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Thursday, June 10 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com MICHIGAN IN COLOR
The scorching summer heat blasted
my entire body as I opened the door
to my childhood bedroom that had
been frozen in time. After I froze in
single-digit temperatures for the first
time ever during my first semester of
college, the uncomfortable, sweltering,
Hawaiian air was comforting due to its
familiarity; it felt like home.
My family had added new cabinets to
the kitchen and painted the bathroom
bright orange while I was gone, but my
bedroom was exactly as I left it. The
video game posters I bought in eighth
grade remained pinned to the wall that
I haphazardly painted blue in tenth. On
my bookshelf, my elementary school
summer reading books sat next to the
Shakespearian plays I always nearly
fell asleep reading. A framed Pokémon
drawing made by a friend in sixth grade
rested on my dresser beside my high
school diploma. Collared shirts that my
high school’s dress code required us to
wear filled my closet. Even though I
spent the last few months away from
home, the placement of every mundane
object was etched into my memory.
This bedroom was like an extra
mental storage space for my memories.
Any time a memory became lost in
my jumbled consciousness, I could
look at an object and almost relive
all of the cringe-inducing, heartfelt
or devastating moments. This small,
square bedroom was also my sanctuary,
whether I was trying to sneakily play
Pokémon under the covers without my
parents catching me or staying up until
3 a.m. trying to finish a lab report. My
childhood stuffed animals stared at me
blankly, never judging me or expecting
me to contort my personality to fit
in with the crowd like I often felt my
peers did. I was most free when I chose
to lock myself away in my room.
Yet, walking into my bedroom felt
as if I was disturbing a space that had
retreated into a deep slumber. I sifted
through old T-shirts from colleges I
rejected and photos of people with
whom I no longer keep in contact. I
still hold the memories attached to
each object, but I’m beginning to feel
like this bedroom no longer knows
me. I have no physical mementos of
my first-year college experience and
my internal growth in my nest of shiny
objects. This room, with its old college
essay drafts gathered in a pile on the
ground, belongs to a version of myself
that no longer exists. Everything in this
room remained exactly where I left it,
but I have changed. For the first time,
my bedroom has not evolved with me.
After living away from home, I’ve
gained more of an appreciation for the
mundane. However, I know I cannot
bring every single object with me into
the next phase of my life. Walking
back into my old bedroom felt like
time traveling to the past, but now I’m
looking toward the future. One day, I
will leave this room for the final time,
and I will not take my broken kendama
or my scouting backpack with me.
When that time comes, I will not be sad
to let go of these relics of my childhood.
Just like the old version of myself that
is long gone, I think it soon will be time
to bury this time capsule for good.
Like most kids, I used to hate
the rain – the gray skies, the slight
emptiness in the roads due to the
forecast and the sharp chillness all
before the first droplets fell. I would
get this pit in my stomach, an ominous
feeling that made me nauseous. I
disliked everything about the rain.
The earthy smell when I first walked
outside right after the storm. The
continuous sound of the droplets
hitting the roof. But what bothered me
most was the thunder.
Every storm, I’d go and sleep near
my mother, and turn to her asking
her to stay awake. She’d ask me if I
was alright and I would respond with
a simple “yeah,” too embarrassed to
tell her I was scared, but she knew.
Nightmares, storms or just scary
thoughts always led to me asking her
to stay awake. But she would listen,
every night, and try her best to stay up
until she accidentally closed her eyes
for too long. Then it was just me, alone
with the thunder.
Every
possible
frightening
scenario would unfold in my head.
The lightning would hit the house or
the basement would flood, or worse: a
tornado, since rainy season is tornado
season. The power would go out,
turning off my bright blue night light
from Ikea and the red 3 a.m. written
on the display of our alarm clock from
the early 90s, and I would be left alone
in darkness alongside the ear-splitting
thunder. My mind continued to race
until I finally fell asleep, exhausted
from thinking too much.
A few years later, my parents,
brother and I had made the long flight
to visit our family back home in Tamil
Nadu, India. We were welcomed
with warm genuine smiles from my
grandmother and aunt along with the
heavy thunderstorm amidst 98 degree
heat. The 30-minute taxi drive home
felt like hours with rain constantly
pouring down the windows. Our
suitcases tied to the top of the car
absorbed every drop of water, leaving
some of our belongings wet. The
storm continued with heavy rain
throughout the night and scattered
thunder and lightning.
After reaching the flat, the
downpour only got heavier, but being
a little older, I was not as scared as I
used to be. Although I wasn’t terrified
of the thunder, it still bothered me,
spending long nights awake due to
the mix of the loud storm and jet lag.
While I couldn’t fathom the thought
of thunder and lightning as positive
occurrences, my aunts, cousins and
grandmother were not even the
slightest bit phased by the storm; if
anything, they saw it as a good thing
and were grateful. The dry, drought-
like heat of Chennai was temporarily
suppressed
with
wetness
and
humidity. My aunt would leave the
door to the ground-level balcony
open so the uncomfortably hot flat
would become slightly cooler. A sense
of relief grew inside of me as the heat
in the room became bearable.
My grandmother sat in the living
room fanning herself with that week’s
newspaper, while I played with my
toys and watched the only English
movie playing on TV, Planet of the
Apes. The rain made the environment
feel relaxing but at the same time, still a
little uncomfortable. The same feeling
of “the calm before the storm” arose
except we were halfway through the
storm, which always resulted in a
common power outage. Even while
quickly overheating to the point of
sweat puddles surrounding me from
the absence of air conditioning and a
working ceiling fan, I found comfort in
the sense of community these outages
brought. With power, everyone was
off doing their own thing, cooking,
working or watching TV. But with
the outage, everyone quickly came
together. They’d walk into the living
room with a slight sigh and a quick
comment: “current pochu” (Tamil
for “current went”). My aunt would
go around lighting the candles in the
flat and the small flame would light up
the room just enough to see the color
of her sari. We would talk nonsense
while sitting on the couch, waiting
for the power to return. My cousin
would throw in a few harmless jokes
about how I would sit with my feet off
the ground to avoid the small lizards
that constantly ran through the flat
or about how I didn’t like the dark in
order to lighten the mood and distract
me. My aunt would nudge him telling
him to stop teasing me and everyone
would laugh. Then abruptly, the lights
would turn back on, the conversations
would end and life would continue
just like that.
After coming back to Michigan, I
was grateful the storms here weren’t
as violent as they were in India.
Life went on until we reached the
first storm of the season, and I was
surprisingly fine with it. I reminisced
about the time I spent in India, where
everyone felt relieved when it rained
since the air was normally dry and the
family came together and made jokes
and told stories. The rain brought us
all together. Thinking back to this
sense of togetherness brought me to
finally view the rain positively, the
same way I did there.
A few times, my family and I were
able to experience a storm during our
road trips. The lightning would flash
and my mother would quickly order
us to close our eyes and not look at
the bright streak in the sky since she
would always say the light is too
bright for our eyes to handle. I would
smile and nod as she said that, while
directly staring at the lightning
streak with dangerously wide-open
eyes. I didn’t want to miss the slight
purple hue that filled the sky, the
beauty that I always seemed to miss
since I closed my eyes and hid under
the cover at the first sign of a storm
for so long.
The
best
part
of
most
thunderstorms is when friends or
family are talking to a group and a
sudden burst of thunder interrupts
them. We all look at each other
smiling but in slight disbelief of the
thunder being that loud. Someone
comments “Woah” or “That was
loud” and the rest lightly laugh right
before resuming the conversation
exactly where it was left off. The
thunder was like a break mid-
conversation. Not only does it break
our conversation, but it breaks
everyone in the vicinity of the storm’s
conversations as well. We all hear the
thunder at the same time, see the
lightning at the same time and likely
react to it at the same time. It’s like a
forced connection between us all. It’s
as if the thunderstorm was a break
from regular fast-paced life itself, a
midlife interruption, where we all
pause for a minute and look around,
before resuming back to our normal
life the way my family in India does
every storm.
The thunder is loud, the rain makes
the grass messy and the storm can be
scary. But without the scariness and
ugliness of the storm, there would be
no purple hue lighting up the sky, no
coolness in the air around my aunt’s
flat and no brief moment of extra
connection between us all.
Time capsule
The calm of the storm
ANDREW NAKAMURA
MiC Columnist
ROSHNI MOHAN
MiC Columnist
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