Commencement

Sitting in the scorching hot sun on Friday, watching one graduate after another cross the stage, it struck me that I’m starting to feel old.  Now for all you sensitive 40 and ups out there, don’t get your panties in a wad.  I’m not implying that I am old, thus making you older.  I’m not that stupid.  I’m merely making a suggestion that with each passing year, I’m reminded that I am beginning to make my entry into the serious-we’re-not-joking-it’s-really-real world of adulthood.  I have friends with wrinkles.  And back problems.  And babies.  And divorce lawyers.  It’s weird.

I remember what it felt like that day and how amazing it felt to walk across that stage.   The excitement, the drama, the sadness.  Here I was in the cozy womb of my wooded college campus, among the people I considered my best of the best, and I was being asked to leave.  Graduate.  Pack up.  Move on.  I had spent four years laughing and discovering and growing and falling over stupid and accomplishing and throwing up from too much vodka from plastic containers and hiding in nooks of shadows of trees and gazing at stars and writing papers all night and pretending to tap dance down brick pathways and grieving and stumbling into new selves and former selves all while thinking “what is the self?”

For some people, college is this obligatory stamp on their path.  Four years (or maybe five) of requirements and probably too many parties and maybe the place where you met the person you married.  Or maybe you busted your ass to get through, working full-time just to get the degree.  This piece of paper that is supposed to somehow transform us.  Make us more hire-able.  Better employees. 

But for others, college is this space of discovery.  A chance to pause the rest of the world and completely absorb yourself in your own years of 18-22.  It’s like four years of padded walls and access to all the fingerpaint you could ever want.  Oh and Cookie Crisp.  And chicken fingers.  And the goal is to still come our hire-able and a better employee.  But maybe with some deeper, more philosophical thoughts on hand.

That’s how I remember college.  A journey.  A road.  A space of discovery.  A chance to figure out me.  Who I was and why I cared.  And why anyone else might ever want to, too.

I remember asking myself questions I’d never thought to ask before.  I remember trying to catch it all—all the things that were happening in my brain and in my ears and in my knees and in my eyes.  Trying to cram it all into my heart and my brain and my memory banks; horrified someone might steal this slice of life I’d stumbled across.  That I’d lose access. 

I remember all the tragically sad things that happened and how I thought there was no way my heart could ever find its pieces again.  And then finding those pieces, and emerging a bit more hardened and perhaps more wise. 

I remember laughing so hard I thought I’d die.  And reciting movies from heart.  And meeting women who changed my life—strong, courageous, hilarious women who taught me how to be a woman.  How to fight for myself.  How to love myself.   My girls.

I look up at the windows that face the lawn of commencement.  I think how many mornings I’ve woken up facing this lawn.  How many mornings I’ve been here.  With the sun on my face.  And all the things that have happened between all those sunrises.

This is home.  For nine years I’ve called this place home.  After being out in the real world for a few years, I came back to work here.  As a grown-up.  As an adult.  But I feel like one of the lucky ones, because I know what happens here.  I know how it feels.  I’ve felt it in my heart and in my hands and I’ve danced with it at night and I’ve rolled around with it in the rain.  I’ve tasted it on my tongue and I’ve taken it out on walks.  It’s not something anyone can ever put a thumb on and almost everyone tries to name it.  Each year a new student commencement speaker has the enormous task of trying to find words that describe this thing that happens here.  And I watch her catch her breath.  And it is there in her voice.  This thing we all know about.  This thing we cannot name.

There are days when I question why I ever came back to work here—this charming alma mater of mine.  Like anywhere, we have our own fair share of the dramas.  And I hear the others whine and moan and talk quietly behind closed doors.  Perhaps they don’t know.  But I do.  I know what happens here.  And I remember.  And those moments remind me why I’m here.

As I listen to the names, one after another, I look up to the window where I spent my freshman year.  And my eyes wander over to the window where I spent my junior year.  And I smirk because I know things about these walls.  And I look out at the lawn.  And I’m feeling old, but happy.  Missing my girls.  Knowing they'd be sitting right here next to me, in something terribly chic, clapping for people they don't know.  Because we know how it feels.  We know what happens here.