Cement - Impressions from a Stanford Reunion

(NOVEMBER 2007)

I confess. I finally succumbed to the most selfish of modern human curiosities.
I googled my name last night.

There they were - all the articles I had written for The Stanford Daily as an aspiring young journalist, in my quest to emulate the perky blonde version of Louis Lane. Each one, cataloged in perfect order, collecting virtual dust on the world wide web.

I scrolled down and a feature story I wrote my junior eye caught my eye, “Farm-Sick in Sydney.” I had been abroad, studying at the University of New South Wales that semester, basking in the Aussie sunshine and backdrop of the 2000 Olympics. And yet, come October, I was overshadowed with a sense of longing.

“It was as though I never expected life at Stanford to go on without me. I didn't actually realize I'd be missing out - that there would be basketball games and bike accidents and Frosty Mints at the CoHo and that I wouldn't be there for them. It was the first time being abroad didn't feel so glamorous, so superior to Stanford.”

The words could be interpreted as the nostalgic musings of a twenty-year old girl, caught thousands of miles away in the Southern Hemisphere, having forgotten she was there to experience the new, fresh and wonderful. In truth, all she yearned for was to return to the familiar.

Admittedly though, a similar sense of longing prompted me to visit the Farm this past year as a real veteran this time, a five-year alum. I hadn’t been back since graduation and although life was good, I was anxious to return to a place that had been home for four enviable years.

In the beginning of Reunion weekend, there was a tangible flutter of anticipation through embracing old friends, fretting over names, and running into old loves. However, by Sunday morning, I found myself alone for the first time in days.

A hush seemed to have settled over the foothills. I decided to take a stroll and breathe in the campus before I left it again for another five years. I didn’t set off with any particular destination in mind, but I found myself passing some of my cherished spots- Moonbeams Cafe, the trees behind Castano, the shaded steps off the Quad.

It was a glorious Stanford morning, crisp and cool, although the sun was burning through the haze and heating my neck under my sweater. I soon found myself at Wilbur Field, glimpsing across the drive at my old freshman dorm - a building I had resided in for half my college years. Once as a skinny 17 year-old novice from the Midwest and again as a senior RA, queen of all dorm-planning and to be brutally honest, masking throw-up stains on carpets.

I walked around the side and into the back courtyard. I studied the tiny middle unit on the first floor and wondered who was living there now. Did he/she know about the little angle of cement that fanned out every so slightly from the foundation, forming the perfect step up to the window if you ever got locked out? Probably, I thought.

The familiar hint of yeasty waffle batter wafted past me and I glanced around at the swarm of bleary-eyed students in sweatpants and flip-flops, dangling key chains and negotiating their spots on the crooked picnic benches sorely in need of a paint job. They looked unbearably young. I flinched with the unexpected pangs of jealousy.

I wondered if I might still blend in. If they might mistake me for another freshman or perhaps a mature upperclassman, here to visit some privileged bottom-feeder. But, then I glanced down at my conspicuous Stanford bookstore bag, bursting with paraphernalia. The truth was that I was bikeless and showered at 11:30am on a Sunday morning. Probably not, I thought. I just hoped they didn’t think I was somebody’s mother.

I turned back to the building and all the memorable vignettes it housed for me. I heard far-off giggling from the maroon lounge sofas, the sharp sound of cues hitting pool balls, the muffled melody of clucking keyboards from the poor saps in the lab who didn’t yet own a PC. Faces I had struggled to picture en route to the reunion took shape for me now. I smiled, remembering. My time here had been a happy one.

What a tribute to Stanford that even now as an adult, its sights, smells, and sounds were able to evoke such nostalgia in me. Perhaps even more as an adult as I stood there, yearning for a life before taxes, mortgages, wedding debt and yearly reviews. I suppose this is what every passing reunion must bring – a wistful reminder of a time of youth.

I tried to picture myself in another five years, ten years, on that very spot, peering out at a new batch of freshman inhaling doughy waffles on wobbly picnic tables, and reminiscing about a simpler time, before potty-training, aging parents, even bigger mortgages, and those extra ten pounds.

I think it would again feel like a privilege to return to my roots and bathe in its essence for a while. Even if by then I really did look like someone’s hip young mom.

I just hope in the meantime they don’t sand down that sliver of cement. That, I think, should remain for the generations.