It feels weird to go back to the place where I grew up. Not home, one could hardly call what I did there growing up. Growing up implies change, a climax and a denouement. Although pleasant, my childhood before Groton was mere existence. It was blissful and ethereal but just existence, with very little substance except the provision of a strong foundation for a personality to develop on. This is where I grew up, where I am now.
The Circle remains unchanged, a fact that shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. Why would the circle change? It’s just a well kept ring of grass with apple trees and a soccer field set up in the fall. Perhaps I have projected a bit of myself onto the image of what I expected the school to be like upon my return. I have changed. I am a mix of things now: more worn down, tired, experienced, slightly wiser and I’m unsure if this is what happiness feels like, but I think I’m slightly happier too. I feel free. And even if the cliche has warned me of all the responsibility that comes with freedom, I am slowly learning for myself what that really means.
Walking along the familiar Chapel-Schoolhouse-DiningHall-Library path brings me back to my days here. I wonder if perhaps I just imagined it all. It could have all been in my head: the stress, the intensity of friendship, the power of all my emotions. However, as I walk around, I realize I am not entirely alone on my reminiscent journey. The present tense of the school walks with me, a representative of the not so distant past. The once-juniors and once-sophomores greet me with familiar looks I can identify as neither disdain nor respect. I am an anomaly, a strange figure to be seen. Groton has moved on, but I will never really be able to move with it. For me, Groton will always be viewed through a pinhole that can only see the years 2006-2011.
Despite my churning nostalgia, I feel a sense that I am still welcome here. Teachers and students alike greet me like a friend who is just taking the semester off, or a teacher on sabbatical. When speaking with teachers, I sense a shift in our dynamic. They are aware of my change, perhaps more so than I am; they recognize that society views me as an adult now, and they treat me accordingly. Our conversations mimic those between a close aunt and an intrepid niece who has been off exploring for a while but always knows that she can turn up and still be at home.
With students, things are slightly different. Many are happy to see me, glad that I have travelled so far to visit, and others seem slightly shaken from the norm as if my presence is upsetting a delicate balance they've worked hard to obtain. I don't mind. I understand their perspective, even if it makes my absence feel more real. I know I cannot live in this dream-like Groton world forever.
A visit here must be short and brief for it to mean anything. My reconnection to my friends is a reminder to them that I am still a presence in their lives. I do not want to go to college and lose meaningful friendships to replace them with new ones. Having more friendships doesn't bother me, but I refuse to make new friends at the cost of my old ones. I see no reason to choose between one and the other.
Being here has made me realize that I am at a wonderful stage in my life. Everything is accessible to me if I want it to be. My personal relationships with my old teachers and friends are evolving. I am becoming a different person without losing the essence of my character. I am still clumsy, eccentric and blunt but I have taken these characteristics and tried to grow up with them. College has become less of a reinvention of Eriche Sarvay and more of an evolution.
With this evolution there is of course a struggle. It is difficult to feel like you are moving forward when some of the people you care about appear to be stagnant and content with this stagnancy. I have always believed that a personality is an art that should be molded and changed and experimented with until a person is completely happy with who they have become.
Looking through my alumna tarnished lens, I see some who appear to be stuck, unable to be free from themselves. Within some, there is still superficiality, immaturity and an obsession with status within a Groton hierarchy. But how could I expect it to change? Again, I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. I wonder if the Groton circle curses us; I wonder if by being here we are forced to notice circularity and cycles more than the average person. For a Grotonian, everything returns to the same starting point, patterns repeat themselves and we feel ourselves reliving the same moments over and over again.
If this is indeed a curse, it exists with duality. Interspersed with the feelings of repetition and occasional regret are the feelings of happiness, nostalgia, and blessedness. And I use the term in the least religious sense. Grotonians are lucky to be who we are, and although divinity is very much a construct of human society, it is impossible not to feel like being at Groton was some kind of luck derived from an inhuman source. Blessedness is the only term in my limited vocabulary that I feel truly captures this emotion, this luckiness to a degree of significance.
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