When a Thunderstorm Comes to Pass

I've spent the last few months stewing over the question of how to write a blog post about my life, given what it looks like at the moment. Here goes nothing. My dad died on August 10. I got to campus 12 days after he died. A little under a month into the semester, I went home for a leave of absence.

I spent my days back in Chicago in the pottery studio, producing pot after pot, laboring through my indecision about glazing in the back room — which I secretly savored, as an excuse to spend more time in the studio — and throwing another half-pound of clay on the wheel minutes after I'd put the finishing touches on the previous piece. I spent my days writing downtown and meandering through the Art Institute of Chicago, seeking inspiration for my work, finding commonality and voice in the pieces I brushed past, and staring at Monets for 10-20 minutes at a time. I flew alone to the Grand Canyon and hiked inside it, feeling how the air pressure shifted after descending below the 500-foot mark into the dry orange abyss. When I shut my notebook after writing, the clap of its covers resonated against the walls of the canyon at its narrowest points, sending echoes through the solitary ridges along which I meandered. I scaled the ascents back to the rim and felt the sweat on my forehead cool.

The day after I left campus in September, I fled east through the Appalachian mountains to visit my brother and his girlfriend in D.C.. The leaves were still orange. I sped through leaf piles in my dad's old car and felt the cold on my skin. 

I also made friends at the studio. We would go to the small courtyard out back, talk about our lives, go back inside and put our hands in clay. I kept my mom company, and she kept me company in turn. We muddled through planning the memorial. My mom did most of it. According to her, it's a lot like planning a wedding, except without the other person to help, even though it's about the other person. One of many such paradoxes in death bureaucracy. I muddled through the whole ceremony, gave my eulogy, and endured the listless condolences and hugs. They were sweet at first, but sometimes edged into the realm of patronizing.

The rest of my time featured November studio nights until two a.m., evenings on the phone with Kenyon friends, cooking for my mom to save her from the PB&J she would otherwise settle for, and sometimes meeting up with old high school friends. Life is often solitary when you're on leave, and that's one of the reasons I left. But one great thing about practicing the kind of independence that allowed me to find solitude and do things alone is that it also offered me the courage to seek out relationships and closeness with others around me. When you're not living on a tiny campus, right next to hundreds of similarly-aged students, it's much harder to develop friendships by happenstance. I learned how to make it happen more deliberately. Independence, in this case, didn't have to always mean isolation.

Now, back on campus with my Kenyon life revitalized, I still spend much of my time in the studio. I'm the studio assistant at the pottery studio in the Craft Center, and I get paid to help maintain things behind the scenes. Making glaze, recycling and producing the clay, washing the towels and aprons, unloading the kiln, and teaching students when they need help here and there. I had upwards of 65 pieces to glaze this semester, probably only 30 of which I've gotten through as of right now. The clay is how I've rebuilt roots here. What better way to ground yourself in an anxiety-inducing space than by clutching familiar comforts?

When the time came for me to come back to Kenyon, I was riddled with dread. It's a strong word, and I use it intentionally. Before my leave, things on campus were the worst they'd ever been for me. Stressors that might already have overwhelmed me under ordinary circumstances were paralleled by constant reminders of my father's absence. (You see them everywhere once you lose a person). I wish I could say that I was prepared for the worst, but my fear was this: that even though I could imagine the worst, I would never be fully prepared for it, and the future would forever lay ahead of me like some kind of inevitable, undefinable doom.

I tread cautiously for the first two or three weeks back on campus. Every time I went to bed, I flinched at the thought of the next morning. But like a storm that hesitated to strike, I woke up to quiet mornings and mostly harmless classes and friendships. Hardship followed me in the way it follows everybody in a mundane, stressful kind of way, and I dealt with my grief in painful ways, but my presence on campus proved to help more than harm me.

In that week leading up to my return, I kept forgetting all the things I had in this place. I forgot then, and I still sometimes forget. The friends that hold me up, an administration that was nothing if not understanding of my situation last semester, and a campus gorgeous enough that a walk along its central path with my headphones on is enough to improve my mood. I've been feeling very grateful for Middle Path recently. Always somewhere in the backdrop of my Kenyon experience, lazing around, inviting me back to bask in the shade of its trees.

It's about 11:15 p.m. now, as I write this section. The storm came to bear at about eight p.m., and it has more or less persisted. I was at my friend's performance of his debut album at the Horn Gallery when it started. I sat next to the huge windows that overlooked Acland Street and watched the lightning peek out from behind the clouds every 30 seconds or so while I listened to the rain batter the window. The sun set behind curtains of rain. The clouds were dissolving before our very eyes, but they never fully dissolved and, when it seemed like all the water in the world had fallen, they kept on throwing their bodies downward. My friend, the performer, was completely undeterred, and we were all the better for it as we listened. Something about the music harmonized with the ambience of the storm outside. Not that they were similar in feeling—they were polar opposites, like complementary colors. Inside, it was warm, his music vivid, immersive and expressive, the lights a dim orange, and the chairs hypnotically comfortable. Outside, the storm roiled onward. Just beyond the windows, it was chilly and it had looked like night since long before the sun had set.

A clap of thunder shook the building. I could picture it being lifted off its supports by the predicted tornado and being thrown into chaotic spin before landing in some wooded, vernal place. The Horn would have landed, I imagined, somewhere green and humid, a tangle of vines obscuring the window and the forest outside. We'd rest there, in the eye of the tornado, nestled in the shade of the trees, feeling one another's presence, appreciating the music and the distant rain and the thunder, and each other. Swaying to it and letting wherever we were swallow us whole.

I miss my dad, and I forever will, and the grief settles in my gut like a rock, and it won't disappear, and that's okay. I don't regret taking last semester off for it. If you're ever in crisis, it's okay to take breaks and breathe and listen to music. I understand it's a painfully genuine thing to say here, but writing without talking about the reality of my own situation just felt disingenuous. This semester, truth be told, has been one of the best I've had at Kenyon, ironically. It's sad that it's my last. I've had a tumultuous relationship with Kenyon, and a lot of it unfortunately lies beyond my ability to verbalize it, but I know that regardless of the reasons, I am going to miss it when I graduate in three weeks. I'm grateful to the institution for, even when I'm going through something challenging, giving me things to miss.

Here's to waking up to unexpectedly quiet mornings and, when storms strike, knowing how to find warmth for ourselves. 

Author's note: This first draft of this piece was produced in late March. I have since finished glazing everything, and my life at Kenyon has only become more secure and Kenyon has continued to provide me with things that I will miss. As events flash in front of me that are all irrevocably tagged in my mind as "The last time I will ever [blank]," I'm finding that the list of things I will miss when I graduate is vaster than I could have thought. It doesn't remove the negatives I talk about here or have talked about in the past. The two coexist. I try not to let my memories of a place slip into optimistic fantasy. But it's nonetheless a lovely discovery that there are so many things about my life here that I, without even thinking about it, have treasured.