Leaving Home Again

On Sunday I head back to Reed.
On so many levels I don't want to go.  I haven't had enough time with my family, enough walks with Ursula to school.  I haven't played the piano enough, or read enough, or taken enough long luxurious baths.  I have not played even one game of scrabble with my family, and I have lost when we played Five Hundred.  I am not ready to get used to school again, to showers wearing flip-flops and Portland weather (which I love, don't get me wrong) and mountains of schoolwork (which I also love).  I just love my family, and the city where I grew up, and it feels that at this time I should be doing what I was doing last year, getting ready for my six miraculous months in Paris, not packing for college.  I want to spend long afternoons with the lovely Kuzu and Mike and Alexandra, talking, reading, cooking, doing the crossword.  I want to perfect my Chopin pieces until I can play them with my eyes closed, from memory. I want to write and sightread and arrange music and sing with my sister and dance around my brother's bedroom to French hip-hop.  I want to cook supper for my family and cookies for my sister's lunch.  There are so many things I want to do at home, so many things that I don't have time for.
At the same time, I know that school holds so much in store for me.  Paideia will occupy the first week of second semester, and I plan on taking classes on Infinite Jest, on reporting, and participating in a historical reenactment of the storming of the Bastille.  I miss my friends, and it will be nice to see them, to have late-night long talks in my bedroom and dance parties while cleaning the kitchen.  And I am excited for Aristophanes and Plato in the second semester of Humanities 110.
But I have not packed, because I do not want to leave.  We'll see where I am come Sunday.
Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

(Reed in the snow, from here)