As a new November looms, it feels like it might finally be an appropriate time to move this out of my folder of unshared writing. Not all memories can be encapsulated perfectly, but maybe that’s why it took me so long to call this ‘done.’ Now that it is an experience that I can remember without trying to grasp it too tightly.
How to best describe the month of November 2020?
As a dream?
A gift?
A bubble?
An escape, perhaps, from everything?
How best to explain the way that we planned for this month for so long to have it work just the way it did?
November, for me, was a month of so much revitalization. More than I knew I needed but, deep down, exactly what I was hoping for.
When Something Old Becomes New
We all spent the first four months of our friendship in close quarters but also in situations around the world that pulled us closer together than even a tiny cabin on the ship could. Our journey began as a chance to meet new people as we studied abroad, an exciting venture that evolved into some of the closest connections I have ever had.
To have been able to dream that most of us would get a chance to, for however short, live together again would have felt so incredibly out of reach back in 2018 when we all said goodbye. At that point, we had no idea how long it would be until we could see each other. We had no idea that there would be this unimaginable, global event that would physically pull us as far apart as ever while giving us a chance to be more connected than we had since those days.
Back then, when we used to run around new places but always back to each other at the end of a new experience, distance and then close proximity was an ever-continuing cycle.
That’s sort of how that month was for us, at least from my point of view. The real-life connectivity after a distance that made it so much more significant to all be together again.
Reconnecting By Over-Connecting
We all had the chance, like most, to utilize zoom and group FaceTime during the initial quarantine and stay-at-home situations. We had game nights more often than we ever would have been able to all show up for in a world that was still ‘normal’. Once the world began to adjust to this new situation, schools brought us back or jobs started hiring again or new opportunities arose, and planning for November became the thing that kept us ever connected.
I don’t know if I could have made it through part of quarantine and then a period of being mostly on my own back at school if I didn’t have those moments to look forward to.
Dragosh threw out the idea of us all isolating together and doing our work from home or finishing our college careers together for a month. I can’t express how grateful I am that it worked out. Suddenly, we had something to plan for, to look forward to. Our calls about where we wanted to stay became the thing that kept us close, talking consistently about transportation or what might work best for us to do safely. Instead of calling for the hell of it, we had something we were really doing together again, and that was huge.
A House, Not A Ship, But Near Water All The Same
Getting to Lake Havasu felt unreal, I picked up Gleb, Omar, and Steven in Phoenix in the car that my grandparents so graciously lent us for the month and we spent a few hours driving and catching up as Omar focused on the Steelers game, something that would definitely be the Sunday ritual during his time with us. We had the chance, after so long, to just be in the same physical space and that was so much more than enough.
The thing is, we could have been doing absolutely anything in those first few hours and it would have been so great. We got to the house and brought our things in, we listened to music and decorated to surprise Dragosh for his birthday that had just passed, we fell so quickly into being together again.
It doesn’t sound like much, but after only seeing a few friends over most of this pandemic, it surprised me how truly normal things felt. Jenna, Dragosh, and Sierra got there a few hours after we did, and, for the most part, we were all together. Hanna’s appearances throughout the month made that togetherness feel even more concrete.
A Beginning, In The Middle
The word that comes to mind when I think of that first day is ‘full’, of happiness and proximity and community and all of the best things about us being together that also happened to be the things that a lot of us had been deprived of for so long.
The month of November, aside from what it was like in the day-to-day of us just being together and talking and working, was a breath of fresh air in a world that has felt for far too long like it was falling apart around us.
I can’t speak to everyone else’s experiences, I know that quarantine brought a lot of surprising good for people along with the bad, but this was something that I needed so desperately. It put us all in a position where life could feel normal because we were all still quite isolated, but now as a group.
A New November, With New Memories
The Havasu house will forever be the perfect size with the best view of the lake and sunsets. It will be remembered as the place that allowed us to find solace in something that we otherwise have no control over. It became a home so quickly for that month and leaving it meant that we were leaving a period in our collective lives that was so unforeseen and so incredibly fortunate.
We took trips on the weekends to national parks, we ate dinner together almost every single night and just talked about our days, we celebrated multiple holidays and a birthday and graduations. We had the chance to experience this super compact version of what all living together would be like, not on the ship but in the ‘real’ world.
It is such an incredible thing, to be reminded that the people you most care about in the world feel the same way about you. To be able to have this family that feels just as real as those we were born into somehow, yet just different enough to be it’s own.
The First November, So Long Ago
November constantly reminded me of things I had forgotten about these people, the way we all react to different situations, or how much something that seems small might excite someone. Even seeing everyone’s style of working and studying brought this dynamic that allowed us to all be as productive as we needed while coexisting and enjoying every moment we had together.
I remembered what it used to be like to sit in the library until 5 am and have these conversations about our deepest fears and what had hurt us in the past, all before we even knew each other’s middle names. We reflected this month on the idea that we all are very similar in the fact that we bonded over situations that were hard or scary or, at the least, overwhelming.
Our reactions when things are difficult are to go with the flow, be flexible, because that’s all we have ever really done. In thinking about our relationship now, as we have all grown and changed, it was so easy to see the synchronicities that existed even still as a result of shared conversations and experiences that had shaped us individually and collectively.
The realization that we were having conversations that we had had years prior, but with different perspectives and new understandings of situations was the most explicit symbol of time’s ebb and flow.
From Shipmates To Roommates
Living together, however briefly, was so different than any reunion or weekend trip or eventually living in the same vicinity will ever be. It gave us the chance to go back to the roots of what made us all friends in the first place, traveling as a unit and coming back to study or work and do very common daily things. It was like we had started in this bubble of the ship that was our home only to come full circle as we self-isolated in a house that acted as our home base. Our adventures looked so different this time around but, in a way, exactly the same.
Had we become friends in a place where we lived close but not so close, where we were school friends that saw each other at house parties but not much else, where we didn’t eat and study and sleep and reflect and learn together constantly, we would have such a deeply different relationship. One where reunions could put us closer than we had been at first or where living in the same city meant getting to know each other more. Even a more traditional study abroad experience would have bred such a different style of communication and closeness. For us, living together in a situation like this one was so much more like what we were used to for the majority of our in-person relationships. It was familiar.
November
Something about that month felt more normal than anything had in years, even as the rest of life felt so deeply uncertain. I think that’s what last November was- a reprieve that occurred in a time and place where we were all meant to be together. Just us, just then, just that way.
November was the calm inside of the storm. For me, at least.
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