Embracing Liminality
When I was younger, I used to love rest stops. They were the interlude between the Duck Tales DVDs I watched with my brother in the backseat of our well-loved Mazda minivan and an opportunity to beg my parents for a bag of popcorn from Starbucks. I remember rest stops near my grandparents’ house in Maine with tanks full of live lobsters and big grassy fields at stops in Pennsylvania, perfect for playing tag.
At a rest stop on our annual drive to my grandparents’ house when I was around 10, my mom insisted that I take out my violin and play a song for the travelers eating at the picnic tables around us. I agreed, grudgingly. I can’t help but laugh when I look at my expression in the pictures my mom took of the moment, the indignancy I was going for not quite convincing against my budding features.
At many dinner parties when my mom inevitably decides to pass the pictures around the table again, I remember how I felt as I played (screeched, as I’m sure the other travelers would say). I was annoyed, yes, but I wasn’t embarrassed. To me, rest stops weren’t real; everyone and everything I saw seemed to happen in a life wholly separate from mine.
With time, I have learned why I felt this way. Rest stops are what anthropologists refer to as a liminal space, “liminal” coming from the latin root “limen,” meaning threshold. Rest stops exist only to cross over from what was to what will be. In a way, they don’t exist at all.
So many of my memories from childhood were made at a rest stop and yet, they are no more memories than they are scenes I watch in my head and can’t quite connect to. The images drip with the tangibility of truth, but the feeling of place is lost to me.
Some of that, of course, can be attributed to time passing. Some, also, to the lax abandon of memory of a child who has no need for nostalgia. But I think it's also typical of the human condition to quickly forget the in-between moments –– to remember the climbing tree in my Grandma’s yard in Maine but none of the forests on the drive to get there.
How then, can I reckon with living in the in-between now?
I’m not sleeping between rows of gas pumps or changing in stalls with no toilet paper. I don’t eat in front of a line snaking out of a Sbarro's or go to the trucker’s lounge to relax. But without the greasy pizza and the awkward eye contact in the bathroom mirror, I am stuck in this same place of transition: not home, but not sure of how long until I reach my destination.
The pandemic has made a perpetual rest stop of our country. Inside my house I sit at the threshold of normality, with work and school giving me a taste of life past and future. For six months I've been stuck in a season of waiting with no known destination. Liminality was never meant to be a semi-permanent state of being, yet here I am, caught in the oxymoron of permanent transition.
Existing where I never have before and learning to fit into a dimensionless space is uncomfortable. But discomfort is an invitation for growth, and it’s a signal to find some sort of solace in the ruins we’re left with.
When my grandpa was sick in March, my mom and I drove the 13 hours from Pittsburgh to Bangor, Maine to help him and my grandma. For the first time on our drive to their house, there were no rest stops open. We were prepared for this –– we packed turkey sandwiches and toilet paper for the trip. Still, I couldn’t help but feel that something was missing.
Around the 8th hour, as my legs began to stiffen and I was tired of looking out the window, I realized what it was; we had lost a space of transition –– a place to rest and prepare for the remainder of our trip.
It’s easy to neglect the importance of these little moments set aside to decompress. During the quarter, the 10 minute walk from Norris to Tech seems inconsequential –– in the winter, even painful. And maybe eating a home-cooked lunch tops yet another slice of pizza from Allison stuffed down your throat while going over a quizlet one last time before class. But without this time in between, the minutes that we have to be “on” stretch out uninterrupted.
And that, I think, is the secret to surviving in the time of Covid.
Coronavirus isn’t a miraculous gift or a free vacation, but the absolute apathy of our politicians has made it clear that we have to adapt to living this way for a while. I cringe at the saying, “life is about the journey, not the destination” (I imagine it pinned on an oversaturated pinterest board), but when there is no clear destination, the journey is all we have.
Together, we have the rare opportunity to reflect on how our society continues in the future and how we can change for the better. Our mistake would be to step forward too quickly without acknowledging the benefits of this time to reassess.
Personally, I’m trying to find my way back to the love I had for the freedom of liminal spaces. Thriving might be too far of a reach, but I’m stretching myself to exist presently and embrace the time in waiting. I know that I have the capacity to survive and even grow in such a transitory space, if only I allow myself to.
And I have rest stops to thank for that.