Time-Travel by Homecoming

Did you watch that FRIENDS reunion special? There was this segment at the beginning of that keeps running through my head. 

The set for the show has been completely rebuilt on a soundstage. David Schwimmer, who played Ross on the show (…do I have to say that? Is there a soul on earth who doesn’t know that David Schwimmer was Ross?) is the first to arrive. We watch as a flood of emotions – the memories of an entire, defining decade of his life – overcome him. Then he’s left alone to wander, and to wonder…how long before the rest of my former castmates get  here? 

Eventually, one of them walks through the soundstage door. Then another. Each subsequent cast member has a similar reaction to Schwimmer’s: Oh my god. I can hardly believe it. Here we are. If you watch their faces carefully, you can see that in the moments before they see their old Friends smiling back at them, each actor looks truly terrified. 

Watching the special at home, I found this flash of anxiety palpable and relatable. It’s that mixture of excitement and apprehension you feel upon any kind of homecoming, as you prepare to hold the past up to the present and see how they fit. The place, the people, and yourself: will the two versions match at all? How will you feel about the changes?

Growing up, I always imagined that, at some point in my future, I’d be able to visit the past. I mean that somewhat literally. It’s not that I truly thought someone in the 21st century would invent a reliable, fallacy-proof time machine. It was just something I kind of looked forward to, like I looked forward to one day seeing a European castle or the Pacific Ocean. When I’m old enough, I’ll visit the 1920s. And the 1820s. And the 1520s . I even have a specific memory of when it finally dawned on me that I’d been fantasizing this way all my life, and that it was, truly, just a fantasy. I was in 11th grade. 

Yes, I was an 11th grade honor student reading Once and Future King in Mr. Delliquadri’s class, and some part of me still thought that I was going to go back to the future. 

Even though I awoke to the unreality of this notion way back then, I know there’s still part of me that remains a little...unstuck in time. But now, my time travel fantasy has more to do with my own life and memories. I have this little inkling that somehow, in the future, I’ll be able to visit my own past. But not through photos and stories. Like, literally visit. I’ll catch myself imagining the trip, and have to snap myself back down into the oppressively one-directional timeline of reality. 

Why all this talk of revisiting one’s past? Ok, I’ll come clean. I’ve just spent an entire week in the past! But not the time travel-fantasy version. The FRIENDS reunion version. The version where you brace yourself before you turn any corner, not entirely sure if you want to find things changed or unchanged. 

I went home to Chicago for the first time in 2 years, home to Hyde Park for the first time in at least that long, and home to Chesterton, IN for the first time in I-honestly-have-no-idea-how-long, but probably not less than 7 years. It’s been a big week. 

It’s all too much for one newsletter, so over the next few weeks, I’m going to write a bit about each of these places. As ever with Metaforia, my intention is not to autobiographize, but rather to stir up some sense of recognition in you, person who is reading this. Hopefully this little experiment in serialization will do just that. 

-Marissa 

P.S. If you live in Chicago or Chesterton and I should have seen you this week, and didn’t…sorry. A week was not enough; I’ll be back!