I know that most people don’t go home for Fall Break (mostly because only being home for 4 days isn’t worth the money it costs), but when all I could see was nostalgic flashbacks of Miami and all of my favorite places there, I knew that it was the perfect time to use the Emergency Trip Home fund I’d been saving up for over the summer.
I’d had the trip perfectly planned out with my best friend, Meily, too: She’d pick me up from the Ft.Lauderdale (a city next to Miami) airport with my boyfriend, Rodrigo, and we’d spend the weekend doing whatever we did during the summer–go to the beach, go to the mall, crash some friends’ houses, etc.)–and it would be just like old times. I knew that expecting things to be the same after 2 months of being gone and just having high expectations in general were doubly just setting me up for disappointment, but I thought “How can things possibly go differently from my plans?” Needless to say, I was in for a surprise.
Things got off on the wrong foot when I arrived at the airport and didn’t have the welcome party I expected. Instead, I got a call from Meily who was lost and, even worse, alone. Rodrigo had bailed on coming with her at the last minute because he wanted to go visit his dad at the hospital. I knew his dad was in the hospital, but Rodrigo had told me that it wasn’t a big deal and that his dad had just gotten an ulcer from some medication that he took. And Rodrigo visited his dad at the hospital all the time! Couldn’t he just wait an hour or two this time to pick me up from the airport? I can understand wanting to see his dad, but he knew Meily would get lost without him…
I guess looking back on this in hindsight, my line of thought was pretty selfish. I mean, I didn’t know what was really going on with his dad, and I think that if I did, I would’ve been more understanding about why he didn’t come, but even so, I shouldn’t have been mad at him for choosing to visit his sick dad instead of to see me.
Anyway, Meily eventually found me and on our way back to her place (I was sleeping over for the night), Rodrigo called me and begged us to come to the hospital so he could talk to me, but both she and I refused because we were exhausted. And if he really wanted to talk to me, wouldn’t he just have come to the airport to pick me up? Well, I guess he really did want to talk to me, because he drove all the way over to Meily’s house to deliver the news and the real reason why he couldn’t come pick me up. It turns out that his dad wasn’t just in the hospital for an ulcer; he was there for something much worse, and Rodrigo had to be with him to hear his diagnosis. I don’t think I can disclose what it was, but it definitely set a somber mood for the rest of the weekend, and understandably so.
Rodrigo, however, said that he wanted me to enjoy my time back at home and, for a few days, he just wanted to pretend everything was okay, so we continued with our Fall Break plans: I wouldn’t see him much on Saturday because I would be working at my old job at the Farmer’s Market, but on Sunday, he, Meily and I would go to the beach, and on Monday and Tuesday, we’d spend our time at his college, Florida International University.
But like I said, plans rarely ever keep. On Saturday night, I ended up seeing him after work at the hospital; We had decided that I should see his dad because I wasn’t going to be here for long, but more importantly, we didn’t know if he was either. It was nice to meet Rodrigo’s extended family, but seeing Rodrigo’s usually strong and healthy dad all weak and frail in a hospital bed was heartbreaking. I got to know Rodrigo’s dad over the summer, so even though I certainly didn’t know him as much as his family did, I still knew him enough to know that he doesn’t belong in a hospital bed.
After Rodrigo told me the news, I shouldn’t have expected the next day at Miami Beach to be just like old times, especially since the place in which we spent the most time in Miami Beach was Rodrigo’s dad’s apartment. Nevertheless, I hoped. We went to the beach, and, just like the metaphorical overcast that darkened the weekend, an ominous gray sky hung over us. You know, typical beach weather in Miami. We managed to get in a swim before the rain started beating down on us, at least. After that, we couldn’t bear to hang out in the apartment any longer to play pool or go in the complex’s Jacuzzi, so Rodrigo decided to go back to the hospital for a while and Meily and I decided to go to Sunset Place, our favorite mall to hang out at, with our friend Joey.
Even then, things still weren’t the same. Meily felt pressed to get home, so we got a quick drink from Starbucks with him and bought macarons from a place called Le Macaron. We didn’t sit down in the Barnes and Noble’s café to exchange stories and hear Joey’s hilarious play by play of all the crazy things that happen to him. It just wasn’t the same.
So the best part of the trip, ironically, was not the nostalgic past times we tried to recreate, but instead the newest routine in Rodrigo’s life: hanging out at FIU. It was so good to run into a ton of my old friends there (it’s like everyone and their mother goes to FIU!) and meet Rodrigo’s new friends. Hanging out in his dorm with his 3 roommates made me feel like Jessica Day in New Girl. I attended Meily’s math club meeting and ate their pizza and drank their soda. I went to a bunch of the on-campus restaurants (because we sadly have none in the 5C’s). For two days, I could pretend to be a college student somewhere else and see what life in another type of college was like. It made me miss Pomona. Sure, I liked knowing a ton of people from high school and having more dining options than just dining halls, but I also missed the small liberal arts college environment. When all of my friends there were complaining about their classes, I thought, “What? All of my friends at Pomona and I love our classes! Why would you ever take a class you weren’t happy with?” The anonymity stopped being exciting and started becoming demoralizing. I realized that Pomona College was where I belonged.
All in all, it was nice to go home for a while and be confronted with familiarity as well as be subjected to dealing with changes, but it’s good to be back. So when I left Tuesday night, I didn’t see it as going back to school. I saw it as going home. To my second home.