I’m an Alum!
I ran by this guy the other day who was wearing a Tufts shirt. I was wearing a “Bowdoin Mom” shirt. (Yup, I am 100% that dork who wears “Mom” shirts from my kids’ schools.) This is likely meaningless to you if you’re not familiar with a certain subset (or “milieu,” because let’s face it, “milieu” is probably an apt word choice in this case) of small colleges. As I approached this young guy, he smiled really big, pointed at his shirt, and then pointed at mine. I knew exactly what he meant: One way or another, there was a tacit agreement that we A) understood a certain culture and were both part of it, and B) were currently situated outside that culture. Then I made it more confusing because right as we passed each other I took my ear bud out (why?) and pointed more aggressively at his shirt and said, “I’m an alum!” probably way too loud. (Let’s also spend a minute envisioning the other people who may have been around who all of a sudden heard only “I‘m an alum!” punctuating the relative silence.)
Here’s a line from the novel The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen: “She was familiar, the way all of the settlers were familiar by dint of being different.” I’m only about 100 pages in to this National Book Award finalist about indigenous Sámi reindeer herders (yes, you read that right), but the commentary on tribalism fascinates me.
“Familiar by dint of being different”: What are the things that ground us when we’re trying to find footing in a new place? What sights, smells, or objects — when presented out of context, in a “foreign” place — draw all the people who “know” them together into one oddball conglomeration? This is something I thought of constantly while living in Ireland, a nation with a diasporic culture that nonetheless was starting to welcome a massive influx of outsiders, my family included. It’s where the seed of my manuscript was planted. Matt’s in Dublin this week and sent me the above photo from the airport immigration line. (Tayto is a potato chip [er, crisp] and for whatever reason the Irish love ‘em. Big props to Tayto’s marketing.)
Love it when a novel, a shirt, and a snack food come together to explain why I’m writing. #homesick
originally published on instagram