The Joy of Regressing

Good tidings — I’m not tidying.

I used to take the train home for the holidays from college every year. My dad was always the designated pickup parent, and I usually found the 20 minutes of “dad silence” in the car with him a good buffer before the flurry of dogs, hugs, and mom questions that greeted me the second I walked in the door. Within minutes, I would have a beverage in hand (Mom), an overview of the next day’s weather forecast (Dad), and a variety of brand-new Star Wars memes (sibling).

Even though it’s been more than a decade since I graduated college, something about coming home always feels like going back in time. If you’re lucky enough to return to your childhood home for the holidays, chances are that very little changes year over year. It’s kind of like a little holiday shrine that exists to cater to your wants and needs.

And it turns out that what I want is to do nothing.

In fact, I want to do more than nothing: I want to regress. I want to leave balled-up Hershey’s kiss foils on the end table and inside-out dirty socks at the base of the sofa. I’m going to pretend that my knee hurts so I don’t have to walk the dog, and I actually think that we should order pizza instead of cooking. Yes, I will be sleeping in — see you at 1 p.m.!

There is some switch that inevitably flips when you walk into your bedroom and see all those reminders that you used to be some punk kid trying their best. For instance, I think about the time I got sent to this very room for saying “pass the f*cking peas!” in elementary school. There are journals on the nightstand filled with every horny and angsty teenage emotion — in turquoise glitter gel pen, obviously. I can feel everything I’ve learned as an adult — when to book a flight, what boxes to check on the family history section of a medical form, how to make a sauce from a roux — slowly leave my body as I dig out my old dance team uniform and I remember all the drama and excitement of the year we won state. How exactly am I supposed to “help with dinner” when I just found my flute?!

Suddenly I’m no longer a 30-something with a 401(k) — I’m a teenager who is about to eat so much peppermint bark that she throws up.

It doesn’t even feel like a choice I’m consciously making. I’ve done pep talks to myself in the bathroom mirror once arriving home, telling myself to “be nice, be patient, and be helpful” this time. But then I say something bratty when my mom asks me a question or audibly groan when my dad wants me to help him with the yardwork, and suddenly I’m no longer a 30-something with a 401(k) — I’m a teenager who is about to eat so much peppermint bark that she throws up. Sometimes, I think that I relish regressing because I get to go to a mental place where I’m not in charge anymore.

Saturday Night Live has always done a great job of portraying this bizarre blend of holiday feelings in a comedic way. The 2014 instant classic “(Do It on My) Twin Bed” celebrates the weirdness of bringing a romantic partner home for the first time and opening them up to your past, one seventh grade school portrait at a time. In “Back Home Ballers” from the same year, they rap about the joy of showing up at home to be pampered: “this may be their house, but for the next four days, we get to run this b*tch.” Conversely, 2012’s “Your Hometown” plays up the strange nostalgia that surrounds going home and using “bleach-stained towels from 1994.”

The older I get, the more people I meet who never knew me as a child or even as a young adult. It feels weird that I have to remember to tell people things about my life, and that while they know me now, they will never know all of me — but my childhood home does. I love going back in time and not having to be the one who picks up dog poop or unloads the dishwasher. I’m blissfully 12 years old again, and I will be eating cookies for every meal.