It takes six hours to drive home to New York from Charlottesville.My father left Sunday morning. He had come down with our cocker spaniel Skylar for the weekend to watch his alma mater Temple University get slammed by the Wahoos.
He was going to stop in Washington on the way home to buy my sister a fish for her dorm room and take her out to lunch.
He drove down the street around the Corner, and I wondered how long it would be until he cranked up the Temptations, the Supremes or the Four Seasons and rolled down the windows.
"Give mom a hug for me when you get home," I had told him. "I'll see you in two weeks."
Two weeks. Two weeks until Thanksgiving.
The semester accelerates every year around this time, and every year we say, "It has gone especially fast this year," blah blah blah.
But this year is different. This year it really has gone especially fast.
As I walked up to my apartment, kicking the newly fallen leaves, I could only think of how different Thanksgiving will feel this year.
For the first time, my mother has surrendered to my father's barbecued turkey. The Aronstein household will not feature the traditional "dueling turkeys," and my Mom will instead make a rack of lamb.
"I hate losing to the bastard," she told me.
Also for the first time, my mother is not exactly sure who will be coming.
"I just send out invitations and see who RSVPs," she told me a few weeks ago.
This semester, my family has suffered highs and lows unlike any other period during my college career.
A few weeks ago, my Nana went to the hospital for a heart condition that I still don't understand. I only know that she might need to get a pacemaker.
The leaves were just starting to change.
"What happened?" I asked her on the phone, sitting outside Newcomb Hall at one of those iron tables behind Peabody.
"I'm taking a vacation," she said.
We talked for about an hour.
"You know, there are so many worse things in the world than getting a pacemaker."
I was in the midst of thinking about papers and metaphysics and the forms and the nature of contemporary literary culture in America.
"Stressed" is how I termed it.
"I'm hanging in," I told people when they asked me how was doing.
And here's my Nana. Pushing 90 ("You know, I'm really starting to feel old sometimes").
And she can claim to be on vacation in the hospital.
Three weeks later, out of the hospital, she sent a tub of miniature chocolate chip cookies to our apartment.
I imagined her small, strong hands fighting the batter, and the silence of the house as it filled with the smell of baking chocolate.
The cookies were gone after a day, and I called her again to thank her.
"I just can't wait until Thanksgiving," she said, the waves of her voice smacking up against the back of her throat.
"We'll get you up to New York if I have to strap you to the roof of my car," I told her.
I've watched my family come together around my aunt and younger cousin Danielle. Caught up in a crash course of how much can go wrong in the span of three months, my aunt's voice wavered on the phone when I talked to her.
This time, I was sitting on the patio outside Clemons Library, the sun setting and the air getting chilly over the arena construction site and the Blue Ridge in the distance.
All I wanted to do was drive home. Drive those six hours north and see everyone. To knock on their doors and say, "Look, I've got relatively nothing to do. I mean, I have a book to read, but I don't need surgery or anything. Let me help. I can wash dishes or something."
Six hours, that's it.
Pump up some road music, put the windows down and turn on the heat full blast. That's what driving home for Thanksgiving feels like.
This year, I'll really just be thankful to get around the table together with everyone. It's like triage. We get together, fortify ourselves with tradition, cranberry sauce, wine and conversation.
And then we go forward, having assessed the dilemmas and collective problems of our own personal hurricanes.
This year will be different.
My sister and I will both be prodigal children, riding gloriously home to the ranch.
There's new furniture in the living room, and who knows what color my mother has painted my room this year.
My parents have been empty nesters for the first time, and haven't killed one another.
Yet.
I'm already looking forward to those six hours -- interrupted this time by a short visit to pick up my sister -- then back on the road we'll go.
Fighting over music.
Fumbling with the EZPass for tolls.
Recapping the semester.
Inching toward home, toward my mom in her apron, my dad in his tan slippers and flannel shirt, toward our freshly-groomed dog.
Toward home.
And this time for a week! Yipeeeeee!
A-J's column runs bi-weekly on Tuesdays. He can be reached at aronstein@cavalierdaily.com.
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