Blue Magic

By ARMITA AGHAMIRI

I sit on the blue chairs at the bonfire, alone with my thoughts. The chairs are cool to the touch, their rough plastic surface against my skin. Flames flicker in front of me, casting shadows that dance across the ground and the hum of distant conversations fills the night air. Around me, students drift in and out of conversations, some standing in clusters, others like me, choosing solitude. These chairs—scattered in a circle around the fire—seem to invite connection, yet here I am, feeling worlds apart from those around me.

 My phone vibrates in my lap, pulling me out of my thoughts. It’s a group FaceTime call from my family. Seeing their faces on the screen warms something inside of me, if only temporarily. My little brother is laughing in the background; my mom’s voice, firm yet caring, asks if I’m eating well. At this moment, I’m reminded of my mom’s role in my life. As she watches me from the screen, I can almost hear her thoughts echoing the sentiment like Galchen: “When children are very young, you are the director of the play of their life. Later you have front-row seats for what is happening with them. Then maybe fourth-row seats. They get older, and you, the parents, get to watch from the front of the mezzanine. But you keep getting moved farther back.” As I sit in this new place, I realize how much she has shifted from being the guiding force in my life to observing from a distance. When I was back in Iran, I was always surrounded by people who cared for me, and making friends felt effortless. Life had a rhythm, a comforting structure—family, culture, and routines that made everything familiar. But now, at 19, as I try to forge new connections in this unfamiliar world, I sense my mom sitting further back in the theater of my life, wishing she could still be the one directing the play, even as she is left to watch me navigate this chapter on my own.

Now, at 19, in a new place, that rhythm is gone. At least I thought it was gone. Making connections, especially with Americans, felt like trying too much. The only connection that I wanted to protect was through a phone screen, and even that felt distant, as though the love I once felt wrapped around me like a blanket was just out of reach. But something shifted as I continued to sit on those blue chairs. The same place that made me feel isolated began to change. Slowly, I started to meet people, other international students, who like me are searching for something familiar in an unfamiliar world. One evening, while sitting in the chairs, I struck up a conversation with an exchange student from Morocco. We bonded over shared experiences of how it is too hard to keep a conversation with other people in class. We talked for hours in that same blue chair about what we thought of the states and what the reality actually is. We talked about how strange it is to have pizza and hamburgers every day with unlimited soda drinks. The laughter and stories we exchange transform the blue chairs from symbols of loneliness to seats of connection. These chairs, once a reminder of my isolation, now represent the gathering space where I learned that I could belong, even in the unfamiliar. That I could cry when I feel homesick and I could laugh at how my Spanish and Argentine friend fight about vosotros.

The blue chairs feel like what Cole calls “pleasure, sorrow, love, humor, and grief, and the complexity of the interior landscape that sustains those feelings”. He speaks of this duality and paradox as in how we can feel like outsiders even when we are trying to fit in, but how places can change meaning over time. I realize that I don’t need someone else to look after me. I’ve learned, sitting in these blue chairs, that I can look after myself. There’s no longer a “mommy” to guide me through each step, but I’m learning to be my own caretaker. The people I’ve met, my new friends have shown me that no matter where I go, I can find my community. These relationships are different from the ones I had at home. We come from different countries, different cultures, but there’s an unspoken understanding between us. When seated at the blue chairs, it feels like centuries of history come together and somehow results in a shared sense of humor. We are all navigating the same feelings of displacement and trying to carve out a space for ourselves in a new world. In these friendships, I’ve found a sense of home. As Cole writes, there’s a comfort in the shared experience of being both different and the same. Sitting in those blue chairs, I’ve come to understand that while I may be far from home, I am not without one.

Riding my bike to class every day, I pass by the blue chairs and can’t help but wonder what the people sitting there are thinking about. Have they felt the magic of these chairs yet? What have they learned from spending hours there, observing life unfold around them? Who have they met, and what stories do these chairs hold? I like to imagine a day when the chairs could talk. I bet one of them would say, “That red-haired girl needs therapy. She’s here in the morning reading a book, laughing her head off at noon, and crying in the afternoon.”

One day, I saw my friend, the Moroccan girl I’ve become best friends with, sitting at the blue chairs alone, something I never thought I would see. She is never alone. Her usual vibrant energy was missing, and for the first time I saw her glued to her phone, which was unlike her. I could not help but go over and ask how she was doing. She gave me a forced smile and said, “I’m fine, just waiting for my dad to get out of work so I can talk to him.” Funny enough, I had said the exact same thing to her just a week ago while sitting on that very same chair. At that moment, I realized something—the blue chairs weren’t just connecting us to each other. They were also connecting us to the other side of the world. It felt like these chairs were a kind of teleportation system, whisking us away to wherever we needed to be, though, of course, you would need mobile data for that since the Wi-Fi never works.

As I sit in the blue chairs writing this essay, I realize they represent more than just places to rest, they are symbols of the transitions I’ve experienced. They remind me of the journey from isolation to connection, from being cared for to learning how to care for myself. The conversations, laughter, and even tears I have shared here with friends from across the globe have redefined what home means to me. While my family’s love still reaches me through a screen, I have learned that the blue chairs at Beloit offer their own form of support. They are where I have discovered my independence, where I have realized that although my mom may be sitting further back in the theater of my life, I am still the one in control of the play. In these chairs, I have built my own community. It is through these moments that I have come to understand that home is not just a place; it is the relationships and experiences that shape who we are. The blue chairs may not talk, but they have taught me that wherever I go, I can find a place to belong.

Featured Image: Sophia Nitsche’25