Note: this post is a loose sequel to one I wrote earlier this year, “Gen L.” It’s not a requirement to read that to understand the following, but you should give it a read anyway. I NEED ATTENTION.

Four of my friends made me return to a subject I was sure I’d thought all the way through.

In mid-July, I returned to Grand Rapids. I’d been invited to a wedding that had gotten postponed, but since I had everything arranged and I hadn’t been to GR since last April, I made it into a long weekend. And what’s a visit to your college town without visiting your alma mater?

On campus, I found my friend and fellow alumnus Hannah. I sometimes joke that I have a friend “type”: people who are way way busier than me. Hannah’s a prime example. When we were students, Hannah and I’s friendship mostly consisted of brief greetings as we passed each other on our way to class. Nowadays, she’s near the top of the pyramid in Calvin’s admissions department, so our friendship continues to subsist on ninety-second increments every couple of months and lots of hugs in said increments. (Not the worst deal; Hannah gives good hugs.)

Once Hannah and I parted ways, I went looking for my friend Katherine. I hadn’t talked to Katherine since I graduated. I didn’t have her number and she’s not very active on social media. I knew she’d gotten married, but I was surprised when I found Katherine’s work desk and saw baby photos in her work area. She was off that day, so I took a Post-It from her desk and left a note with my phone number. I ended with an open invitation: “Tell me if you’re ever in Detroit. I’d love to see you and meet [her husband] and…” I paused. I didn’t know her baby’s name. The photos at Katherine’s desk were from that androgynous stage of newbornness, so I couldn’t even tell if she had a boy or a girl. (A boy, she let me know over text.) “…the baby.” I finished.

On Sunday, some miscommunication meant I left Sunday evening when I meant to leave early in the afternoon. It was a blessing in disguise: Luke and Lauren, the couple whose house I’d stayed in, had been out of town during my stay, and my delay meant I could see them and meet the baby girl they’d had since we last saw one another. I met them through a house church network I was part of as a student, and I attended a service while I waited on my ride. They’d gained some members, lost some, but listening in and learning what all has changed made my head spin.

On their own, these incidents were parts of a weekend. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, they feel like an unaddressed aspect of something I discussed months ago: the strange, semi-paradoxical loneliness epidemic we’re experiencing despite “social” media’s bedrock place in society.

Simultaneously, we’re living in the most nomadic and most connected period of human existence. In older times, relocation was often a move of desperation: the Irish emigrating to America in droves to escape the Great Potato Famine, Southern African-Americans moving north to escape racist violence and Jim Crow laws, war refugees seeking asylum. (That last part isn’t past tense, sadly.) And people who relocated left communities behind when they did it. If you moved from Dublin to Boston in 1849, the only way you could communicate with your family still across the pond were letters that could take weeks or months to reach their destination, with any responses taking equally as long to arrive to you. Fast-forward to today. I can (and I have) instantly congratulate my friend Ellie in Seattle on her engagement, check in with my friend Cami to ensure her safety during the California tsunamis, and ask my friend Olaya how her Ph.D. program somewhere in her native Spain is going—and receive a response back in a matter of minutes.

Now I’m not a Luddite. I am not some crabby old man saying the end times are upon us because no one mails letters anymore. What I am saying is that this combination of ability to relocate and to stay connected with whoever you leave behind causes a sort of spiritual fracturing. You know how some characters with super-speed leave a string of afterimages trailing behind them, they’re moving that fast? That’s what it feels like: all around, there are echoes of me in places and with people I’ve held dear. Yes, I currently reside in Detroit and work in a middle school in Mexicantown, Detroit’s Hispanic and Latino enclave.

But there’s still echoes of me working at my first school, hoping to God I’m making a difference.

There are echoes of me in the Gathering, sipping drinks, scarfing pastries and chipping away at my latest piece of writing.

There are echoes of me all around Calvin’s campus: playing Injustice 2 on my roommate’s Xbox, joining in a floor watch party of The Punisher, bouncing around the English department, cooped up in “my” cubicle on the library’s top floor, chopping it up in Calvin’s club for black men, playing Sunday night D&D with my roommates, studying Wednesday nights with my best friend Kali, laying down reading on my couch.

There are echoes of me in Grandma’s House, the house rented from my friend Jack’s grandparents that became my friends’ default hangout spot come junior year.

There are echoes of me in Oviedo, Spain, feeding my host parents’ schnauzer table scraps, going to classes, traveling around town with my friends, sipping a Coke at one of the sidrerias, petting the bear of a golden retriever that was forever asleep on the floor of the Guinness bar my classmates and I frequented.

There are echoes of me at Faholo, the church camp I went to throughout middle and high school, goofing off in the dining hall, cutting up with my bunkmates, trying to hold in my laughter throughout a prank call, experiencing God in worship, fighting for the rope in tug-of-war.

And there’s a part of me that wishes I could become my echoes, or maybe that I could make all of my echoes sound at the same time. I wish that I could relive my semester in Oviedo or make certain nights at Grandma’s House last an eternity. I wish that I could go from a week at Faholo to a freshman year Buffalo Wild Wings run to a Saturday night wandering Oviedo with my friends to watching college football at Grandma’s House to engulfing Kali in a hug when she returned from her semester in Peru to going out for ramen with Brooke. I wish I didn’t have to wait months at a time to see Hannah. I wish I could have been there to congratulate Katherine on the baby. I wish I could be in two places at once: my church and house church with Luke and Lauren.

But that’s not reality.

I will always treasure these memories and the people I’ve made them with. I’ll listen to the echoes and treasure the notes they add to the symphony of my life.

Annaka has said that a lot of my writing is about looking back. That’s what echoes and afterimages are, right? The past lingering.

I will listen to the echoes. I will treasure the echoes.

And then I’ll look for new places to leave afterimages in.

Noah Keene

Noah Keene graduated from Calvin University in December 2021 with a major in creative writing and a minor in Spanish. He currently resides in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. He spends his free time reading and putting his major to good use by working on his first novel. See what he’s reading by following him on Instagram @peachykeenebooks and read his other personal writing by going to thekeenechronicles.com.