Our theme for the month of June is “spirits.”
Oftentimes when I have to give a reason for why I picked up my life and moved back into my parent’s house at the ripe age of twenty-nine, I cite my desire to spend time with my family. I was the only child who stayed away from Massachusetts for a period of time, and this meant that for six years my family time was concentrated in two week sprints—a flurry of activity around Christmas and a few “hurry up and wait” weeks at our camping ground spot.
As I’m coming up close to a year on moving back home though, besides gaining a chip on my shoulder for not having my own apartment while on a teacher’s salary, I’m contending with what family time actually looks like in 2026 with four adults living together. Most mornings, I eat sourdough crumpets made fresh by my father as he listens to the daily financial news. Most nights, we are all home, contented by our device(s) of choice. I find myself walking around with headphones in, asking my sister to repeat the comment she made; I find myself repeating questions to my father as he comes home from his daily walk, the headphones I gifted him last Christmas in his ears.
I had a moral panic about this a month ago. The Atlantic dropped the perfect article in my lap for guiding my students to think about real-world discussions about companionship and AI, which in passing mentions how the amount of hours Americans have spent at home alone has increased over the past few decades (cue the elephant in the room). I’m squandering all this time I want to be spending with my family, I thought. What am I doing?
When my sister got home, I forced her to play a board game with me that she was good at. I suggested a movie night with my father a week later where we watched Sinners. As with most moral panics, that was about the extent of it.
But like a stone in my shoe, the worry continues to roll around. It wedged itself under my heel when I read Sam’s guest post, hearing that the Project Neighborhood program at Calvin is coming to an end in 2027.
I’ve spoken before about the PN house that completely changed the trajectory of my life—a trajectory that I guess I’m back on, now that I’m in the place I expected to be at the job I expected to have. Reading about Project Neighborhood ending, however, I genuinely teared up. I know how transformative it is to have an intentional community, to commit to not being alone together but being together together.
My Nizhoni mentors, Nic and Linnea, were the definition of spirit, in many senses of the word. Nic was the spontaneous one: planning house pranks, suggesting dumpster diving trips, creating games on chore charts, coercing us into house workouts, pulling out a boardgame on a random Wednesday night, doodling on the whiteboard. Linnea had the quiet calmness: playing the piano, inviting to share the egg casserole she made, but also enthusiastically decorating for Christmas and providing costumes for the house mandated Trick or Treating on Halloween.
I struggled last year when I pseudo-stepped into their role. I felt like my housemates and I were alone together: we crossed paths and we had dinner occasionally and we chatted in the kitchen, but we didn’t spontaneously take a sledding trip in the wintery weather nor pull out a board game on a quiet Friday night. I don’t have that spirit. I’m not the fun teacher; I’m the one who baked four batches of blondies and one gluten-free version in order to offer a bribe, an apology, and a hope all in one.
But. I still want that PN spirit, that Nic and Linnea spirit, in my house. I want to coerce my siblings into playing the board games we grew up with. I want to share the crazy thing my student did over the dinner table. I want to host friends over for dinner and have an hour long focused conversation without a phone or earbuds in sight. I want to act in accordance with what I know: that I love my family deeply and that I will not have them forever.
May I not squander this opportunity. May we not squander these opportunities.
Alex Johnson (‘19) is a high school English teacher in Massachusetts. She spends her days being an uncool adult who enjoys reading romance novels and explaining niche rhythm game strategies.
