Family Ties

As I sat in the family room of my brother's off campus house tonight, eating dinner with him, my cousin, and three of his seven housemates, my mind wandered and oddly enough, made some connections to Othello and the family relationships that are present there. Desdemona goes against her father's ways and elopes with Othello, a man of different status and race. I also thought about this section of our class's theme: displacement. I started thinking about this when I thought that I don't know if I could give up everything I know, my family, and my life. It was hard leaving and going to Rome for three months, away from my family. It was hardest to leave the people I was with tonight, which is probably why I started making connections to Othello. I've been separated from my brother before, but never for three months. A senior at ND, Kevin has ran Cross Country and Track the past three and a half years. Due to the time commitment, he was only able to go abroad during the summer between his sophomore and junior years, and for six weeks. Not three months. But anytime he and I were separated for more than a week, I had my cousin Michael around to hang out with, and be like my surrogate brother. But not this fall. This fall, Michael headed off to Dayton for his freshman year, and Kevin came back to South Bend for his senior year. And I had a month of being home without the two of them, feeling out of place almost every second. I felt displaced at home, still with my  parents and sisters, but without Kevin and Michael. Making it worse, every time I visited my brother, my best friend, Tara, and  my cousin, Elizabeth, at ND and SMC, I left feeling as if i was leaving the one place I felt at home, complete. Being apart from Elizabeth was hard too, but not as hard as the others since I went the first eighteen years of my life seeing her twice a year. But not being able to talk to her fifty billion times a day (literally-you should see the amount of texts we send each other each day) was going to be a challenge. So going away felt as if I was out of place-not where I was meant to be. Rome grew on me, and the feeling out of place left some. But coming back to SMC and ND, i've felt more back in place, back to where I feel I should be. Therefore, Desdemona leaving her life, her family, and everything took a lot more than  I could have done. She must have loved Othello more than the life she knew, and went with him. Maybe she didn't feel displaced when she was with him, like I do when I'm with my family.