Welcome Home.

This past weekend, my sweet husband and I made my yearly pilgrimage back to the Mothership.

Auburn. Glorious Auburn.

From the moment we drove into town, everything went wrong.

We sat in traffic for an hour on our way into town. We passed three wide open parking spots in downtown on our way in, but couldn't find a spot for blocks when we came back to town for supper after our hour-long wait. Our hotel was awful. Awful. The hallways smelled like smoke-- just not a typical cigarette smoke. Not a burning smoke either. Like a drug smoke. And the rooms were worse. It was like walking into an 8th grader's armpit-- I work with middle schoolers; trust me, I know. The floor in our bathroom was sticky, there were stains on the carpet, and the air was damp. After dinner Friday, we sat on the steps of Samford Hall for over an hour, just refusing to go back to our hotel room.

Saturday, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, which makes for a beautiful day but an unbearable four quarters in the upper deck at Jordan-Hare. We left sweaty and sunburned. Very sunburned. STILL sunburned. And the game... I don't even have to tell you about the game. It was ugly.

But did I stay until the bitter end? Absolutely. I sang the fight song as the defeated players piled back into the locker room. And I was thrilled to go downtown afterward, even if it meant hanging out with a bunch of Arkansas Hogs.

Because Auburn isn't just football to me. Auburn is home. Interestingly, the "theme" at Auburn this year is "Welcome Home." We're known throughout the country as the 'Auburn Family' because it's something we pride ourselves on, because it's something we insist on. And for four years, Auburn was my home. Probably the four most significant years of my life, from a developmental standpoint. Auburn is where I "found" myself, as some people like to say. The friends I have today are the ones I had at Auburn: the ones I met in the ADPi chapter room at Berta Dunn Hall, the ones I spent endless hours studying with at RBD, the ones I spent countless weekends with at Jordan-Hare. Where we rolled Toomer's when Daniel found out he was cancer-free, where we spent "Terrific Tuesdays" at the intramural fields, where BreakFeast first kicked off.

Someone said to me last year, "Lindsey, do you realize that you live in a red state?" My mind first jumped to politics, but I guess she read the confusion on my face and followed up with, "You know, Alabama has beat Auburn in every sport this year." I never went back to check the statistics. Maybe she was right; I'd like to think she skipped one somewhere where we pulled through, but the truth is: it doesn't matter. Because it wouldn't matter to me if Alabama beat Auburn in every sport we played for the next ten years. I'd still be an Auburn fan.

Win or lose, every trip to Auburn would still feel like a homecoming. Even with a terrible hotel room and horrible traffic and painful sunburns.