The Summer of Winter Break

alyssa ho (she/her)

The first thing I noticed was that Potato Corner fries still tasted like heaven. I was afraid that they wouldn’t be as good as I remembered, but as I bit into another tangy crisp, I didn’t doubt it for a second. I passed the bucket to my best friend, Miya Matsumune. She was attending Bryn Mawr, another East Coast university, and she had been home for winter break a week longer than I had. I watched her carefully, wondering if she was a figment of my imagination or if I had traveled back in time to the summer before college. I supposed that was the whole point of this experiment… to see how it’d feel to relive the last day I was home on my first day of being back.

June 15th was the day before I left on a cross-country road trip to college. That afternoon, I got lunch with Miya at the Arcadia Mall. We then walked around the Los Angeles County Arboretum across the street. That night, I let my fears out on the page, knowing that in less than 24 hours, the home of my youth would no longer be a constant but a temporary blip in time. I would lose my house to emptiness, my friends to forgetfulness, and my family to formality. Comfort felt distant and as the sun reached its highest point, I had already driven miles down the road, crossing the border of California and the line between home and that place I used to know.

Now, it was December 21, my first full day back as a fallen child in the City of Angels. Yet here I was again, munching on fast food and slurping boba tea on a shaky marble table in Arcadia Mall with my best friend. It was as if I had reversed the last few months and had a chance to start over, deciding to stay this time.

And there he was, working on a new fence that would border the backyard, the old one torn and discarded, a shipwrecked heap by the trash bins. There was always something half-finished, half-constructed in my home. Although the house may have looked different, it was only because my father had not changed. I worried that the house would be empty, devoid of familiarity, but my father’s hands still sculpted and cared for the place. It didn’t need me there to witness it. I supposed that in the end, home was not so different at all.

Then there were the things my mother still did. She brought home Taiwanese takeout, beef noodle soup, and scallion wraps because it was the meal we usually ate on happy occasions. Even the increased price couldn’t deter the joy I felt from the taste of the warm broth, soft meat, and sweet spices from the star anise. Around the dinner table, she lectured me about getting a boyfriend. I laughed with relief. I was afraid our relationship would go stale after being away for so long. It’d be static, unresponsive, too formal. She’d treat me like an adult, not her daughter. But as we sat on the couch, sharing a blanket and binging TV, it was as if I had never really left her nest. I snuggled underneath her wing. It was interesting how home had the power to persuade me that I too, had not grown very much after being away. Little by little, a home can change, but it is not gone. It is right where you left it.