Schools have two autumns. Where everyone else feels the shutting down of things, the small deaths of plants and the departure of birds as summer ends, the life of schools begins to fade at the beginning of summer, at graduation. On campus, cherry blossoms are elegiac; every year the dogwoods flower in late April, and when you see them bloom you know people will be leaving you. The mature shade of summer trees is vapid and bemused at the place's idleness, a death in its own right.
For a while now Columbia has been a maze of foreign trucks bringing tents and bleachers and guard rails to transform its one open space -- between the old and the new library -- into something populable. I never know exactly when graduation is here; it seems to go on for days, with the chairs and tents raised and struck at odd times, and there are parents around and people in fancy dress.
But today was definitely it. Here were the blocked off streets, the carts of refreshments pushed up Broadway by exhausted-looking caterers, the strays in the subway and at the sidewalk restaurant tables in their powder-blue robes and mortarboards, parents taking pictures everywhere.
From a distance today one of those blue robes turned into Elliott -- tall, grave and yet somewhat doofy Elliott from Ohio, from my game design class, walking with a redhead who must have been a sister and with parents in tow. The powder blue made his pale red hair look inappropriately flamboyant for someone so serious. I called out congratulations, and he startled a little. I didn't stop him, though I felt like maybe I should have. We were all supposed to go out for drinks sometime this week, but like so many thrown-together student groups the cameraderie seems less sticky than we thought and discussion of a date has faded out.
Where there's one graduate there are others, so I poked around looking out for some of the rest of our team. Randy and Ben were graduating, too, and I would have liked to have checked in with them. Ben's got what sounds like an excellent job down in Austin, allowing him to transcend the dubious existence of most people I've known in the process of their graduation. Meanwhile Randy, who's got an imagination any smart game producer should really want to snap up before someone else does, didn't have a job last I checked.
Something sick in me wanted to look in these kids' eyes knowing they were about to face the hardest part of life I've known to date, the part which seems to have permanently warped some of the people I know. Just to remember what graduation's like. A little cold dark shiver, and then back to my warm basement lab, the embrace of my grant and my office and my advisor and my department and everything else I won't have to leave for... well, probably another year. Part of me hopes longer.
I'd arrived back on campus well after the ceremony, and there were only a few grads around, doing the last-day things like pushing around rolling bins of their posessions. By tomorrow they'd probably all be gone. It makes more sense for the whole family to fly home together.
I remembered the day I graduated, wearing the orange shalwar kameez and dogwoods in my hair, hugging Michael Moore for speaking truth to the assembled hippie parents and hugging the college president for putting up with me all those years. Pictures indicated Jacob and I went everywhere together that day. My favorite one, though, is the one where I cornered him in my room while we were packing, and there he is with his hair down and no glasses, the way only I used to see him.
What I remember about that day is aching for more time with him, and being rebuffed by Dad, who was eager to get a move on for our last family vacation. Dad looked under the hood of Jacob's old beater car along with Jacob and his dad, too, and frowned at the patch jobs they'd done to keep the thing running. Something about that frown was crushing. Jacob and I were on and off all summer after that, even though I'd thought we shouldn't last past Hampshire. There were no words for that relationship. The frown had plenty of space to come up with its own meanings.
The graduation before that I lost Lauren, one of my best confidantes, and also the older student from Poly who'd led the way to Hampshire. The year before that it was Priya, I think, and who knows who-all else I loved. The year before that was the one Evan and I set off in a marshy green mist the day of graduation to drive all the way across the country together, not knowing what a rough trip it would be even as of that evening when the car threatened to break, not knowing I'd get sick halfway across and alienate the Midwest contingent of my family by blowing off the plane tickets they bought me.
god I'm lucky. So many people I love aren't leaving town this summer, not even Sarah who usually goes to Vermont. The guy I'm interested in made rather deliberate plans not to go away. I'm moving on to campus, and making plans to have parties and regular dates with everyone I know. The campus will be empty, but my life at least will continue with little change. I'll walk around it barefoot the way I used to at Poly in August, when summer classes were done. I'll get to know some classrooms I've never even looked in before. I'll say hi to the maintenance men. The security guards already wave me through even if I don't present my ID.
For the day of graduation, it's always bittersweet being the one who stays. I was one of the only people heading into the library; everyone else was heading out the campus gates. The cafe where I used to find the guy I was crushing on was empty, bereft of voices and of the noisy colors of posters announcing student activities, but then, so were the private-nook carrels on the second floor, and I had reading to do. I must have been the only one with reading still to do. I must have been the only one asking after the reserve books. I think about Ebenezer Scrooge at his boarding school over Christmas, but then, it's not snowing, and the lawns are green and mine.
What's it like not to be that last student?
I don't know, I haven't ever been one of the ones who had to leave campus for good.
Posted by Gus at May 17, 2006 11:39 PM