MONO NO AWARE
Where I’m From
by Ryan Caine (2013)
I am from the long summer days to the long winter nights.
I am from the spring, summer, and fall baseball games, getting my pants darkened with infield dirt.
I am from the two sisters being born and coming home from the hospital.
I am from playing in the snow and sipping hot chocolate after.
I’m from the early Saturday morning pancakes and the smell of bacon.
I’m from the ice cream truck’s music: As sweet as the ice cream that followed.
I’m from the carefree weekends with my family, the good ones and the “Spring cleaning!” ones.
I’m from the football games on Sunday and the dinners after, sharing old stories that some of us had forgotten.
I’m from the afternoons spent in the woodshop with my dad, building who knows what?
I’m from all of the times I’ve heard “Go to your room!” or “Good job.”
I’m from all these moments, but I’m sure there’s more to come...
Where I’m From
by Ryan Caine (2024)
I am three quarters from the East Coast, and one quarter Midwest.
I am from crowded college gyms, in my own world of music and exertion.
I am from afternoons spent thrifting with Vivian and Phoebe, friends and sisters at the same time.
I am from winters where I no longer see the sun.
I’m from late Saturday mornings of chugging water and greasy breakfast food.
I’m from the roar of the crowd on game days: As fierce as the sport on the field.
I’m from weekends busier than weekdays, and the ones whose memories make my week.
I’m from nights out on Thursdays and the pizza after, giggling and debriefing the night’s events.
I’m from driving home from the market and calling my parents, talking about all that we haven’t seen each other for.
I’m from all of the times I’ve heard “I love you” or “Thank you, Ryan” or “Nice work.”
I’m from all these moments and more, and now I don’t want to go.
But I’m sure there’s more to come…
Different Kinds of Joy
I wrote my first version of "Where I'm From" in sixth grade, when my school had a no homework on Fridays policy and all I wanted to do on those blissfully homework free weekends was eat my dad's pancakes on Saturday morning, play Madden Mobile, and read my newest book. I still lived in Connecticut, in the house where my youngest sister was brought home from the hospital, and I had no sense of what life ahead of me would bring. The furthest I looked forward to was the next summer, when I wouldn't have homework at all and sunlight stretched late into the evenings.
I wrote my second version of "Where I'm From" eleven years later – a few short months before graduating college. And when I read them alongside each other, my immediate reaction was typing out “Made me sad” and closing my laptop. Dramatic. But it was much sadder than I expected to revisit what sixth grade me wanted to claim as things that defined where he was from, and how little overlap there was between those things and what I’d claim now. I haven’t picked up a baseball since high school, and getting white baseball pants filthy with infield dirt now just makes me think of laundry. The only weekends I spend with my family are over school breaks or the summer, and my sisters are no longer sleeping in cribs – last weekend I went out to a bar with one of them, and the weekend before that I saw the other star as Belle in her school’s rendition of Beauty and the Beast.
However, as much as I treasure childhood memories, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice everything I’ve experienced since sixth grade to go back and live in those moments again. All of those changes are natural parts of growing up, and the sadness I feel at losing them won’t ever be much more than nostalgia. But the emotion behind "Made me sad," from which this essay was born, also refers to the future ahead of me, and what might change in the ten years to come. Will my future self, newly in my thirties, one day read the second version of “Where I’m From” and think its words are childish, just as my twenty-one year old self saw the words I wrote in sixth grade? I’m sure it’s inevitable. And that sucks, and feels weird to think about, especially as I’m preparing to say goodbye to life in college. But no matter how much I don’t want to leave this time of my life, no matter how much I wish I could stay, it all must pass. If I want to experience the similar type of life changes that made me look back at my sixth grade self and see how far I’ve come, then I have to say goodbye.
And saying goodbye is helped by how every line across those two poems have one thing in common: joy. Each line speaks to a different kind of joy. Some have faded over the past eleven years, but new ones have taken their place. And I'm so excited to see the new types of joy that I'll get to write about eleven years from now – and every year in between. The beauty of things passing lies in what awaits when you let them run smoothly through your fingers. Bask in the feeling, but don't clench your hand and try to hold onto something that can't stay. And if that seems too difficult, then just think of the newest season of your favorite show that's due to come out soon. If you stayed anchored in time, how would you watch it?