How to Return Home.

Your bare feet sliding on the old wooden floorboards,

Home just as you left it but still you’re shaken,

Like walking into a museum somehow out of time.

It’s all the same except the girl in the hallway,

Where she’s been and who she will ripen into,

Your childhood’s on the other side of a sprawling divide… too wide

- How to Return Home, Tales from the Bad Years

You’d all laugh if you knew where I was at this hour of night so I won’t humor you with the details. Instead, I’ll leave this my own little inside joke that I can laugh at whenever I look back on these entries.

Yesterday, I walked into the office of my drama department at my high school. There was Ms. Furlan, the conductor/music teacher who is still struggling to call me the right name, poking furiously at a new texting phone. With every button whack came a new explicative. I laughed, both silently to myself and loud enough to draw Ms. Furlan’s attention. She laughed right back and started running through her list of possible names for me as she gave me a warm hug. Mrs. Potter, my director, walked in only moments later and I poked fun at her for still not being able to text.

This scene has played itself out hundreds of times since I started working in the theater department. It was so routine and wonderful. I easily entered conversation with Mrs. Potter about school, theater, shows and the drama festival this weekend. It was effortless and comforting. I felt like I was putting on my favorite old sweatshirt. It’s warm and wonderful and clings just right. I am always so happy wearing it until I reach the arms up and realize that I outgrew the damn thing. It’s still my comfort item but there is no way to make the fabric grow and stretch the new me.

I guess you never expect the change. You know that you are going to grow and mature and become something new but you never expect that the things you loved so much at one specific point in your life could change just as radically as you yourself have.

I left my five little girls this summer. Five freshmen girls I met when I was a junior. Five little women that I will always refer to as freshmen. Five little girls who I will always remember as they once were: gawky, with braces, with eyes as big as stars and dreams as big as their hearts. And when I left, I assumed they’d change…get boyfriends, new haircuts, decide that they like math. But I never really thought they’d grow up in the time I’d be without them.

I came home and had coffee with five beautiful women who have changed their minds, dreams and goals and found out that love is what your heart feels. Women who are taking the weight of the world on their shoulders and excelling under the pressure. Women who believe in themselves. Women who are so mature that I wonder what one more year of high school and college itself will bring for them. Women who I consider to be some of the most beautiful human beings I have ever met in my life.

I look at them and how far they come with a certain reverence. I haven’t been able to objectively look at myself like I have them. But I hope that my growth and change as a person from the time I got to CCM until now, six months later, reflects itself like it does in these women.

Love, AA, AP, CG, HC, KE