MOMENTS LIKE THESE

The second his feet hit the carpet, he dropped his duffle and pulled me in. His hands mussed my hair as I pressed my forehead against his chest. He smelled like home and rest, and I forgot that I had been worried in the first place.

Sitting at the top of the Rockefeller Library on campus is the only place I can keep my eyes open for the daily transition from day to evening: streetlights flick on and the sun sets on the horizon earlier than the day before. I sit facing west, a perch I have maintained since I was a freshman. The amount of work sitting on the desk beside me isn’t deterrent enough to remove me from my thoughts and mindless watching of the peaceful world below.

The first time I found this spot, I was eighteen and in a state of duress. Somehow, all those years ago, I found solace here. I felt tucked far enough away from Brown that I was able to breathe and think clearly, and the vantage point was high enough that I could watch the world around me move on without me. It was a beautiful thing. Nothing happening to me on College Hill in this instant mattered out there, and it reminded me about the big picture. To this day, a need for this reminder is why I return to this little carrel. 

My present life circumstances had led me here this time around. The sun was setting behind fog-like clouds and a binder of Italian vocabulary words sat beside me, but nothing could pull my attention away from the world below me. Homesickness took hold of my diaphragm whenever I meditated on it for too long, and the accompanying struggle to breathe properly only exacerbated the issue. The need to center myself surpassed my need to study. I began to make up stories about the people moving about on the streets. 

Nothing noteworthy happened at first. People were on their bikes and others were jaywalking, but it was all average at best. The lights on the front of Capriccio clicked on, and I focused my attention on the restaurant across the river. I watched people holding carry-away containers exit, and I began to wonder if this spot was all I had remembered it to be. Then, I saw her.

A young woman, perhaps a few years older than myself, walked up and stood under the awning. Moments later, she turned and began to beam. A man similar in age moved towards her quickly and swept her up in her arms. My homesickness twisted into longing. I had left a significant other behind when I returned to campus this semester. The return to campus alone was enough to make me ache with homesickness, but leaving behind a new love was a sensation I hadn’t been prepared for. 

We hadn’t discussed what was next in any regard when it came time for me to return to the East Coast. The assumption of what would become of us when life returned to a semblance of normalcy had changed repeatedly throughout the duration of our time together thus far. The last time I saw him before moving east was at dusk on an uncharacteristically chilly August evening as I boarded an Amtrak home across Michigan and watched his car pull away from the train station. I had sobbed for a long while despite trying to will the tears away with every fiber of my being; the melancholy I internalized over the next two hours remained in me for the weeks to come. 

He doesn’t know this, but I had resolved to end things, in anticipation of him ending things, when we called the night before classes began. I wanted to leave, to not be left, if that was meant to be how our story went. I didn’t want things to end, but I was scared. It’s a fear I won’t forget in the near future because of how deeply in love I had fallen, and because I still face the fact of how much deeper I can fall in love as more time passes. He blindsided me that September evening with the direct opposite of parting ways; we shared a glimpse of the futures we had each conjectured individually and worked out how our situation would sustain long distance. We knew it wouldn’t be easy, especially with no time in person to build the foundation for this endeavor. I had lost my nerve and sat quietly in shock at how differently the night had gone from what I had woken up expecting that morning. Despite the roller coaster, I fell asleep relieved that night, but every day since has been filled with moments of despondency and longing when confronted with the happiness of those in love around me.

*****

My last midterm let out exactly 31 hours before his plane landed. This moment marked the pivot in my productivity; the previous three days had been spent turning out three midterms, and now it was time to rehabilitate my living spaces and make sure there were no somatic symptoms of the amount of mental gymnastics that school, distance, and other social problems were putting me through. These stressors, after all, were soon to be replaced with the singular stress of seeing him for the first time in nine weeks. 

I spent the entire day on autopilot and in my own head. Long distance hadn’t been treating us well, not on my end, at least. As communication waned, insecurities heightened. I treated every call like the last, because, for me, so many times in the past, it had been. I worried that he wouldn’t like the more independent version of myself that I became while on campus. After having witnessed the worst moments of my struggles with the situation, my friends were adverse to him before he even arrived, forcing me to fear a clash of the people who mattered most to me. Once my laundry was folded and crammed into drawers out of sight, it was time to leave.

My best friend and I rode in silence as she drove me to TF Green to retrieve him. My anxiety filled the cab of the car until her voice joined in the melody of car horns and road noise.

“Calm down,” she said plainly, in a way anyone else would interpret to be cold. And then, “You’re supposed to be excited. I’m more excited for this than you are.”

Inside the airport, it was silent. There were mini crowds of people waiting for luggage to one side, and a row of seated individuals waiting for their own arrivals to the other. I scanned everywhere, but didn’t see him yet. I sat down directly opposite the escalators and waited for the screen to say that the Southwest flight from Chicago had landed. The LED sign said it was on time, and my heart sank. My thoughts nearly escaped me before I realized panic was setting in. My leg started to bounce, and I was shifting in my seat every moment or two. I wanted more time to prepare myself mentally. I wouldn’t have been mad had any mild inconveniences fallen upon the plane for me to obsess over rather than my own concerns. 

My attention was eventually pulled back to the world around me when people started descending the escalator. My nervousness grew. I fumbled with my glasses and slid them over my nose as I rose from the hard plastic seat. I could see through the foggy glass better than I could without glasses at all, and the faces coming towards me were now clearly not his. I jerked my head side to side whenever a white man with dark hair taller than myself appeared in my periphery. In New England, this is not the minority of men. The crowd thinned and I sank backwards into my seat and removed my glasses once again. The LED screen still said “on time,” not “landed.” 

What seemed to be another plane of people began to descend minutes later, but I remained seated this time around in an attempt to keep my negative energy contained. I watched the people walk off on their own missions to get home or to their hotels or to their loved ones. I smiled at babies through my mask and focused on the people around me the best I could to avoid myself. No one seemed too concerned with anyone but themselves, even when they rose from their seats and left the airport behind their new arrival. Suddenly, the elderly woman opposite me rose from her seat with tears in her eyes and rushed to the escalator. A young couple with a young toddler in their arms was coming down the escalator. 

“Who is that?” The mother pointed to the grandmother at the bottom of the stairs while whispering loudly to the child. The child looked as clueless as I surely did, but observing a minute longer filled in the story for me. This was near the first, if not the actual first, time that she was meeting her grandbaby. It was a reunion of a family presumably separated by the world’s present circumstances. Joy fell down everyone’s cheeks when the child transferred arms, and hugs were exchanged before they left for the baggage claim.

I caught myself thinking, that’s what I want right now, but then I realized: I was about to have that. Yes, nine weeks of uncertainty and tough conversations and tears and regrets couldn’t be erased by anything, especially not in that moment, but they could wait until tomorrow or the next day. Unpleasantness has a time and place, it doesn’t have to be the time and place. 

The LED screen refreshed and the line that read “Chicago” now also read “Landed,” and I felt excitement for the first time in the weeks we had spent planning his trip together. What couldn’t have been more than a few minutes suddenly felt like an hour while I waited for the latest crowd to descend. As they began to come down the escalator, I fought the urge to rush up the stairs. My eyes landed on him and watched him search frantically for me before he saw me. The second his feet hit the carpet, he dropped his duffle and pulled me in. His hands mussed my hair as I pressed my forehead against his chest. He smelled like home and rest, and I forgot that I had been worried in the first place.

*****

I startled awake Saturday morning hours later than I had intended. The plan we had settled on the night before in a sleepy and slightly drunken stupor was to eat lunch and go to a movie premiere in Boston, but Lord knows it wouldn’t have happened if I left it to the man who was currently playing his daily game of morning virtual chess across the room. Planning is a bittersweet love of mine, but opening a half dozen tabs all before the crusties were wiped from my eyes was not the best way to start the morning. I soon had timed everything perfectly to the minute, which was immediately threatened by his laissez-faire approach to timetables. 

Walking him to the restaurant downtown for lunch was like looking at Providence through new eyes. I pointed out everything of note as we passed through campus and walked down the hill, with an emphasis on the places and pieces of architecture that were of special interest to me when I visited Brown for the first time. For a fleeting second, I felt the same awe that I came here with. Rather than feeling irritated with the cold wind tunnels, I found myself admiring the city we were descending upon from College Hill. I spoke about the Rock and told stories about my times in the carrel I had claimed. Everything I gestured to was another drop of ease and hope in a bucket previously emptied by the pandemic.

After our meal, we climbed onto the commuter rail to Boston and were soon headed through New England to a city neither of us had experienced before. After spending nearly a year sharing one person’s city with the other at a time, it was foreign to be experiencing something together for the first time—something that could be ours.

In between grumbling at each other about bench space, I realized this was actually part of an item on my bucket list: take a train tour of New England’s fall colors. The reds, oranges, and yellows lit up neighborhoods and danced across the surface of lakes. Peace fell over me as I took a moment to cherish something, anything, without rushing through it to move onto something else.

The commuter rail stopped half a dozen times before our stop. I was already enamored by the time I stepped into the industrial hell that is South Station. Pulling him to the side, I spotted a hole in the construction wall that would lead us to the street without entering the actual station. When we emerged from the hole onto a street full of cars, we stopped to take a minute. Presumably, he was reorienting himself while I gazed upwards to the clear blue skyline.

I'll never lose my fascination with skylines. I will always be the tourist on the street staring up instead of straight ahead, even when I’m local. A gentle hand on my shoulder brought me back to where I was. Apparently he had been asking me what the map said about directions to the theater, but I just said follow me and started across the crosswalk blinking the red countdown at me. 

He trailed beside or behind me the rest of his stay, until his final night here. Dragging my feet, I followed him to my best friend’s car waiting for us on the street in the pouring rain. The idea of having to take him to the airport was hardly more bearable than being the one left at the train station. Like a fool, I thought it would be easier. I wasn’t the one being left with hours of travel ahead of me. I was leaving, not being left. My heart broke all the same.

At the airport, there were double sliding doors that lead into the check in area. When I tried to walk him in, I couldn’t make it past the second set of doors. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I had promised not to cry, so I told him I would let him off here. He looked confused, but hugged me goodbye and said that he would see me soon. By the time that I reached the car, I burst into tears.

*****

Long distance isn’t for everyone. It might not be for us, even, but I refuse to give up something so soon and without making changes. When one creates, they make edits before they scrap everything. When you love, you have to do some work before calling it quits.

I often put a baseless onus on myself that it should be my prerogative to keep everything in tip-top shape. This festers into regret when I seemingly fail—again, because long distance is the farthest thing from easy—and the regret beats me into submission. Even so, the moments we have together are worth it. Reunions and new experiences are the better part of this new chapter for us, and capitalizing on them is what is holding me together in our time apart.

Friends often push about how we aren’t handling this as well as other long distance duos they know of, and in a fleeting moment of security I reminded them that comparison of any relationship isn’t a valid criticism. All relationships between people are different with separate needs and circumstances, no matter how similar they appear at first glance. I hold onto the moments of bliss in recent memory to sustain me, knowing that better days are only ever a month or two away at a time.

AUTHOR: Juliette Woodcum is in her third year at Brown. She’s reevaluating her role in the worlds around her and will welcome any listening ear or cup of tea to help her in the process — preferably bring both.

ARTIST: Ashley Castañeda is a Latinx illustrator in her junior year at RISD. She is probably taking a well-deserved nap somewhere.