How are the kids?

Oh hey, Norbucks. Hey, iced coffee, hey gross purple sofa, hey bewildered freshmen. Hey girl giving me funny looks from the opposite sofa because I am humming off-key to myself in a way that's even getting on my nerves. Hey.

Part of me is thinking that it's like I was never gone. This all feels so familiar, mostly because I spent a depressingly large amount of time here last year, scrabbling to finish up screenplays that had no right to be finished. The man at Norbucks knew me and I knew my way around and I knew what the lakefill looked like exactly because when words escaped me, I could avoid looking for them by staring out the window and pretending to be pretentiously pensive.

(I just tried to spell "pensive" like "Pensieve". What hath Harry Potter wrought?)

But a larger part of me knows perfectly well that I've been away for three and a half months. It's that part of me that keeps reminding me that, all things considered, it's been a pretty crappy summer. Everything that's happened--cancer, car crash, concussion, criminal assault (got the alliteration, at least)--is so overwhelming that I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Charlotte gave me a trophy that tells me that I beat "Summer level 10" but sometimes it feels like summer level 10 beat me.

So yeah, getting back to school is the-same-yet-different, but isn't that how it always is? We experience things over the summer, good or bad, but then when we get back among our peers in the fall or the winter or the spring or whenever, it's like someone hit the reset button a little. You're back a few months ago, when things were different, and you kind of have to wait for things to catch up to you. And it's weird. But interesting. But good, but bad, but relative.

This is not to say that I'm sad to be back at school, although of course, I was sad to leave home. Most college students (who don't hate their parents) have this problem, I guess. You like both places, you want to be both places, but of course going somewhere means leaving somewhere. Saying hello means saying goodbye. Life becomes more bittersweet, but also more exciting because saying goodbye makes the hello worth more. And when you have to say goodbye to someone, that person, their relationship to you, their personalities, their jokes, their insights, mean more to you because they have a deadline. You fit as much of them into your life as possible because of that goodbye that is on the horizon, because you don't want to say it.

So now I'm at Northwestern and I've said my goodbyes, for now. It's wonderful to be here among people I care about, in a place that I love. Soon I'll be saying goodbye again, though, saying hello to people at home. And that's okay. That's the ping-pong life of a college student. And as Mark Ruffalo wants us to know, the kids are alright.