Lonely by Anthony Wishard, Columbia Senior
My body grows older but my mind remains unperturbed by the slow decay of time. As I reminisce, memories crash down upon me like ocean waves and I begin to remember the triumphs of my past. I hold bearing upon no memory greater and more significant than that of a young 11 year-old boy who cried for his mother’s return as he was left to live on his own for five weeks. This is not as bad as it seems however, for those five weeks turned into the greatest five weeks this young child ever experienced.
Ten was the age in which I was first accepted into the program Project Forward Leap (PFL). Apprehension flooded through me when I was first informed of what the program entailed. For three consecutive summers, I was to dorm on a college campus for five weeks with students of my grade and age who were all from Lancaster and Philadelphia regions of Pennsylvania. I was to take academic classes to help prepare me for the coming school year and to give me a head start over others in my school. My natural reaction was that attending school during the summer was ludicrous as putting steak sauce on an Oreo cookie. I was also quite nervous about the prospect of being isolated from home for five weeks. How would I get my meals? Who would do my laundry? These questions, along with many others, raced through my mind as I considered attending this program but the answers were rendered in due time.
When my mother was informed of the program and my opportunity to participate in it, she immediately jumped on board and was quite thrilled about the idea. In the end, more my mother’s end than mine, it was settled that I would attend PFL. Before the program started however, my mother taught me many life lessons that were cumbersome at the time, such as how to do my own laundry and how to iron; however I now appreciate them greatly.
Move-in day at Bryn-Mawr College came too soon for my liking. I was ready to go home before we had arrived. My mother and I exited the car and walked observantly toward the check-in desk. In the span of a minute we realized that as a Caucasian child I had just become the minority in a group of approximately 60 students. The thought unsettled me because I had always been a clear majority in the small town of Columbia where I reside.
Finally, after I was registered and checked in, the true “move-in” process began. Suitcases, bags, and boxes were lugged up two flights of steps until the destination of my dorm room was reached. My roommate had not yet arrived. I entered the room, took my side of choice, and began to unpack. The numerous hours of that evening dwindled away more rapidly than light in a power outage. The time came for my mother to leave and leave she did. I will never forget the child who stood on the sidewalk and waved a silent goodbye to his mother, unaware of how rough things would become without her.
I cried every night of that first week, longing for my mother and for my own bed at home. Nothing could remove the feeling of isolation, of loneliness. I had no mother to guide me, I was a minority for the first time in my life, and there was no choice ahead but to accept the current situation no matter how much I disliked it. Time soon passed and the five weeks came to a close, year, after year, after year. As the third summer of PFL ended, I was not begging to go home but begging to stay. Over those summers a bond was created between everyone in attendance that is too strong for the telling. I was unable to face the sad reality of knowing that this final goodbye would be the last words spoken to the people whom I had come to know and care about. I did not want to leave behind the friends and memories that I made, and leave them to rest as but a whisper of thought in my imagination. But just as that very first day had ended on a sidewalk along Bryn-Mawr campus, so did the very last day as I left Bryn-Mawr one final time.
As these memories flood my mind, I thank my mother to no end, I thank her for her steadfast determination and for insisting that I attend PFL. The experience changed me in more ways than one and it opened my eyes to many things that had previously gone unnoticed. No longer was I a minority but a brother to all those who shared that time together. No longer was I afraid to be left alone without a parent to look over me, and no longer did I look down upon furthering my education in any possible way, I was now ready for greater challenges.
After graduating from Project Forward Leap, I went on to attend a program at Millersville University entitled Upward Bound. This again was a five week program but unlike PFL. I was not afraid to be left alone because I had finally realized that I was never truly alone. Every single person in that Program was right there with me and grew as a whole. I was again, sole minority as the only Caucasian among both students and staff but I did not care because skin color matters not. I attended Upward Bound for three years until the program’s funding was cut. Across the span of six years, I learned lessons that cannot be taught in a classroom. I learned life lessons that will remain with me forever, and within me those memories will never die. There is no doubt of uncertainty in my mind that both Project Forward Leap and Upward Bound changed my life.
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