Senior Column: Lauren Brown

I’m leaving behind the familiar creaking noise my back door makes when I let my dog outside. I’m leaving behind late-night drives down Mission Road. I’m leaving behind people and things I won’t realize I’ll miss until I’m 191 miles away from them.

But above all these things, I’m leaving behind my best friend of 18 years, my mom.

She’s the person who knows that I like my eggs cooked over-medium. She would take a bullet for me or, at least, kill a spider in my room when I’m too terrified to. My whole life, it’s always been just the two of us, and with college getting closer every day, I’m realizing just how lucky I’ve been to have the greatest roommate on Earth all this time.

If you can picture scenes from the TV show “Gilmore Girls,” you can grasp what daily life in my house is like. We spontaneously dance in our kitchen to Norah Jones, borrow one anothers’ clothes and no matter how busy our Thursday nights are, we make time to watch “Scandal” together.

I’ve always been told I’m just like her. As a kid, it’s a comment you’re not sure how to respond to. Now, it’s a compliment I gladly receive. Beyond the uncanny physical similarities, inevitably I’ve inherited her sarcastic sense of humor, her love of hugs and her penchant for the outdoors.

Camping with her all over the country, she taught me that girls can pitch a tent and go a couple days without showering if it means getting to watch the sunrise over Yellowstone. When we forgot our tent poles on a trip to Colorado, we built what I can only compare to the forts I would make out of our couch cushions as a kid. It rained that night, and with the easy-going nature only my mom possesses, she laughed and I laughed with her. That’s something I’ll never forget.

I’ll miss her angry-but-only-because-I-care-about-you tone when I forget to call her about staying out late. I’ll miss the massive “It’s A Girl” sign she insists on hanging on our front door every year on my birthday. I’ll miss seeing her face in the crowd at every cross-country meet and choir concert.

I’m already dreading the three hour and 15 minute drive we’ll make together in August. As ready as I am to go to college, packing my Jeep Liberty to the brim will symbolize the beginning of the biggest change in both of our lives.

Yes, it will be almost unbearable to leave behind watching high school football games and spending Wednesday nights in room 521. But, I know some of my biggest challenges will come with being without my best friend in college. Challenges like adjusting to dining hall food rather than my mom’s cooking and not being able to walk down the hall to tell her about my day.

The saying “Home is where your mom is” has been embroidered on one-too-many pillowcases, but it’s so true. My mom always been my biggest fan, encouraging me to be a writer ever since I wrote a goofy story about the invention of the napkin in the second grade, and now I’m headed to college to study journalism. Everything I’ve done and everything I will do is thanks to her unending encouragement.

Next year I’ll live in Lincoln, NE.

Nonetheless, I know my true home is wherever my mom may be.