While there still remains some seven weeks before I say my more lasting goodbyes to this place, much of what physically shapes my world here is beginning to be packed away in boxes and there’s a strange feeling that the calendar has shifted such that what have been familiar routines of my daily life in Kalamazoo are now turning into potential ‘last times’…last time to bike to the farmer’s market, last time to dance in the street with Cheyenne, last time to sift through galleries for free wine samples at Art Hop, last time our porch will fill with the cozy assortment of laughing friends, an occasional stranger, and plates of fresh vegetables and warm pie that is a potluck. The close is nearing and I want to say thank you as it does.”
Some weeks before, just after I left my final class on the last day of my undergraduate career at Kalamazoo College, I sat down on a bench outside of Mandelle Hall, a building that has held much of my time over the last four years working in Admission, and wrote a gratitude list. Normally I wouldn’t have picked this bench, would have strayed toward a more secluded space on the grassy quad or travelled alone to the Arb to be among the trees. But that day I chose to stay, looking out at the intersection of Thomson and Academy to watch the steady stream of students form a walking, weaving, collective trail map between classrooms, the library, the sunny steps outside the Fine Arts Building, over and over and over that red brick road. Strangers passed by me, fellow seniors called out ‘happy last day,’ friends came and went, sitting with me for a little while on their way, and over some three or four hours, I slowly made my list:
courage
vulnerability
voice
presence
fierce friendship
staying
kindness
compassion
gratitude
wholeness
family
showing up
critical and challenging love
commitment
values
listening
full conversation
bound wellbeing
sit with discomfort
profound growth
embrace
intentional community
to be willing to be dazzled
generosity
opportunity of laughter
bold hope
But, when I challenged myself to turn these words, ideas, philosophies, and directions into a grateful farewell to the college, city, and four years of living that have radically shaped my humanity, I was left at a loss. For two weeks, after many a night spent staring at the blank white screen on my computer, searching for some words, any words, to tumble out from beneath my tapping fingertips, this is as far as I could ever make the words reach:
“Dear Kalamazoo,
Thank you.”
I went home to Indiana for a visit, now with only three weeks remaining as a Kalamazoo resident, sat underneath a pine tree and, as sap dripped onto my notebook, slowly spelled out another list:
Thank you for the
conversation
pulling the rug out from under me
self-sufficiency
times I argued against you
rejections
unexpected lessons
caregiving lessons
ability to wrap family around me
sacred rage and courageous love
epiphanies
forced letting go
“D’ on my first psych exam
willingness to open my arms to complexity
Senegal—for how its difficulty changed me, for how its lessons returned me to thanks
I tried, again and again, to transform these lists, these tentative, grammar-lacking sentiments, into some sort of ‘dear Kalamazoo’. It’s not that I wasn’t full of thanks; rather, there were many nights during that whole and full last week in that place, as I slowly packed away that beloved big yellow house, whose walls witnessed a full twelve months of such life and living and growth, in which I found myself overwhelmed by how much the phrase ‘thank you’ seemed to be spilling from my chest cavity. The thanks were there, to be sure, but too large and complex and raw and real, it seemed, to be articulated by my alphabet.
And then, I left. I filled the car with boxes, wrapped by arms around in farewell, locked the door, and some few hours later found myself down the road, with family on either side of me, finding awe in iconography, and pushed to place these words onto page:
Tickle of a Brush
I heard of a painter
who,
upon hearing
‘it’s perfection’
in description of his artistry,
exclaimed:
‘no.’
There were small imperfections
everywhere.
All through it,
slight tickles of the brush, slight
disproportions of a word, slight
curves to that straight
line; and the weeping
sun looks more jellyfish
than symbol of a mourning
universe.
If it were perfect,
if every note of music
were of equal
measure,
there would be
no rhythm.
And then how would we move?
As my finger marked that final question mark, I knew, then, the words for which I’d been grasping, the words which were there all along, woven within those lists and unfinished sentences, the attempts and the blank white screens: imperfection.
Dear Kalamazoo,
Thank you.
Thank you for not being amazing. Thank you for not being a place over which I have ever gushed. Thank you for never feeling absolutely, entirely, definitively right. Thank you for how, four years later, I can, in deep honesty, tell someone: you know, this place still feels foreign to me. Your foreignness pushed me to find home in my own skin, challenged me to seek sureness in my spirit, tumbled me out, four years later, telling someone: my soul now exists self-sufficient. Kalamazoo, you didn’t complete me, and because of that, my four years with you taught me to courageously live every day toward my own complete self.
Kalamazoo, during our four years together, you tossed me upside down, pulled the ground from underneath me, plunged me deeply past my comfort zone such that I now walk away from you a more alive and authentic self.
Kalamazoo, I left you with a little bit of eagerness, a surprisingly-large bit of sadness, and a willingness to be dazzled that I now understand to also go by the name of strength, which my four years in this place has asked me to grow in myself.
Kalamazoo, don’t expect me at homecoming; crowds overwhelm me and orange is my least-favorite color.
Kalamazoo, do expect me to think of and thank, often, the imperfect you as, to the rhythm, I move.
Imperfectly,
Callie
callie daniels-howell 