Rite of Passage

This is what it means to be an adult: to fix a photogenic smile on your face when all you want to do is curl up in a ball and cry; to politely shake hands with a man whom, at that particular moment, you would far rather slap; to refuse to allow one's perfectly appropriate heartbreak to interfere with the mindless but necessary rituals of life.

Not that my graduation was awful. Dr. Vanderpoel's speech, the cheerful chaos as we milled about Nash in our gowns, Dr. Sander's cap blowing off, the contra dance that night . . . there were far more moments when I wanted to laugh than when I wanted to cry. Yet those few seconds walking across the stage, which according to all the Kodak ads are supposed to be cherished for a lifetime, were, after Dr. Farris' speech, exceedingly painful. (Why did he have to say such things then, of all times? Why does he always have to be so . . . himself?) The day was emblematic of my entire experience at PHC. If I had known beforehand what the last four years would be like, especially with all the things that happened to my major, I would not have come. But I am so glad that I did. God has grown me as a writer and as a disciple through the friendships, the professors, even the untimely death of the writing major. There has been far more joy than sorrow, but most of the joys have been unexpected, unlikely, and not the kind that would look good in a brochure for the college. Some of the highlights:

• dancing the Virginia Reel in the street in front of the dorms my first semester
• boating on Lake Bob
• Smudge!
• Dr. Vanderpoel
• the comaraderie of the cube rooms at 2:00 in the morning
• writing a Stacey paper about the tyranny of the automobile
• Dr. Hake's classroom contortions, ramblings on male-female relationships, and infectious joy in God
• bobtizing Charlie, the orange inflatable couch
• Eden Troupe (Remember the bushes!)
• watching Muppet's Christmas Carol when I should have been studying for a Con. Law final
• finally understanding T.S. Eliot (a little bit, I think)
• spontaneous tea parties
• singing in the stairwells
• stomping in circles around the tiny patch of woods for 45 minutes, the day the cancellation of the writing major was announced, fuming, until a verse came to mind - "He leads the blind by paths they have not known, along unfamiliar ways he guides them" - and the verse became a song, and my heart grew quiet in God
• getting lost on the way to church and finding myself in front of St. Peter's just as services were beginning
• singing songs from My Fair Lady with my roommate at midnight, until our RA told us to be quiet
• learning how to contra dance
• failing miserable to learn how to swing dance

And there are many more. Thanks be to God alone!