Member-only story
One of a Few Friendships I Think Back On
I had a roommate who was an international student from the Philippines in the fall of 2007 (I had a different roommate every semester or two in university until I finally stayed in a single private room of my own in my last year).
Her name was Anne Marie.
Her dream was to be a housewife and a mother.
We were close at the beginning.
She was my roommate for only that semester.
There was one Friday afternoon that she spent making a Filipino dessert in the communal kitchen (our dorm was called ‘Carvin House’ and Carvin was the international student dorm; I was invited to live there, though I was not an international student, because I was well-known on campus as ‘the girl who loved all cultures and languages’).
She spent hours making that dessert.
She gave me some of that dessert to try.
While I liked the dessert, noticing her happily spend her time in that kitchen made me feel so unhappy.
There was a heaviness in me upon seeing her spend other days in that kitchen.
She was born in 1984 (she had a BA degree from a Filipino university already and she decided to get another BA degree in the US).
