- 12th Annual Young Alumni Essay Contest
- Honorable Mention: “Do We Part," Trini Bui ’16, MEd’18
- Honorable Mention: “I Swallowed the Moon," Kathryn O’Callaghan ’17
The airport terminal I’m in has few similarities with Farley Hall’s chapel, but somehow I can sit in both. My mediocre grounding techniques prompt me to cut through the haze in my head and fix on one location, offering me simple exercises. Five things to see. Four things to feel. Three to hear. Bright blue board with a departure time earlier than my alarm normally goes off — the quiet cause of the burning in my eyes. Feet on patterned carpet hiding the debris fallen from thousands of travelers’ shoes. Muted conversations of adventure, goodbyes, safe travels, I love yous. Dull ache in abdomen and potentially head? Or neck?
I pull out my phone to make a note to tell the doctor about the pain, and it doesn’t matter that the boarding pass that pops up places me somewhere in Terminal 3 of O’Hare International Airport. I am here waiting for the first flight out of Chicago, but when I lean into the worn pleather seat at my gate, I fall into one of the red oak chairs that lined my dorm chapel back about five years in time. I’m clothed in whatever T-shirt and shorts were on my dorm room floor five minutes before Mass started. The glow of the chapel is soft, as are the rugs beneath my bare feet. A hymn book is spread across my lap, and the piano blends into the noise of the radiator kicking in, but my mind belongs to the upcoming March midterms; I only have four tests to take before a much-needed spring break.
When I start trading out musical notes for notes from my anatomy class, I teeter back towards the terminal, the troubles of my own biology staggering into my mind.
“We will begin boarding shortly.”
I’m back in the airport again, waiting to fly to a city with a facility that treats the rare cancer sprouting throughout my 26-year-old body.
It’s been like this for the past few years. I find myself in liminal spaces like the chapel, the in-betweens of memories that inevitably lead to the greatest transitions while somehow letting me stay in the sweet spot of the “before.” The location changes periodically: The last night in my childhood room. My sister’s bridal suite before she leaves it. The empty doctor’s office, with the blood pressure monitor and ear scope loosely hanging on the wall, like modern art for my parents and me to enjoy.
Liminality is not nostalgia. It’s the space before nostalgia — the comfort before the yearn. When I question how I end up in the in-between, I think about the transitional nature of my early 20s, catching flights almost weekly, couch surfing, content that I could never be tracked down to one location. Liminality tells me to prepare for an impending diagnosis. It reminds me gently to save spaces to heal in.
That night in Farley Hall in March 2020 is always the first place I go.
“A big welcome to all our first-class passengers. . . .”
Others at the terminal gate begin tossing items into their carry-ons and gathering their kids. But all I see is Father David, who stands in the chapel with the difficult task of focusing college women who are running on little sleep. His homily, as always, starts with a trick question: What is the first commandment?
“Now boarding Group 1,” a voice intrudes from a loudspeaker.
No, that’s not the answer. . . . I’m not sure.
He doesn’t force the thought.
It’s “go forth and be fruitful.”
I mentally add this to my checklist of things to do that night.
No, he backtracks, not letting me slide by that easily. We often think there is one way to be fruitful.
And here is my favorite part of this particular liminal space — the reason I keep coming back to it. Father David gives us a mischievous and daring smile. But there are many ways to create life. Write a character into being, volunteer, bring life to someone who is low on it. Even in that small chapel, he’s proving it to us by example. I smile. There are many, many ways to be fruitful. There are many, many ways to give life.
I sit in that chapel, renewed with purpose, but I’m aware of what comes next. My heart does not want to go there, but these liminal spaces always have an exit: A sunrise. Canon in D. Test results. A closing hymn.
“Now boarding all remaining groups.”
I’m back at my gate, feeling the six years that have passed in my joints as I join the line.
Here is what comes next in the liminal space of the chapel: Within a week, the world will be shut down by an outbreak of the coronavirus. Within three weeks, I’ll return to campus to clear out my mini-fridge and take down my photo wall and turn off the fairy lights that adorn all 10 square feet of my room, kissing the chapel doors on my way out of the hall. Within a few months, Father David will have died. Within three years, I’ll be diagnosed with a rare sarcoma. In four years it’ll go away. In five, it’ll be back.
But not right now, not in this chapel. In this chapel, I am 21 and my biggest concern is a multiple-choice test. In a minute, I’ll board a plane for my next round of treatment, but for now I’m 21, and I am being told that to create life, we must be willing to give it. It is a great premonition for the fortitude I’ll need in the coming years, but it feels simply like a guiding light.
“Final call for all passengers.”
My airplane seat is not like the Farley Hall chairs. As I buckle up, my fingers graze scars that stand tribute to the disease that has altered my ability to conceive life. My mind is foggy with medication. I want to lift other passengers’ bags into the overhead bins, but I’m limited by the absence of muscles that no longer exist. Eager to provide, I shift in my seat so as not to impose on the armrest I share with the stranger I sit with. I open my window shade, just in case my neighbor prefers it, and it feels like the only thing I can do. I want to be fruitful.
It may seem counterproductive, living in these liminal spaces, but it’s not. I go back to that chapel not to hide from my life, but because it’s flooded with life: the before, in-between and after. These liminal spaces remind me that the ability to bear fruit stands with the capacity for growth and nourishment, and the ability to provide life stands with the appreciation and honoring of my own life at each stage. In these liminal spaces, I taste the fruit I labor to give.
I see a flight attendant in the aisle, waving a pamphlet and motioning to each exit. He’s wearing a green robe and looks just like Father David. This is the reality of living in liminal spaces: They tend to blend. He looks directly at me, checks if my seatbelt is secure and the seat itself is fully upright. Then he says, Put your own mask on first before assisting others.
Katie Laurence’s essay won first place in this magazine’s 13th annual Young Alumni Essay Contest — the Schaal Prize, named for former managing editor Carol Schaal ’91M.A. Laurence works in the technology sector of a financial institution and lives in Chicago.