hook, eye, and sinker

I just got back from four and a half days of vacation in the Midwest.  I am writing now because I am due for a post, overdue in fact, and while mere mortals might be unfazed by the calls of a self-imposed schedule, I am the Pinnacle of Self-Discipline.  Sometimes to a dysfunctional degree.  But mostly, without this characteristic, I would have spiraled irrevocably into the deepest circles of the inferno.

But there is no good place to start.  There is no way I can share every activity, every discovery, every crucial moment even of the past five days.  There is no way to fully express exactly how much this time means to me.  So I am loath to write anything at all, knowing I can never do it justice.

My mom said, driving me back to Wilmington from PHL, "You said it earlier, when you were talking about going back: Closure."

There it is.  Closure.  Did I go back for this?

It has been just shy of one year since I pulled the loose threads of my college career into a quick and careless knot of necessity.  Part of me feels that if I had postponed this trip by just a few weeks, certain things would have hardened into unfortunate eternal truths.  I didn't really know that up front, but I think it's good I went when I did.

I went to see Ann, and the apprentice art show at the NAG.  It's strange to me that I haven't seen her in 9 months.  That feels wrong.

I didn't make plans, I told about 3 people in advance that I was coming, and I vowed to keep a low profile.  I was going to avoid campus at all costs.  Anyone I did speak to while in Northfield heard my apprehension about running into any of my ghosts should I set foot on The Hill.  This is something I may never feel prepared to do.

But places get under your skin.  I love St. Olaf.  I am proud of the place I chose to get my (invaluable) education, and awestruck by the relationships that grew out of that place.  Of course I would go back.

I got in on Thursday, which as any Ole knows is Froggy's night.  Froggy's flooded last fall, weeks before I turned 21.  So I never got to experience this particular tradition.

Of course I had to go.

And of course some ghosts appeared to me there, and it was expectedly mundane, and we drank (and sloshed through) cheap beer and danced a little and laughed at how normal it felt to be at Froggy Bottoms on a Thursday night.

The next day Ann had some work to finish in the ceramics studio on campus, so I went up there with her and sat next to her workstation for most of the day.  Again, I felt content.  I snuck out the back door to do some yoga, and tried to work on a stagnant poem, but predictably I got restless.  My respected fellow anthropologist William had suggested to me the night before that I stop by the Soc/Anthro office (Ye Olde Stomping Groundes) and say hi to some of the professors there.  If there is anywhere on campus I do want to visit, it is Holland Hall suite 400.

I undoubtedly chose the right course of study at St. Olaf, and I was glad to be back.  (I did miss the Bananagrams set that used to be the focus of my Friday mornings in the Soc/Anthro office, but things fall by the wayside.  We all know this.)  Mid-May is a hectic time on campus, but I snagged some really good chats with a couple of professors.

Professor Tom Williamson of Anthropology Lore invited me to walk with him to Buntrock, where he was going to a meeting.  Buntrock.  The center of campus activity.  My kryptonite.

Of course I went.  He mentioned the chances he's had to catch up with a few of my classmates lately and said, "What strikes me about seeing all of you is that, in 8 or 10 months, you've got this confidence.  You're just so confident."  He seems a bit awed, as always, with us and with the world at large.

"We have to be," I reply, and launch into a description of the requirements of professional conduct.  But I get this weird feeling he understood better than I did that I was really talking about something much broader and deeper than just self-presentation.  It's about survival, and self-discovery, and the truthful uncertainty of the post-grad world.

I ended up on campus one more time, the next afternoon, to see Grace, who refused to let me escape unscathed.  She recalled the place she saw me in last spring, wild and desperate and even delirious, and she said she understood then to give me space, and she understands now what I felt like.  I was amazed by her perceptiveness of a situation I myself was barely aware of, but I remember feeling the same way in the spring of my junior year and the spring of my senior year about my good friend and peer mentor Jon.  I'm overwhelmingly grateful to her for knowing, all along, and for not letting me leave without a hug, a conversation, and a St. Olaf Cookie.

I ran into a few more people while I was there, all of them important.  For all my fears about having to tell all 2500 campus denizens a blander version of my year, I only suffered encounters with people I think about often and with whom I could have hoped to share my time.  It felt normal, sitting on the quad in the sunshine, being the Enabler of Work-Shirking, just like I always have been.  Talking about nothing in particular.

We did talk about their plans for the impending eternity, and I did find myself spinning my life story with a bit of a didactic touch.  I have learned so many lessons this year and I want to talk about them so much more than I have opportunities to do so; I guess what I'm hoping is to set up the stage for a continuing dialogue, and that maybe someone will pick up the dangling thread a few months or a year down the road.  Or tomorrow.

Feeling sun-tired and almost overwhelmed, I headed back downtown to breathe before Ann wanted to leave for our camping trip.

We were pretty quiet in the Rover, winding between cornfields and trying not to speed too much on those classic U.S. highways.  Both of us alone with our own thoughts, but once Ann said, "I was wondering why this feels so normal, and then I remembered that we did this last summer, 3 days, all the way across the country."

So normal.  We crossed into Wisconsin as the sun sank slowly from its piercing peak.  I didn't know until we crossed the old bridge spanning the St. Croix River, and my heart sped up erratically before thunking back into a slower, deeper rhythm, how normal.  Without a doubt there is a piece of my heart melted into the wild Wisconsin landscape, molded to the river and the hills and the dark green trees.

We stopped just over the border at St. Croix Liquor to pick up the New Glarus Wisconsin beer I've been craving for weeks now.  The proprietor spoke with such a warm, thick Wisconsin accent, was so friendly, helpful, knew the trails and the beers and the importance of a good campfire.  "Beautiful night for camping!" he said, waving us out.  "You girls have fun!"

I didn't know how much I missed it.

I still am not a through-and-through Midwest girl, but my loves are in Wisconsin, Northfield, Minneapolis.  I got my fill of Bread Belt witbiers at the Lowry in Uptown, drank cold press coffee at a hipster coffeeshop on a high-traffic corner.

Most importantly, though, I got to touch base with my loves and with the parts of myself I left with them in May, June, August.  I got to access that deep, unspoken, unspeakable click that happens when we reconnect, which is as simple as a smile and a touch and a minute of quality time.  This is my love language.