Editor’s Note

I have a bad habit of calling my mom when I’m walking somewhere. I’m never calling to ask her anything, or to tell her something specific. Usually I just start talking. I call her in between classes, on the walk from my house to the library or even when I’m just walking from dinner to a meeting. She picks up, and I talk at her for five minutes. I tell her what I’m doing, what I did earlier, what I need to do later, something annoying someone said, something I forgot, something I’m worried about and what I ate that day. Then I arrive at my destination.

“Okay, I’m here. Love you, bye!”

Then I hang up. I have apparently decided that my mother’s role in my life is, at least on weekdays, to accompany me between buildings. 

This wasn’t always part of my daily routine. Freshman year, I wore headphones everywhere: walking to class, walking back to my dorm, walking to the gym, grabbing food and taking it back to my study space. If I was walking by myself, I almost always had something playing. I liked moving through campus enclosed in my own little auditory world. I could walk through Hanover without having to fully be here.

Now my own voice is my podcast. I’ve decided that the more socially acceptable version of talking to myself is forcing my mom to listen to my stream of consciousness in little five-minute segments throughout the day. 

The funny thing is that my mom doesn’t really know what my walks from place to place look like. She’s visited campus many times with my dad and sister, and we’ve gotten a solid routine down: They show up, I take them to lunch (which means they’re paying), they complain about the state of whatever room I’m living in and I take them somewhere that I think will give them the best glimpse of what my life looks like when I’m away.

But there’s a difference between showing someone your life and letting them experience its monotony. You can’t really capture an ordinary Wednesday in a visit. Most of college is not what I decide to show my family on Family Weekend. 

My mom gets my narration of this dullness, in fragments and without much context. She listens as I greet people I walk past and buy sushi from Collis. She hears about the weather, usually because I am complaining about it, and about whatever I have just remembered that I need to do. She knows when I am running late because she can hear me walking faster. She knows when I have arrived somewhere because I tell her I have to go.

It’s a strange way to keep someone in your life. Most of what I tell her would not make for a very good update. There is no real beginning or end to any of our conversations. I hang up the phone, then pick it back up an hour later as I move to my next commitment of the day. 

Freshman year, I needed something playing in my ears to make Dartmouth feel less  unfamiliar. Now I know the routes well enough to notice the people and sounds and small routines along the way. I don’t need something to fill the walk anymore. I’ve just found a way to share it. 

I provide the soundtrack for nervous freshmen making their way to class. They get to hear about my awkward conversations and mistakes in the lab and hatred for the rain. They will probably think I am talking to myself unless they get close enough to hear my mom’s voice on the other end. Then I’ll get where I’m going.

“Okay, I’m here. Love you, bye!”

An hour later, when I start walking somewhere else, I’ll call her again.

This week in Mirror, we dig deeper into the familiar. One writer documents the long history of flair on campus, as seen on First-Year Trips and in Greek spaces alike. Our advice columnists analyze a rush meal that could have been something more. And in Mirror Asks, we get to know Mirror’s new writers.