Home, with a Capital H

Right when my freshman spring ended, I went back home to my native Florida — hotly anticipating the warmth that Cambridge, in all its meteorological nastiness, still somehow, in mid-May, denied me. Finals had really wrecked me, and after a year of running blind and ragged, I arrived home so ready to soak up its comforts, and all the idyllic restoration I’d dreamed about getting at my lowest points that semester. Instead, I got pneumonia.

My sister — my bestie — and my mom — another rock star — took care of me. A little incident from this time has stuck in my head. I was on the couch, in this kind of awful, shallow anguish that you’d think was deeper from the way I complained about it. And I asked my sister to grab me some water. “Oh, the Harvard baby wants us to grab her water, she makes us do it because she thinks she’s too good for it now—” and out pours a sermon. This strikes me at the time as light teasing, but also makes me feel super touchy. It’s full of literally just the most acrid, sarcastic, indulgent things she can lob at me, unprovoked, and in hindsight, it really gets to me. In the moment, I glare at my sister and the tirade sheepishly ends. She grabs me some water, good naturedly, as she did so often over those couple of days. I sip it, and we keep on keeping on, both still each other’s best friend.