You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here

What I won’t tell you

I won’t tell you that in a couple of weeks, “What dorm were you in?” will become an almost obsolete question, not the third thing you ask someone at a party. I won’t tell you that in a couple of weeks, when people ask about my education, I will tell them something in past tense: “I studied English at Notre Dame.” I won’t tell you that I won’t write for The Observer anymore, and I won’t live five minutes away from my people, and I won’t have the Grotto always accessible to me — rain or shine, night or day — to cradle me and shield me and bring me some semblance of peace. 

I won’t report to O’Shag every Thursday morning at 10:05 for a 10 a.m. meeting (with a Charron Commons breakfast burrito and cappuccino in hand). I won’t call people on a Friday to see if they’re free to run to Brothers for “a crisp beer” on the patio with the sun shining (and Avery serving, of course). I won’t prop my door open on a Monday night in Breen-Phillips Hall to welcome dozens of girls into my living room, so we can chat and talk crap and hang out and do homework. Legacy won’t be a place I go to to drink in a parking lot on holidays (and then use the bathroom in the houses of mutual friends). DeBart won’t be a place I go to to get educated. South Dining Hall won’t be a place I go out of my way to eat in (because the ambiance in South is simply unmatched). Duncan Student Center won’t be a place I go to see and be seen and bump into everyone I know — friends and mortal enemies and guys I kissed who I never want to speak to or see ever again. 

This Notre Dame life won’t be mine anymore, and I have to be okay with this.

Death to the mini fridge

A few days ago, I gave away my mini fridge to Paula, one of my beloved BP residents, and I actually started crying. It wasn’t about the mini fridge at all. 

I cried when many of my residents moved out, but Paula was the last of my freshmen — the last of my baby sisters — to leave. When I hugged her on those steps by Stonehenge, she told me she was upset that I was leaving. I told her with tears in my eyes, “You are ready to be a sophomore. And if you are ready to be a sophomore, that means I’m ready to graduate.” 

It felt strange how consoling Paula also consoled me. It felt strange to coach her through this moment of moving into summer and getting older and saying goodbye; meanwhile, I, too, needed to hear myself say, with strength, “I’m ready to go.” 

Islands of hope

It all makes me wonder: Perhaps we were never meant to covet this place forever. Perhaps Notre Dame and Holy Cross and Saint Mary’s are these small islands of hope, places we go to to grow and rebuild and find truth and strength for a couple of years. 

Perhaps forever is a farce that we’ve all gotten too caught up.

Perhaps we discovered this hope — that resides in these islands of hope — in college seminar where we presented for 15 minutes on anything that mattered to us (singleness or kendama or racial disparities in healthcare). 

Perhaps we discovered this hope on the streets of Munich when we stayed up navigating every form of public transportation, trying to find our way home in dirndls.

Perhaps we discovered this hope in a stranger’s Subaru on the way to Chicago to go to a conference, and these strangers became friends in a pancake house, and you popped edibles and watched “I Think You Should Leave” all the way home.

Perhaps we discovered this hope every time Tyrone said “Good morning” to us at 1:30 a.m. in the Huddle when we were up until ungodly hours working.

Perhaps we discovered this hope when friends showed up for us — in the big moments, like a poetry reading; or in the little moments, at 2 p.m. outside of Chick-fil-A, in a Trader Joe’s aisle.

Maybe we’ll find it somewhere out there

This hope can’t be bottled, but it’s not reserved for this place. That’s something I’ve grown to understand, as I’ve watched my beautiful/epic/incredible girlfriends from the class of 2024 carry all the hope and promise from their years in Notre Dame, Indiana, into their next experience.

These are the girls who text me asking for updates on Senior Week, the girls who came home to me almost every weekend this fall for home football games to dance and tailgate and tell me about The Real World outside of here.

I’ve realized that hope doesn’t go away just because we do. Maybe we’ll find it somewhere out there, outside of this experience.

When my dog died, I started to see him in the eyes of every animal I encountered and every seagull soaring against a blue sky. When my heart broke, I started to find love in small glances and smiles from strangers. When I left Rome, I found home in speaking broken Italian whenever I got a bit too tipsy or running around a new city in search of a cool cafe or bar.

Now, when this college experience ends, I hope I will find Notre Dame, Indiana, even when I’m not physically there. This place has so much heart, and it’s impossible not to see that.

The thing about mortality

Last summer, my dad went into cardiac arrest a few times. I was here in South Bend, Indiana, by myself and completely helpless. Grace cooked me an Italian dinner at her family home a couple days after my dad was hospitalized, and I’ll never forget finding out my dad went into cardiac arrest again while I was eating spaghetti and tiramisu with my dear friend. I felt horrible. I felt sick to realize how tangible mortality was — how, without mortality, we stood no chance. We never stood a chance. 

I suppose we were always destined for endings. 

After my dad was released from the hospital, he told me that if not for our mortality, we wouldn’t have so much fun. If things didn’t end — people didn’t die, our hearts never broke, college never ended — we wouldn’t have so much fun.

He said what’s the point of forever. We have to get comfortable with our own mortality and find some peace in it. This is me trying to find peace.

“Closing Time” by Semisonic

Closing time is all the lights coming up at Newf’s and “My Way” by Frank Sinatra playing for the last time of your undergraduate career. Closing time is becoming best friends with some girls from Gateway, you would’ve never suspected as a freshman — I wish I could tell younger Kate that some of her best friends were in the periphery. Closing time is your best friend sending you a picture of something that reminded her of your poetry. Closing time is making things right with your first friend of college around a lake and at the Grotto and really truly forgiving him and yourself, all in one breath. Closing time is telling Kyra that you hate to admit it, but you were totally threatened by her and Casey freshman year when they became so close with the lads of South 205. Closing time is a big hug and kiss on the cheek. 

Closing time is knowing — hoping — that we will all find Notre Dame, Indiana, in any shamrock we see ever, any Fighting Irish fan at the airport and anyone who shows the heart of the friends we found here. 

Perhaps it wasn’t Notre Dame, Indiana, that did that. It was you (and you and you). You were always the heartbeat of this place. You were the first home of my adulthood, the first family of my adult life.

Notre Dame, Indiana, will forever be etched in the fabric of my being — not like a tattoo, like a promise. A whisper that makes the hair on the back of my neck stick up, calling me home. 

Home doesn’t have to be here, but here will always be home. 

And to the young ones coming up and into their college experience: Take it all in. Take it in like it was your last day. The smells, the people, the stress — it’s all beautiful. Just lean in. Someday, you’ll be walking home from class like you have all the time left in the world, and someday you’ll be in a Margaritaville in Chicago before your Senior Booze Cruise, wishing you could have it all back. I swear. I swear.