I’d never received a package from her before, and its timing (nowhere near my birthday) made it extra tantalizing. She’d been overly generous with the packing tape, so there was no way for me to open the box without the intervention of my mother’s knife. The fact that the package had traveled over an ocean made it seem even more magical, and its contents did not disappoint—which means, I suppose, that they appointed. There were Cadbury chocolates, the likes of which I’d never experienced before. There were paperback editions of Roald Dahl with covers entirely unlike the American ones. There was a toy truck whose name I believed to be Laurie until my mother explained it was spelled a different way. Wrapped in the arts section from the Sunday Guardian, there was a piece of red felt that was revealed to be the northernmost tip of Paddington Bear. And then, at the bottom of the box, there was a sweatshirt with the Oxford university crest. I put it on immediately, and it fit perfectly.
Pinned to the sweatshirt was a short note.
I thought you might like these. Consider it a gift for no reason.
Love,
Grandmum
I was enchanted.
My father, when he came home, was more acerbic. “Are you kidding me?” was his reaction when told about the package.
My mother insisted that I write a thank-you note, and I mustered up my finest penmanship to do so. Thus began a pattern that lasted for more than a decade: Out of the blue, my grandmother would send me a package, always with Cadbury chocolate and always with books, and I would reply with a thank-you note that gave her the slimmest of glimpses into my life alongside much more voluminous reactions to the books she had sent. This was how we corresponded. The relationship didn’t require much more than that, which suited both of us well.
In the meantime, my fantasy of Oxford set in. It was my literary utopia, a beacon of erudition in a world that seemed to increasingly despise the learned. Any time a classmate disdained me or derided me, I imagined there were plenty of people at Oxford who would understand exactly what I meant. Every time my father or mother looked at me as if to say How did our merged DNA conjure this pedantic cypher?, I would picture a kind Oxford professor who would admire my inquisitiveness rather than be mystified by it or feel betrayed by it.
The downside of knowing this better place existed was the nagging, constant doubt that I would ever be good enough to be admitted through its gates. What if what I intended as profound insight was revealed to be mere bloviation? What if I read all the right books and surveyed all the right thinkers but couldn’t manage to string together the right words myself? There’s such a thin, unpredictable line between aspirant and pretender, and it shifted so often in my mind that I never knew where I stood. As the application process began, it felt like the worst kind of reckoning—I could endure my schoolmates calling me pretentious or weird if my own idiosyncratic self-education came to be respected by the people I actually respected. But if Oxford said I didn’t pass muster? It would be devastating—and that was exactly what I was expecting in my dark, insecure heart.
Then, much to my surprise, they let me in.
My mother was with me when I found out, and she and I hugged and cried and felt as close as we’d ever been. Hours later, it hit her how far away I was going to be, which tinged her excitement with a certain eau d’empty nest. I waited two days to tell my father and only did so because there was no way of getting around it. He had his own life now, away from my mother and mostly away from me. I interrupted from time to time, to witness his foolhardy attempts at fatherishness. When I told him I’d been admitted to Oxford, he congratulated me—not with a hug, but with that simple word, congratulations. Then, almost in the same breath, he asked me how much it was going to cost. When I told him, he murmured something noncommittal, then asked me where else I’d applied. I’d given him the full list the previous time we’d dined, but I repeated it again, making the other options as lifeless as possible so my position would be clear.
Luckily for me, my father’s friends must have been impressed when he told them his son had gotten into Oxford; where I imagined a bastion of poets wrestling with their own despondency as a way of pulling the world out of its mire, my father and his friends saw a breeding ground for Future Leaders. Understanding the entitled direction that wind was blowing, I made my prime ministrations to my father along Future Leader lines, and after some cutthroat negotiations that got far more personal than they objectively needed to be, my parents worked out the tuition question.
It was only then, when I knew the dream was in fact coming true, that I told Lily. We had been assuming we’d both be staying in the New York area—she’d been admitted to Barnard and I’d been admitted to Columbia. Now I was mucking that up, and wanted to be sure I wasn’t mucking up our future as well.
I took her to Elephant & Castle to break the news over scones and tea. Perhaps because I had chosen a British-themed establishment for the delivery scene, she didn’t seem particularly surprised. It was incredible, really: She knew how much Oxford meant to me, and was thrilled on my behalf in a way that nobody else in my life had managed to muster.
“But what about us being together in the city?” I asked.
“We can work it out,” she promised. And I believed her in a way I’d never believe in myself. Because Lily always keeps her promises, even if she has to shoulder the world and bend time in order to do so.
We knew long distance would be hard, especially considering my disinclination toward the digital tether. I didn’t want to rely on texting and FaceTiming and writing witty, sweet comments under each other’s posts as a way of keeping the kindling under our love.
“My favorite things about you are in-person things,” I told Lily, and it was true. I promised to write her letters and to figure out a way for us to travel to Europe together before she started Barnard and I started my second year. I wasn’t going to be tempted to play the field or sow my oats; for me, Lily was the field, and she could have all of my oats. She didn’t fit perfectly into my new life, but the beauty of our relationship is that she hadn’t fitted perfectly into my old life, either. Love teaches you that fitting is overrated; what you need to do is change the shape of your life to make the connection. We’d done it before; we’d do it again.
It was hard at first. I’d sit in my room and listen to Death Cab for Cutie’s “Transatlanticism” (the song, not the album) on repeat.
I need you so much closer …
I’d write her letters on the backs of Oxford postcards.
I need you so much closer …
I’d call her to hear her voice, to hear what she had to say, to experience the reassurance of her hearing me.
This was during the first two weeks of school. Then, fiercely and relentlessly, Oxford took over my life.
The scenes on those postcards were the scenes I’d carried in my head ever since the sweatshirt had caused my curiosity to bloom. Verdant lawns and sophisticated cathedrals of learning. Gargoyle guardians keeping watch beneath cornices. Iron gates older than most of the books we’d read. Blackwell’s bookstore and the Bodleian Library, opening their shelves to the whims of genius and the genius of whims. The hallowed ground felt wide open, the citadel of knowledge entered at last. That was my postcard version.
The problem was that the postcards tended to show empty lawns, empty buildings. I hadn’t taken into account that there would be other people walking on these paths, crowding these gateways, pulling books from the shelves, and talking loudly into their phones and texting laboriously as if their minds and communication skills had been fully outsourced to Apple.