Sebastian White :: Boston: Love it or leave it

ESSAYS

Leaving Alfred for the Last Time

Alfred Magazine | Spring 2004
By Sebastian White

The day I left Alfred for the last time, I wasn't really sad. But admittedly, I wasn't exactly happy about my departure, either. As Main Street swung out of view and the AU campus slowly disappeared in my rear view mirror, what struck me most was how completely devoid of emotion I felt about leaving Alfred, the tiny slice of western New York that had unexpectedly become home. The tenor of my relationship with the place had shifted so much over the years—from disdain to acceptance and eventually to utter love—that the passivity of my emotion the day I rolled out of town was off-putting, to say the least.

After three years in Alfred—I spent my sophomore year studying "abroad" in Boston because I couldn't stand the place—I had come full circle.

It used to be that as a hurried, anxious freshman, I'd go away for holidays and pray for airport closures, sickness, even car accidents—anything to delay the inevitable, dreaded return to a place that, quite simply, made me miserable.

It was the everyday feeling of powerlessness that got to me, the feeling of life constantly hanging over you and being completely unable to shift the lingering melancholy. It was the sense of stagnancy I felt, the perception that life—full of more exciting people and places—was whizzing by me and I was missing out. I was incapable of investing myself in Alfred. I was seventeen.

My departure wasn't a regrettable one, because when I returned to Alfred in the autumn of my junior year, something happened. I thought the place had changed, but it was just my attitude. I ended my grumbling about Alfred's maddening pace of life, stopped living from vacation to vacation, and finally began to accept that it might be possible to survive life even in a place bereft of decent cafes and New York Times home delivery. Mostly, though, I came to accept that the world would still be waiting for me when I graduated.

When I finally chose to slow down and experience life on Alfred's terms, the real Alfred, a vibrant and nurturing—not to mention superlatively beautiful—community emerged. Surely it was there all along, but when I first arrived in the Kanakadea Valley at seventeen, I wasn't ready for it.

The daily monotony that once dragged me down was now invigorating. If the extent of my stress was having to trudge through a foot of snow to share ideas and debate issues in class, I had little to complain about. I found friends who provided never-ending laughter, support, and jovial company for evenings in the library and countless Sunday mornings at the Jet. I found faculty who genuinely cared about me and who consistently welcomed me into their homes for equal parts coffee, conversation, and counsel.

In Alfred, I finally found a home. For a kid who'd moved half a dozen times before college, that meant something.

But before I knew it, my final semester at Alfred was winding down. Time had flown by so quickly that the prospect of an imminent departure was surreal. I had a job post-graduation, but I was ambivalent about taking it. Could I really leave Alfred after falling so deeply in love with the place?

A faculty member I adored told me there was work for me if I wanted to stay in Alfred for another year. The prospect of staying seemed very real and sounded, at least initially, like a good idea. "But you need to think about it seriously," she told me. "There's a place and time for Alfred in peoples' lives and you need to figure out if that time is through."

I sat speechless for a moment. "I don't know," I told her. "I just don't know." I couldn't admit that I wanted to stay. Self-consciously, I thought, "what would that say about me?"

Graduation came and went I decided to stay on in Alfred for a few weeks before heading home to New England. It was a glorious time to be in the Village, a time that sadly, students completely miss.

I spent each lazy, sun-drenched day reading on my apartment balcony, catching up on all the great books I'd amassed during college but that a heavy load of economics and sociology courses forced me to neglect for too long. With no obligations, slack days drifted into each other and time naturally slowed even further than usual in Alfred—the predictable crush of neighborhood kids streaming off the school bus at three o'clock the only real indicator of each lengthening day's passing. I didn't leave my perch overlooking South Main Street much that month—the athletic center became too far a journey, Rochester unimaginable.

May slipped by and before I knew it, Alfred was gunning towards mid-June. Professors had long dismissed their classes and the Alfred University campus was deserted. Friends had left, off on wild summer adventures—one last hurrah before the inevitably of employment set in.

Eventually, the school buses stopped roaring by in the afternoons as the Village came alive in summer's spectacular kaleidoscope of greens and blues. Main Street was quiet save for a few local kids laughing outside the new coffeehouse.

Students were gone and life was returning to normal.

It was time for me to leave.