Going home again after all

[mrissa]

As regards this entry: Wahlstrom 202 has a huge map of Middle-Earth on the wall. I had a Moment there. Didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The world has gone on as it ought to, at least, up until this summer. It's kind of like -- some people would be offended by this comparison, but it feels to me like the relief I had that my Gran could work at the job she loved until less than a week before she died. I miss her still, but it was good, it was definitely good that she could keep being what she was up until the end. And Wahlstrom is itself, and that's good.

Otherwise, my visit to the alma mater went pretty well -- I had a good time talking to five of my six physics profs, and the sixth is retired. They are themselves. They are as they ought to be.

On the drive down -- oh, it's such a familiar drive. The apples-and-funerals place! The motorcycle mural! Emma Crummy's! That Dairy Queen I scolded my grandmother about when I was younger than Roo! That place greykev picked up forgotten toiletries on our road trip! The Green Giant! North American Taxidermy! The 7Up silo! The Treaty Site! -- I kept thinking of John Cusack in "Grosse Pointe Blank," standing there on his cell phone saying, "They say you can never go home again, but apparently you can shop there." And it wasn't like that. The dark windows in the Chestnut Tree hurt. So did the bushes that used to be Johnson and the walk from Olin that used to have trees--but those hurt when I graduated; those were old, tornado hurts. And I took pictures of Wahlstrom. I took a picture of my own hand on the Kasota stone, because I'm a big ol' sap.

I'm not at home on the Gustavus campus any more. I'm not at home in St. Pete any more. But there's a place for me on the second floor of Olin still, in the physics department. It's like going home to my parents' house: I don't live there any more. It's not the same place as it was. But that doesn't mean they aren't there still, and it doesn't mean I can't go and visit and spend time and have it be a good and natural thing. Being a physics alum doesn't have to be the same thing as being a physics student to be a good thing. I won't be dashing down there every other week, but I could go back again, and I don't think it'd be quite such a big deal next time. And some of the things I loved best about that place are still there, and all five of them looked glad to see me.

Comments

[lthomas987.livejournal.com]

How odd that you ran down today. I contemplated making that run today but I had to wait for the AC guys in the morning, and the dentist in the afternoon. I would have had to wander to third floor Olin not second. Life's weird.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It is indeed. One of the guys from the class above mine was coming to give a talk this evening, but I couldn't wait around to see him (which is too bad; he was my first TA, and I really liked him, but we haven't stayed in touch).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, much nift.

I didn't know you had a work website.

None of the new buildings are in Kasota Stone, which makes me sad. markgritter and timprov tell me Kasota Stone is getting prohibitively expensive and that's why. Still. Sad.