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May-June 2008
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Getting My Feet WetI remember many things from my cousin’s wedding—my poofy bridesmaid’s dress, the humidity, how pretty the small church looked during the ceremony—but most of all, I remember the guests’ advice, bestowed with drawled urgency, about how to survive in New England. It was the summer before my freshman year of college, and my relatives (from my mother’s 100-percent-Texas side of the family) were anxious to help me avoid the pitfalls of living in an arctic, Yankee-filled part of the country, referred to simply as “up there.” Many of them were impressed that I was going away to Harvard, but that was not the point. The point was that I was venturing off to a far-away land, where I knew none of my future classmates and was unprepared for the conditions that awaited me. The night before the wedding, many of us were sprawled about on deck chairs next to the hotel’s pool. A distant cousin approached me and sat down. “Have you heard about the bugs?” I replied that I had not. “They have enormous bugs up there—big as softballs! They fly into your clothes and bite you. Don’t ever leave the house without some strong bug spray on.” After this advice was dispensed, my cousin leaned back into the deck chair and took a sip of his beer. “You should talk to Bill, though,” he added, mentioning a distant relative by marriage to whom I had hardly ever spoken. “He lived up there for a couple of years.” I had no intention of seeking out more terrifying counsel, but, Bill, it turned out, found me anyway. After exhausting the subjects of the size of the wedding party, the quality of the food, and the humidity of the day, Bill turned to my precarious future in Massachusetts. “I only have one thing to tell you, kid.” I waited in suspense, hoping to hear nothing more of enormous insects. “Never—and I mean never—get your feet wet.” I looked at him expectantly, but Bill seemed finished talking. “Don’t get my feet wet? Like when I go swimming?” I asked. “Don’t get your feet wet, period! You know what I used to do? I used to put both of my feet in Ziploc bags, then put my socks on, then put my shoes on,” he said. “That’s the only way to guarantee your feet will remain dry. Do what you have to do. Just don’t get them wet.” The rest of the weekend passed in a blur of photographs, dancing, and feasting. But a vague sense of foreboding accompanied me as I drove home with my parents that Sunday. My anxiety at the prospect of leaving my hometown and family seized on my relatives’ dramatic warnings, even though they would have made me laugh in other circumstances. Neither of my parents detected my unease, which quickly dissipated in the excitement of planning my departure. In a few weeks’ time I was packed up and ready to go, the memory of my relatives’ warnings long faded. Yet into a small inside pocket of my biggest suitcase, I slipped a precautionary container of bug spray.
Instead of scary insects or frostbite, intimidating peers confronted me at Harvard. At the first party I ever went to as a freshman, an older, immaculately dressed student asked me where I was from. When I answered, “Texas,” he said, “Oh, what a coincidence. My family owns a ranch in Montana.” I didn’t see the coincidence, and this comment came to symbolize what I saw as my apartness from the smoother, more sophisticated people who surrounded me. For most of my first year, I defined myself against Harvard and the people I categorized as a part of Harvard; it was a reassuring way of remembering who I was and reminding myself that I belonged somewhere. In spite of my previous longing to go far away for college, and the fact that I never quite felt like I completely fit in with my hometown, I began to cling to the identity of the girl from Texas. 1 | 2 | continued >  
 
 
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