We Were Swensen
The home that was never mine.
Over the weekend, my 12-year-old convinced me to “clean up” my computer. It’s one of my least favorite—and most necessary—tasks. I can never remember the difference between storage and memory, even though the nice tech guy explained that one is like the bookshelves and one is like your desk. Either way, both of mine were screwed. My MacBook is rapidly approaching the end of its life, and I am desperate to prolong it.
So my daughter had me deleting emails from 2015 (without even reading them, you guys. Like, what if there was something important in there?) and removing large downloads, and then she informed me that my Dropbox was unacceptable. So I took a deep breath and started deleting files. But in this case, I did NOT arbitrarily delete entire years at a time. Because sprinkled throughout insurance documentation from our flood and invoices for work I did 8 years ago were pieces of beloved writing that I cannot bear to part with. Even though the vast majority of it absolutely sucks.
I can declutter a lot of things, but my old writing is not among them. This is why I wrote a memoir—because retracing my steps is so very important to me. I certainly did not take the time to read the vast majority of the old word documents, but one jumped out at me. I barely recalled writing it and hadn’t thought about it since: We Were Swensen. Instantly, I remembered writing this excerpt in response to a writing class prompt about an old home, or an adolescent rite of passage, or something like that.
Against my better judgement, I’m going to paste it in its original state (gulp, cringe) here, because this beloved building was on the list of places I visited during my nostalgia pilgrimage over the summer, the trip I took when I was writing my book. I wrote this nearly ten years ago, you guys. Maybe you have a place like Swensen in your history. Here goes:
We Were Swensen
This is a story about the “Old Me.” Or rather, the young me. I was 19 years old, and had just begun my junior year of college. There were a plethora of housing options for upperclassmen, allowing them to move beyond the traditional dorm room experience. One of these options was a collection of “houses” on the outskirts of campus, each made up of two floors—one for girls, and one for boys.
It was one of the few co-ed housing choices available, which made it extremely popular. Of these five houses, each had a different dynamic, and there was one in particular that was special: Swensen House.
I’m not sure how to begin describing it; it wasn’t populated by jocks, as some of the other houses were, but rather filled with music majors, education or communication majors, and those who maybe didn’t fit in anywhere else. Of course the occupants changed from year to year, but the overall vibe was the same. Yes, Swensen was a “party house,” but not in the traditional sense.
We attended a Lutheran liberal arts college in Iowa, by no means a “party school.” Many of the students were conservative, religious, and very studious. I myself was not religious, having been purged of my devout Lutheranism by my second semester. I had a very active social life, but still managed to graduate summa cum laude, with two majors and a minor. I never actually lived in Swensen House, having tired of the on-campus living experience after sophomore year, and moved into my very first apartment with my friend. But I still felt like I was part of them—I fit in there.
The Swensen residents welcomed me like one of their own, in spite of the fact that I once got the party busted by carelessly wandering into the hallway with my telltale red cup of Jungle Juice. I slept there more times than I can count, and I’m quite certain I drove home from there more times than I should have.
Swensen felt like my home.
While it may have seemed to outsiders that we were a people without morals or scruples, I assure you, that was not the case. We simply adhered to our own code, one that transcended traditional values and boundaries; the fact that we all abided by this set of principles made it seem less lawless, less reckless. Our activities may have been taboo at times, but we never behaved in a way that would deliberately hurt anyone else. (Infidelity and lack of future brain cells did not apply.)
While the “God Squad” on campus may have considered themselves above us, we were an extraordinarily loving group. In fact, oh, how we loved!
My evenings spent at Swensen were a blur of plastic cups, laughter, poker with, ahem, special rules, Polaroid camera shots, cigarettes on the porch, music, crappy couches, and loft beds. The New Year’s Eve parties, often happening sometime around January 8th, were legendary.
I had never before felt so free to be myself, so unconditionally accepted, so enmeshed in an eclectic community with a spirit of playfulness and hedonism. I loved Swensen.
We had no idea, perhaps, that once we left, we would never again belong to such a community. While we may inherit certain new freedoms, the ones we had enjoyed there would be a thing of the past. That, to me, was the most beautiful aspect of college life: an introduction to living with others, other women, other men, an artificial environment to kick start adulthood that was somehow still very real.
I’m sure the code of silence that applied to our debauchery-filled nights together still holds firm: What happened at Swensen stays at Swensen. Many of us are now mothers, fathers, gainfully employed, respectable citizens of the community—our more carefree, indulgent selves a thing of the past.
But there is a part of us, hidden somewhere under the layer of responsibility and maturity, that will always be Swensen.
I sort of can’t believe I wrote that so long ago and had zero recollection of it. Clearly, I’ve been retracing my steps, longing for the past, and seeking answers for many years. Even in my early thirties, I knew there was something special about that era of my life, and having since gone through two years of IFS therapy and writing an entire memoir, I see now that a very important part of me is forever contained in Swensen; a nesting doll somewhere inside still remains. It wasn’t just a bunch of dumb college kids having fun. It meant something. Our connections were real, and for me, it represented a time when maybe the most authentic part of myself sprang into existence and was allowed to shine freely.
I had nearly forgotten about that part of myself, and I had certainly repressed it for decades, until the past year. No, I don’t mean I’ve returned to Jungle Juice parties and sleeping on couches. But I have returned to a sense of aliveness, of freedom, of personal integrity. That sounds like such a strange thing to say: certainly my choices as a nineteen-year-old may not have represented a traditional sense of, um, integrity, but to a degree, I had more personal integrity then than I did at age 40.
Because I knew myself, embraced myself, and allowed myself to exist in my truest form. It was awkward and sometimes ugly. It was careless and occasionally reckless. But I was falling in love with myself and falling in love with life. And we all need to do that at some point in our lives, and after we forget that we love ourselves, we need to remember again. I’m remembering. And I remembered what it felt like to belong to Swensen, too.
Next week I’ll share an excerpt of my memoir about what it was like to return to Swensen last summer when I was writing my book and revisiting my former homes. Swensen was not technically one of the 17 on the list, because I never actually lived there. And yet it felt like such a Homecoming.
XOXO,
Steph
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