaining exchange of “wait, don’t I know you?” As we were seated we ran into the wine shop owner who recommended our bottle for the evening (the restaurant is in a dry town on the island, so it was BYOB). Perusing the menu, we found a chicken liver pate courtesy of a recent MotV feature, which we ordered promptly with no disappointment. It was one of the first moments in which we felt plugged into the community, and food was the signifier of that. Without fail, food is how I’ve made my way home.
