College

Saturday, I spent the morning with Sandy, taking pictures of Hazel at the Arboretum, the afternoon at a baby shower, and the evening watching the new Star Trek movie with Jesse and having dinner with Brandon and Kara.

There was something about the day that gave me flashes of college. I’m not sure if it was how much time I spent on my own (Jesse at home, working on a freelance project), the fact that I drove myself to the movie theater and met Jesse there, hearing Marianne’s voice on the phone, the specific way the sun hit the windshield of my car as I drove. As I left the theater and drove to Brandon and Kara’s house, with the radio turned up, I felt that delicious memory of college, when there were challenges with few actual risks, when the world operated exactly as I thought it should a great majority of the time. I knew precisely how much I needed to study, how much work to put into every paper or story, to get the grade I wanted. And I always got the grade I wanted. This isn’t a boast but a fact, that the world seemed pliable, and that we could shape it into anything we wanted.

I remember late-night runs to Taco Bell, just because we could. Walking with Jesse and Scott to Big Daddy’s for a $5 pizza, climbing back over the stucco-covered wall that surrounded our apartment complex. Studying for finals with Marianne in our living room, eating bowls upon bowls of ripe cherries until our fingers were stained red.

Anything was possible, and there were no real limits. Each meal Marianne and I cooked in our shared kitchen seemed impressive. Frozen salmon seemed gourmet. Ramen was still entirely acceptable. There were no property taxes to pay, no water bills. We felt impossibly grown up without having the responsibilities that come with actually growing up.

Now Marianne’s in California, browsing through used bookstores and training for a charity bike ride from LA to San Francisco. And I’m in Wilmington still dreaming big dreams but with a heavy dose of reality to accompany them. The world has lost much of its malleability. But I can still drive west just before sunset with the radio up loud, with the air soft and summery, and remember a flash of what it felt like to be just beginning.