One of the objects that I brought with me to class on the first day was a picture that my sister drew. An eight-year-old girl with a hugely active imagination, my sister is constantly drawing. I have a million drawings that she’s given me, but when faced with the decision of what object to bring that really says something about my family, I snuck this one of my mother’s wall in her office. Part of the lure is that the picture contains all of our immediate family members, but even more than that, the picture contains an eerie sense of who we are as an entity. 

In the foreground, there’s the artist herself and our four (now three) cats–who, if you ask my mom, actually do run the house. Right behind the five of them are my mother and stepfather. These are the people that my sister sees every day, so she’s obviously made them the biggest. One of the cats, though the photograph I took doesn’t show it, is actually in the process of peeing, since that particular cat likes to pee on things when he’s mad at us. In the background, my grandmother, who’s identifiable by the wrinkles on her face that my sister kindly drew in, standing next to me. My grandmother and I are, I suppose, more further removed from my sister than the rest of our family members. My grandmother lives next door, and I live all the way in New Paltz.

What’s interesting to me in regards to this picture as it pertains to a “habitus,” however, is that this picture never leaves my person. I have fitted it into the back of my binder, opposite a schedule of all the assignments I have due that week. 

In the binder, I keep all my syllabi for classes and manila folders in which I store my readings for each class. I had first put the picture in there as a way to make the binder as a whole feel less daunting, but now I am more interested in this idea of the picture as a transient object in my habitus, just as I am a transient object in the unit of our family.

I didn’t frame the picture and put it on my wall, or skip the framing all together and take it up there like a lazy, broke college student. Instead I made sure that it would come with me wherever I went, that when I was in the library working, all I had to do was look over and be reminded of where I came from, and of whom I’m always trying to make proud. What does that say about me? I’m not sure, except that my whole habitus has become a habitus of convenience. Living in a dorm room, one is always aware that one’s living space isn’t permanent, isn’t even theirs. There are so many restrictions to what we can and can not put in our space that it often feels sterile and lifeless. The furniture is hard and uncomfortable, and we’re not allowed to bring any extra in (though I’ve cheated that rule and brought a folding wood bookcase for the past two years). I’m always aware that my area is one of transition. I’m never stopping for long there.

And even when I go home, I’m aware that it’s not really my home anymore. There’s my family, of course. And I have my own room. I’m lucky enough even to have my own office. But there’s always a sense that it’s a place I’ve left, and that in doing so I’ve also left an irrevocable chasm between my family’s space and mine. So perhaps the conclusion is that, without even knowing it, I’ve converted my entire habitus into something transient, that can be moved when I need it to. It follows, then, that the most important things follow me around, even in my micro-travels across campus from day to day. Maybe the object of the picture itself shapes the way I interact with this transience, letting me leave behind the anxious nature of never having anywhere permanent by allowing a physical representation of those I love come with me to all places. That picture is the thing that’s permanent, and maybe it makes every space a kind of home to me.