Even Though I Try, I Can't Let Go

When I was a first-year living in Weld, I had five roommates and four pseudo-roommates. The pseudo-roommates were collectively known as "The Boys Across the Hall," because most of them lived in the suite about two feet from our open door.

For most of my first year at Harvard, college wasn't exactly what it was supposed to be. It was fine, pretty fun, my classes were okay and I really liked my roommates, but somehow it wasn't as cinematic as I'd expected it to be. It wasn't the late nights of card games and deep talks I recognized from coming-of-age movies and my parents' sepia-toned reminiscences of their own time here, and it certainly wasn't Animal House (surprise, surprise). More often than not, it was a bunch of people trying just a little bit too hard--to find the party, to have fun at the party, to "participate" in section, to enjoy the apparently brilliant lectures, to feel like we had the complete college life of which we and all our friends from home had boasted at Thanksgiving break.

But if there's anything that was just like it was supposed to be, it was the Boys Across the Hall. They fixed our computers, and we taught them how to swing dance in their common room before moving on to the master classes in Leverett dining hall. When we got back from Thanksgiving break, they called us over to see the real live Christmas tree they'd decorated, and on Valentine's Day we found collective flowers from them in our common room. In a happily self-deprecating running joke, we invented an imaginary sitcom based on our less-than-TV-star lives, and they began emailing us mock scripts, guest-starring our impenetrably perky, I-Bank-bound prefect.

Easy and casual, relations between the two rooms ebbed and flowed all year. They happened to be ebbing right around that crucial window of blocking time, and for whatever reason, we went our separate ways. By the time housing assignments were announced, we were hanging out more and hoping to end up together by chance, but the whimsical Spirit of Randomization had other plans. We landed in Eliot, and they were sent hundreds of yards away, to the nether regions of the River.

Throughout April and May, first-years the Yard over talked the talk of post-randomization spring. My most beloved non-blockmates were far-flung, from the Quad to Quincy to Dunster, and we joined in the promises to visit and plans for biweekly meals that filled the Annenberg air. But I was worried, and I was most worried about the Boys Across the Hall, with whom our relationship had been dependent on proximity. We had never had to make plans, or even to make an effort beyond three steps or a yell. It wasn't that I didn't think we valued the relationships enough to make that effort, only that I didn't know if they would translate.

So often, I've had the experience of finding that a certain group dynamic cannot be recreated out of context: that my FOP group never felt the same at "reunions" as it did in the woods, that the people who'd felt like soulmates at summer camp had less to say to each other when united at a pizza place in October. This doesn't undermine the intensity and reality of those connections in the moment--in a way it makes them and their moment more wonderfully singular--but it does provide a sobering glimpse of the great big truth that you can't go back again. So I wondered, will we ever be able to reclaim even a little bit of what was such a huge part of that first year? Is this the end for us and the Boys Across the Hall?

The answer, of course, was sort of. Visits are infrequent, and reproaches regarding the infrequency of visits are plentiful. Although I love a lot of things about the House system, it does land us in these very insular little worlds, where we can eat, sleep, study, hang out, and basically forget about life outside the realm of our own key-card access. Add this to the startling revelation that Harvard students are very, very busy, and that in general, we probably don't make enough time for spontaneous, casual fun, and you have the little Harvard mini-tragedy of these "long-distance relationships." As hard as we try to stay in touch, it still feels like just that, staying in touch, and there's something tremendous lost in the lack of immediacy.

Now, over a year since we parted ways, we are all pleasantly immersed in our post-Weld worlds. The dynamic has never been quite restored, but it is always so great to see them. The other night we had a reunion dinner which was lots of fun, evoking vow upon vow to "do this more often." Will we? It's not like we haven't made that promise before. But here we are, at the start of a new year, a couple of weeks from the first big paper, and hope springs eternal. Maybe it's best to just let these things go, but at dinner the other night, it really did almost feel just like old times.

Jody H. Peltason '01 is a history and literature concentrator in Eliot House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.