popular mechanics for lovers

So I think the chancellor and I might be BFFs now. (Not really, but he’d read up on my bio, and he remembered the name of my hometown when we were talking. We had to hang out backstage before the program started and got shushed because we and the backstage crew were bantering too loudly.)

All told, there were some eight hours of speeches and musical interludes and coffee breaks and free lunch. The entire day was in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Honors College’s founding, and the speakers (all 24 - I think one had to drop) were faculty, alumni, administrators, etc. etc. etc…in what was easily one of my favorite speeches, the son of the founding dean - much beloved and even more sorely missed - spoke about riding in to work with his dad. The way Oakland seemed magical.

And the thing is, I remember Oakland being magical too. It’s magical even in my recent memory. When I think about being happy, really truly and honestly happy, I think about this summer, when I lived on a different street and woke with the sun on my bedspread and couldn’t quite see the Cathedral from my bedroom window. I don’t know. Being an adult feels like such an adventure when you start. I bought groceries and went on first dates and walked home from parties so late that the four-way stops were a free-for-all, their stoplights blinking red like a disaster warning. I remember the sound of birds in South Oakland when I woke up there. The way it smelled. The way summer always smells like something.

Sometimes I feel like I can’t let a single thing happen to me without making it a story.

There was a dinner afterward, which was entirely too full of people, and an absolutely amazing professor I had freshman year (lit) was there, of course, having spoken. His CV is longer than my chapbook. And I always figured that he was nice to me because I was sort of quiet and fragile-seeming, though my papers were genuinely good, but he came over specifically to talk to me before we were seated and said I’d done a fine job. I said I’d been up half the night because I couldn’t sleep, and he asked if I was worrying and rehearsing, and I said yes. Then he laughed. “Good to know some things don’t change,” he said, and it makes me feel good, just really, really good, that he remembers things about me. 

So: today I woke up at 7 and didn’t fall asleep once during the program. And I delivered my introduction like a professional, even though my left leg was shaking behind the podium. My parents came up just to hear Dan and me speak, because he also did an introduction (and very well), so I got to hug them before they disappeared back into the snow. I ate two (2) pieces of cake and felt okay about it afterwards, and I made small talk with strangers, and I even had a friendly interaction with my former roommate, the one I don’t talk to anymore. He was part of the summer too. A lot of people I don’t talk to now were.

The same old ugliness is behind there somewhere - I can feel it - and it’s going to try to make all of this seem like nothing, but I won’t let it. Someday, maybe a few months from now, this will seem like magic too. Why not believe that now?