"Such a Long Long Time to be Gone and a Short Time to be There"

This past week we kicked off the holiday season with Thanksgiving, which despite its most questionable history, has always been for me less about its origins and more an excuse to bring the family together to eat, drink and be merry.

The holiday season itself, unfortunately, can be a divisive topic. The abundance of lights, songs, food and family is mired in questions and concerns. To what extent are holidays exclusively religious? Are gifts about giving or obligation? Is it cynicism or reality to view the whole shebang as a capitalist explosion intended to manipulate the masses into mass-consumption? Or should our celebrations be undertaken with a full heart and genuine feeling? If we’re open to it — is love really all around us? I choose to subscribe to this latter interpretation. I think there is something truly nice about having a time of year dedicated to showing affection for loved ones in an atmosphere of warmth, music and cheer. Thanksgiving in particular has always been for me a time to appreciate family, away from the hubbub of the following weeks.

Family, however, is a fluid concept. While I am fortunate enough that my family is able and willing to come together to eat, eat, eat and argue over who takes longer to play in Scrabble, this is not necessarily the case for everyone. Some families are separated either physically or emotionally. And if relation is just a technicality, an accident of fate, and we do not necessarily share genes in common with the people we love and with whom we celebrate, then it might be necessary to reevaluate the definition of family.

Despite my joy at being reunited with my blood-relatives over break, I couldn’t help feeling a weight of sadness at being separated from my Middlebury family. While my friends here have only recently entered my life, for the high density of time spent in their company, I might have known them forever. We dine, party, work, fall apart, build ourselves back up — in short, discover who we are — together, and provide each other with support from the beginning onward.

The semester has flown by and before we know it the spring will be upon — and then behind — us. As a senior, I am not only impressed by the gravity of the future that awaits me, but also at the thought of what I might be losing. Moving forward is essential. I will not be leaving my Middlebury family behind as they too will be flung into the world alongside me, but to what corner of what continent time will only tell. I fear, and I’m sure others share in this fear, that the end of my college career will see the permanent end of my college family.

It would be easy to say this fear is misplaced. That if I care for my friends as much as I say that I will find a way to keep in touch, that we are coming of age in a time where maintaining contact across oceans is at its most convenient, so there should be no problem in preserving these important self-defining relationships.

But there is something to be said for proximity. While our college friendships are more largely defined by common interests, intellectual affinity and personality type — different from childhood friendships, which seemed to come about incidentally and most of which have fizzled out with time — it occurred to me the other day that my entire college experience was shaped by my first-year dorm placement. Although we are members of a relatively small community I am constantly surprised as to how many students, even in my graduating class, with whom I have never seen, met or spoken to. It’s all about location. And as we dive in to our futures, that in length and breadth will dwarf these four short years, I find it naïve to think that maintaining our college relationships will be simple.

Perhaps the college family, like the best kind of memory, will always persevere as it has taken part in defining our lives. But through time it may grow weaker and be revisited less often. Only time will tell and truthfully, dwelling on the unfortunate potential dissolution of great friendships is not constructive. I’ve probably gone too far into realities that need not be confronted at this time. So instead, in the spirit of the holidays, let this, my final column of the semester, not be a downer but a necessary reminder to step away from our finals-week cramming sessions and put aside the end-of-semester angst to enjoy each other. Our time together is limited, so why not let the love flow?