THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Our relationship with home has taken on a greater significance than ever before as we have spent most of 2020 quarantined in our personal dwellings. Ironically, the idea for this article originated a year before the pandemic even hit. In October of 2019, I returned to the small town where I completed my high school years, a place my parents still reside, on the south shore of Massachusetts.
I moved around a lot as a kid and the idea of “home” always felt somewhat pervasive and disconnected. From the time I was born until I graduated high school, my family moved on average every 4 years. That meant a new elementary school. New middle school. And last but not least, a new high school. We always relocated to a small town outside of a big city so that my dad could commute to work. A perpetual ground hog day as “the new kid,” students were either intrigued and curious —or the opposite side of that mixtape: I was decidedly uncool and awkward. The latter often led to utter invisibility or painful bullying.
By the time I moved to Cohasset, Massachusetts in 1998, I would enter the new school as a fifteen year old freshman student. Here are the memories of that morning: “Is my backpack cool?” “What style is everyone wearing?” “Do I even care?” Five years prior, when I had moved cross country from California to Connecticut entering middle school, I proudly wore my favorite denim jacket on the first day of school covered in different pins, each representing a memory. Glitter stars, palm trees, Micky Mouse. This decision was laughable and totally lame to a crowd of preppy New England kids adorned in Patagonia jackets, flannel shirts, and hiking boots. That 4th grade year was the most brutal tormenting I ever experienced, many lunches consumed in the library alone or in the bathroom. The only upside, my heart expanded to a vast place of empathy and recognition for anyone being bullied and with a zero tolerance for it. (For the recored — that glitter pin denim jacket was undoubtedly cool. Perhaps more California than Connecticut, but the fact remains ;)
Thankfully, Cohasset proved to be a much easier transition. In hindsight, I had built a force field of armor around me by then. I was afraid to make friends because I was always leaving them. Better to not get too attached in the first place, I thought. That first day walking into school felt like I was floating outside of my body and everything I experienced seemed to happen from a distance. Other than a few significant relationships that tethered me to shore, that feeling rarely left me throughout high school. They say you never quite detach from your first collision with vulnerability … that fundamental exposure to a young heart shadows us throughout life and informs who we become as adults.
The below video is a look back through time ... From my high school bedroom (which still remains exactly the same). To the halls of my high school (which has transformed significantly throughout the last twenty years). Here is what I learned about those teenage years on this last trip home. We may have hidden our insecurities and anxieties through varied tricks of adolescent mirage — but the truth is, we are all very much the same. We all wanted to be liked, we all worried that we were weird. And if we learn to lean into our vulnerabilities and communicate with courage, we find a sense of freedom.
My love letter to HOME — regardless of how far we travel … no matter how many adventures we have or the amount of people we encounter: our roots always remain.
Kindest,
Kate
PS. Any Cohasset High comrades reading this … GO SKIPPERS!
