Two months from today, my lease is up. On December 21st, the apartment I sit in will be vacant and (hopefully) clean. It will be as I found it, blank walls and vacuum-streaked carpets. I will be driving home in my little Ford Escort which will of course be packed to the brim with my belongings. Tom will be in the passenger seat and we will alternate cassettes in the tape deck–80′s to get us going, then Joni Mitchell and James Taylor to mellow us out and then showtunes to sing to so we stay awake. A familiar eight-hour trip to both of us that culminates in inevitably getting stuck somewhere near New York City, usually over the bridge or on I-80 in Jersey.

But that’ll be it. The very last time. It’s pretty awful to think about the fact that I will not have Wegmans close at hand to run to. The Western NY/Pennsylvania food market has become my favorite place to be in Buffalo. Any grocery item imaginable, plus Chinese food, plus dry cleaning plus video rentals. Truly the best…unless of course you count Higher Grounds, the independently owned coffee house that donates all its profits to charity. They make the most amazing peppermint lattes and I recall many nights with Lindsay, sitting on their couches wondering if we would ever be normal.

Then of course, there’s Niagara Falls. Natural beauty surrounded by Vegas-like casinos and haunted houses and gaudy restaurants. Though I’ve been up to Canada to blow ten dollars at the nickel slots and also to relax, most vivid in my mind are the few nights I’ve actually gone out like a normal college student. Few and far between, those (always) freezing Saturday nights that I packed myself into a crowded car, drove through customs and headed out to cheesy dance clubs to sip Amaretto Sours and grind to bad house music.

I can’t even begin to start reminiscing about UB itself. My beloved public research university that shuts down the entire campus when their awful football team is playing a home game. There are over 20,000 students on campus and yet every day I run into people that I know. I am so at home in this environment, most notably in the Center For The Arts where I spend every day, singing, dancing, attempting to be “trained”. But other places on campus, I know so well–the crowded lecture halls, the impossible parking lots and of course, the ever-familiar bike path that has helped me clear my head so many times.

And how do I express the pain in the fact that in two months I will be leaving it all behind? Three years ago, I wondered how I was going to live without my family. And now, I wonder how I’m going to go back and live with them. Not because they’re hard people to share a bathroom with but because my life is here, in Buffalo. Here are my beautiful friends who have touched my life so completely that I would need a gazillion blank pages to write to them, to write about them, to write for them, to thank them, for everything.

Oh wait. I forgot. The snow.

I would be remiss in not mentioning the famed precipitation of this Western New York city. My time at college would have been very different had I not had to scrape the ice off my car eight times a day or wash my jeans at least twice a week to get rid of the salt stains on the bottoms. The boots my mother bought me my freshman year are well-worn now, despite my protests at the time that I probably wouldn’t need them. It was constant, the snow and wind, beating my face as I walked to class or home from rehearsal. It would slice my cheeks and slither down my neck, past my scarf.

And though it often kicked me around, it wasn’t always menacing; there were those snowfalls that were gentle. Sometimes, I caught them late at night at just the right time and I would walk quietly, impressing my boots into the light flakes thinking to myself that this was why people stayed here in Buffalo. They put up with all the blizzards and mounds of ice because on very dark nights, the snow is tender and you can see your breath and in turn, see the very substance of your soul.

Two months, sixty days and I will be “free”. Free of college stresses: papers, dance practicals, rehearsals. But are you really free if what confines you also nourishes you? How I dread that day in December when I have to carry my boxes down three flights of stairs and pack them away. I think giving a fond farewell to each and every individual place would be too painful and too hard. And so, when I turn the key in the ignition, I will only pray that it will be snowing. I hope that God will grant me that simple request of tiny flakes falling through the air. Or perhaps, at the very least, I wish for some on the ground…just some delicate white fluff in the rearview mirror for me to wave goodbye to. Peace.