“All the world’s creatures draw draughts of joy from nature”
-Ode to Joy, Friedrich Schiller1
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On the east side of my room hangs a set of three crude paintings depicting a strait through which a fleet of tiny boats passes. From afar, one might think that they’re some pointillist masterpiece from the 19th century. I’m disappointed to say that this is not the case. The brushstrokes are sloppy, and the general mood can only be described as “lifeless.” All in all, the set is very… Lavender Mist.2 Messy though it may be, however, it gives my room personality. Piquancy, if you will.
It’s one of the many quirks littered about my room that I will miss when I depart for college in a week. I’ve been awake for what feels like hours now. The Sun has not yet risen. Accepting that I’ve missed the last train to Dreamland, I make the decision to roll onto my side and check the time.
5:49 A.M., the clock reads. It’s almost time for my mother to breeze into my room and dramatically lament how I only have one week left until I leave my entire life behind to pursue an education. God forbid. Both of my older brothers moved to Amsterdam not long after they graduated together five years ago. They’re pursuing research opportunities in marine biology or some such environmental science. Meanwhile, I will be hopping on the six o’clock train to Boston next Saturday to start my studies in the finer art, the art of literature. Where others see a fruitless oblivion, I see a gateway to my most vivid fantasy: my name on the cover of the newest New York Times bestseller. I see Professor Max Wolfe, PhD, teaching Henry James to a full house of literary ingenues and aspiring writers.
I am reveling in my wildest dreams when the clock strikes six and the mechanical wind chimes in my room urge me out of bed. Reluctantly, I drag myself to the edge of my mattress, put on my glasses so I don’t step on any stray trinkets I may have left around last night, and contort myself limb by limb into an acceptable standing position.
Sprawled on the ground is a chaotic heap of clothes, hastily thrown around during a sleeplessness-induced craze. My big day is fast approaching, yet I still have no clue what to bring with me. The seagulls’ cries feel nagging.
Just pick out some stuff and throw it all together, they squawk incessantly. You can always have stuff sent to your dorm if you forget anything. Come on. When your mother sees all this clutter strewn about your room, she’ll flip! Just make a choice.
Stupid birds.
Right on cue, my bedroom door creaks open. Enter my mother, adorned with beach hat and sandals. She stops abruptly two steps into my room, noticing at once the heap of disorder that is my bedroom floor. Her high-arched face twists itself into a gruesome mix of rage, confusion, and terror.
“Ai-yah3, what manner of swine must live in this pigsty?!” my mother cries, distraught, in sharp Chinese words. “I bet a real pig could clean up better than you do! I would do better raising farm animals. Eighteen years of age and still hasn’t learned how to make a house a home… I’m not going to be there to babysit you in your dorm room, ah?”
A drawn-out sigh escapes my lips. “I know, mama. I was very panicked last night. You know I haven’t been getting as much sleep as I’ve desired lately.”
“Must be because you don’t eat enough fibers, eh?” she declares pointedly, waggling one finger at me as she crouches to relieve my floor of its littered condition. “If you ate more vegetables and less snacks, you wouldn’t worry so much. A full night’s sleep is the reward for the healthy.”
Not seeking an argument, I start helping my mother with folding my clothes so that we can spend the rest of the morning after breakfast figuring out odd ways to shove a large mass of them in my three suitcases.
The next few days become filled with distress over what constitutes a necessary item to bring to the dorms, followed by frantic arrangement and rearrangement of different clothing items, devices, and other assorted goods. Eventually, my mother and I settle on a decent arrangement of my belongings throughout all three suitcases and a load of extra cardboard boxes.
The hour of departure looms over our heads. To both my mother and me, the big day can’t come quicker, yet the snail-like pace at which it approaches presents an anxiety of its own.
Ultimately, it comes time for me to step into the next phase of my life. Sentimentality abounds.
***
Tears moisten my mother’s face as we arrive at the gate to my train. This is, lamentably, as far as she can go. We embrace, likely for the last time in a while, before our goodbyes are cut short by the sound of twinkling bells indicating the train’s arrival. My mother asks me to double check if I have everything I’ll need on the train in my backpack, to which I assure her that I’ve already passed “double” and should be somewhere near “quintuple” by now. Nevertheless, I grant my mother’s parting wish. Everything is right where it should be.
I don’t look back as I step through the automatic doors to the escalators leading down to Platform 16. Call it brazen perseverance or perhaps a morbid fear that if I so much as glance over my shoulder, I’ll be compelled into staying for eternity. My steps are heavy yet eager as I enter a compartment close to the head of the train.
Upon setting foot in the quaint compartment, I immediately note the elegant furnishings and ample view. The beige, cushioned seats are arranged in groups of four, one pair facing the other with a cozy wooden table separating them. The thin gray shades on the windows are rolled up, allowing for quite the crystalline perspective of the train’s surroundings. I take a quick glance at my phone to ensure that I’m in the right place and settle into a window seat near the center of the compartment.
At the time of my entrance, the only other passenger in my compartment is an elderly woman in a graceful shawl who appears to be reading a thick tome of some sort. Her gaze does not stray from her book, so I don’t attempt a polite greeting. My relative solitude, however, soon becomes interrupted by waves of passengers entering to find their seats. Among them are several adults, punctuated with the occasional incoming college student. Recognizing no familiar faces, I decide to pass the time with my face buried in one of the several books I’ve brought with me for entertainment.
After a minute or so of deliberation, I draw from my backpack my weathered copy of Cat’s Cradle4 and crack it open to find that my disordered annotations still decorate the novel’s pages.
I’m halfway through one of my scribbled digressions on the novel’s first sentence when a voice from the other side of the book speculates, “Must be good. What’s it about?”
I look up from reading to examine the source of this mysterious voice. Somewhere between my opening Cat’s Cradle and flipping to the first chapter, a young lady appearing to be around my age must have claimed the seat across from me. Her raven locks, which are complemented by dramatic streaks of charcoal-esque eyeliner, fall in meticulous waves over her shoulders before culminating in neat, refined ends. The smirk on her face is embellished with a graceful rose quartz-colored lipstick, subtle yet flawlessly put. On her ears, two minuscule butterfly-shaped earrings rest—they’re fashionable, but they don’t immediately draw one’s attention. This forthcoming young lady clearly knows the secrets of the beauty trade. An admirable trait.
“Oh… nothing. The end of the world. Standard stuff.”
The young lady taps the table between us with one of her precisely-cut, purple fingernails and looks me up and down. Meeting my eyes, she says, “Cool. Maybe I’ll pick it up sometime.”
Her words are thrown around almost, as if she could toss them up into the universe and walk away without looking to see where they land. Her eyelids don’t reveal any emotion, but her smile and her habit betray her.
“My name’s Elisa,” the young lady extends her hand, the one that was previously occupied with tapping, and I cautiously accept it. “You seem like someone I’d want to be friends with. Fortune has clearly sensed our potential for friendship and brought us together. What’s your name? Where are you headed?”
Damn, she’s forward, I think to myself. Instead of criticizing, though, I manage to mumble, “Max. Boston.”
“Okay, I get it—not a talker,” Elisa raises an eyebrow but a friendly smirk remains attached to her sarcastic visage. “But if you’re going to Boston at this time of year, surely that means that you’re entering college.”
I nod.
My new friend clasps her hands in excitement. “Twins!”
After confirming that we’re headed to the same college, both entering as freshmen, the small talk begins. I learn that Elisa will be double majoring in Psychology and Neuroscience and that she has a sister studying Computer Science who will be entering her senior year. We also discover that we’ll be sharing a Linear Algebra class three times a week—a lucky coincidence that Elisa attributes again to kismet.
Less than a hundred seconds pass between the time the two of us compare schedules and an elegant ringing comes from the overhead speakers. The conductor’s nasal voice blares throughout the compartment, notifying all passengers to take their seats as quickly as possible before the train departs in a couple of minutes. Behind Elisa, a young Caucasian couple and their two toddlers are preparing snacks for the ride ahead of us, while behind me, three middle-aged men converse loudly in an indeterminate European language. Across the aisle from Elisa and me sits an elementary school-aged girl who is soon accompanied by her mother carrying two paper cups of steaming hot water. The seats next to my friend and I thankfully remain empty.
A gentle screeching and a forceful push forward alert us that the train has started moving a few moments after I survey the compartment. As we leave the station behind for our next destination, I send a silent prayer out into the universe that my mother will be able to take care of herself alone at the house.
She’s a resilient woman, I assure myself, but I remember to make a note to self to call her as soon as I’m finished unpacking all of my stuff. Otherwise, I’ll get an earful about how I’m neglecting my poor mama now that I’ve become independent.
Once I stop stressing, I decide to look out of the window to admire the scenery that we pass by. The seaside metropolis I’ve stayed in all my life rushes by through the glass. Soon, the view of sweeping hills and grazing cattle replaces human hustle and bustle.
An hour of nature watching and small talk passes before I know it, and our train journeys over an enormous lake whose limpid waters reflect the Sun’s rays so brightly that I have to squint a little. The tiny waves on its surface remind me of when my brothers and I were but innocent children and would go out and play in the ocean, jumping and galloping to see who could make the biggest splashes. Once we’d exhausted ourselves, we’d drag our feet as we hobbled back to our house by the sea, where our mother had squeezed and frozen fresh lemon tea. We’d try to go to the couch to fight over who got to pick what TV show we put on, but our mother would stop us and warn that if we didn’t wash the saltwater out of our hair, it would leak into our brains and we’d go blind in our sleep. Shrieking, we’d all sprint up the stairs and push in front of one another rushing to the showers. At the end of the day, we’d force our dinner down and put our plates in the sink, eager to listen to my mother’s nightly saga. We’d settle into our beds and sleep like babies having had the best time together and dread having to go to school the following day. It was an endless cycle of fun. Now, I leave behind that paradise for another.
All I can think is, The suspense is killing me.
- One of the author’s favorites. It provided the original (working) title of the novel. ↩︎
- It is worth noting that the author markedly does not like Jackson Pollock ↩︎
- A classic Chinese/Southeast-Asian interjection. Roughly translates as “Oh my goodness!” or, in extreme cases, “How dreadful!” ↩︎
- As in, Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut—the only Vonnegut that the author himself has read. Jacobs and his father both own copies, the latter’s with more yellowed pages than the former’s. With Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Cat’s Cradle forms a power duo of Jacobs’ “Best Airplane Reads.” ↩︎
Above painting: The Embarkation for Cythera by Jean-Antoine Watteau