What Now?

When I come home, there's a drive I like to take.

As I drive, the fragrance of earth floats through the open windows. Not just any wet earth scent, but that of the California hills. It instantly brings me back to the August sunrise runs of high school cross country in the Reseda mountains. I become overwhelmed with nostalgia, an emotion I find myself avoiding far too often these days. I used to love driving late into the summer night with the windows down and the empty streets lit by the glowing street lights, curving into and around the valley’s hills, enjoying the Los Angeles skyline coming into view now and again, but I find myself taking them less and less often, tired of feeling that I'm just reliving an activity from my childhood, my teenage hood, as everything I does when I'm home now.

I'm usually too lazy to commit to a real emotion,so I push it away and try to think of something else. But then, another waft of the distinct scent of the earth comes in the window, and I'm sixteen again, running up the hill, Mr. Bates, the overly enthusiastic Social Justice teacher at my side, exclaiming “Just look at that sunrise! Makes you glad to be alive, doesn’t it?” and the other girls around me gasping for air, but with enough energy to turn to each other and roll their eyes with indulgent little smiles, before focusing back on the dirt curve of the path before them, the green and brown shrubs on either side, stretching as far as our eyes could see, camouflaging other runners, bikers, deer and sometimes wolves from our view, even from a few feet away. It was easy to suddenly believe myself alone on those mountain paths, when the curves and different stamina levels separated us from our teammates, and I was there, by myself in the wilderness. Sometimes I ran slower than I could walk, but I knew I had to keep going, had to catch up with one of the other girls before a wolf jumped out from behind a bush to eat me. And after the runs, the whole team would sit in the dirt in a circle, gossiping and joking and laughing as they stretched, their sweats covered in dust and Coach Murphy would lecture about nutrition for a while in her lovely Irish accent and then we would all pile into our carpools, off to grab Jamba juices and head home to collapse on our beds and sleep away half the summer’s day. The Barefeet would drive me home, and I’d chat with them, about fashion or teachers or friends. When school started, the girls would all pile into cars and head off to Devon’s house for showers, or straight to school to use the new locker rooms. We all fought over using the mirrors, and the outlets for our hairdryers.
One waft of clean, sweet smelling summer night earth, and I miss Louisville as fiercely as I did when I attended the last class’s graduation, as the girls in white walked down the stairs, and all the teachers lined up, proudly watching them go on, like they had for us once. Once. I love College, and I love my friends, but high school…I miss the carefree days of a part-time summer job instead of a full-time one, a world in which I wasn’t worried about building my credit, but only about how I looked in my pleated gray skirt. I miss being goofy and not worrying whether people thought I was mature enough, serious enough, responsible enough for my age, I miss the green lawns of our campus, the earnest discussions, the easy banter, the communal worshipping of Mrs. Tumpak, the sarcastic but brilliant English teacher. I miss dancing in the hallways, and falling asleep on top of each other, and whispered conversations in the library, or daily picnics on the lawns.
I miss feeling like I belong in Southern California, like I belong in the world I'm in. The world of a summer home from college is one of displacement; everything so familiar, so the same, but I am so different. It is a sweet limbo, in which every place, every scent, every activity is so tainted with lovely memories that it is impossible to make new ones. I long fiercely to go back, but so much to just go, to leave so that the beauty of things ended will stop haunting me.
A summer home brings no new adventures, just the reliving of old ones, just the postponement of life. Life is on pause, and I am trapped in in my own once upon a time.
Old friends, a close family soften the blow of returning to the past, but they too, are frustrated with the limbo holding summer in its grip. There are too many adult obligations now, jobs that suck up our time, independence of self rearing its ugly head, morphing into independent lives, lives that don’t include seeing friends every day, but rather consist of a scattered group only occasionally reunited.

I've been wiling away my days helping around the house, at my parish, writing, painting, contemplating my future and trying desperately to come up with a plan, any sort of plan. All I want is to go back to school, but what happens next summer? What happens after I graduate and there is no school to go back to? What then?

What now?