BABY STEPS: A Return To Childhood

My roommate declared last week that even though she had protested it for her entire messy childhood, her mother really had been right:

It is better to live in a clean house.

My other roommates agreed. In our own apartment we are immaculate. I promptly clean the dishes and make my bed. Despite some confusion when I borrowed a vacuum with a “Monica” nametag from the Office of Residence Life last year — and thought it was a commentary on the Lewinsky scandal — I soon learned that cleanliness was not a dirty joke. The next vacuums I borrowed were named Chandler and Joey (really!), and I learned that the vacuums were my “Friends.”

None of my roommates are friendly with the cleaning supplies at home. I’m not even sure where my family stores the vacuum. I treat my bedroom floor like a larger-than-life hamper. If I tried to operate the dishwasher, my family members would find themselves swimming to the refrigerator in soapsuds.

What could make a seemingly characteristic quality like cleanliness be activated or inactivated by our address?

I pondered this as I left to go home for the long weekend on Friday. I made sure everything was neatly in place for when I returned. I made my bed with clean sheets and removed my laundry from the hamper so it could be taken home and washed. Four hours later, I entered another sanctuary of cleanliness — my parents’ house.

I opened the door, and my feet touched the familiar tile. My mom asked from the kitchen if I wanted something to eat. Within seconds, my suitcase was flung open next to the front door. I flew through the house like a human hurricane leaving a trail of damage wherever I went. I had found the fountain of youth.

I was a child again.

Somewhere inside of the mature college student who took care of her life (and her apartment) at college lurked a messy five-year-old. Inside of the 21-year-old who ritualistically did laundry once a week was the child who ruined countless pairs of shorts at camp with a butt-shaped dirt print on the back from indiscriminately sitting down whenever and wherever she felt like it.

I threw caution to the wind. I left responsibility at the door.

As much as we may fight our parents’ control for the eight months we are at college, for the four weeks at home during Christmas and for the occasional weekend visit, we relish the lifestyle of overgrown children whose parents cook and clean for us as if we don’t both know we do it ourselves for the rest of the year.

My mother, who had replaced her only child with a village of plants to take care of, welcomed the opportunity to be maternal and do my laundry — which, by the way, she hadn’t even done for me when I lived at home.

My father, who never asked if I had any homework at school because he assumed it got done (which it did), asked what homework I’d have to finish for the long weekend. I had optimistically taken along a pile of books that sat punitively in the dark at the bottom of my suitcase. I hope they enjoyed the trip.

While I was home, my parents wanted to know where I was going and when I would return. They didn’t understand that 11:30 isn’t when I come home to go to bed, but when I leave to go out, because they never call to ask when I am coming home while I am at college. Yet, the questions that had once been a nuisance were now a comfort.

There was something magical that happened in the moment last weekend when I stepped through the front door and dropped my suitcase. The suitcase wasn’t the only baggage I checked at the door. All of the adult responsibilities fell away and were replaced by the security and comforts of home. The older I get and the more responsibilities I have, the better it feels to remember in that one moment why for the rest of my life, there will only be one place I can truly call home.

For two-and-a-half days on President’s Day weekend, I got to play the role of a 21-year-old child, and my parents got the chance to have a child again. I think we both enjoyed it. However, my parents are looking forward to the time when the storm front passes and the hurricane heads for Boston once again.