A Do Over

This spring at a hotel in Chicago I watched Stanford sophomore, Emma Rose Coleman, take the stage in red-rimmed glasses and perform slam poetry - an evocative and lyrical piece about her life on campus.   It was one of many inspirational moments amidst 400 fellow alumni at Stanford Connects, a day propelled by discussions on everything from black holes to robot ethics to climate change. Thirteen years separate me from The Farm and yet that afternoon listening to scholars, students, and faculty share their passions and pursuits, I time-traveled.   Emma’s poem settled over me like morning dew.  I was catapulted right back, bicycling feverishly through the quad, ponytail swinging - The budding writer.  The quintessential Fuzzy - brimming with promise and expectation and a touch of naivety.   I prickled with undergrad electricity.  I was infused with an almost manic energy.  I felt like I could take on the world.  And by mid-day, the four years  I spent at Stanford seemed palpably fast, short and insufficient.  I knew I had lived it.  I knew I had loved it, but I was a bit envious of Emma.  I wanted the chance to do it again and this time, with more gumption and boldness and conviction.  I wanted a do over.

I longed to sit down with that lanky freshman girl who abandoned her creative writing seminar that first fall because she felt young and timid and exposed.   I wanted to tell her to stay.  To tough it out. To whisper in her ear that she was good enough.

I yearned to comfort that devastated senior who moped around for weeks following a break-up.   I needed to show her a few snapshots:  Her, standing barefoot and beautiful in her wedding dress. Her, cartwheeling along the surf of the Arabian Sea. Her, interviewing for her first job.  Her, watching her three-year-old pedal a tricycle down the driveway.  I ached to show her how large the world looms.  I wanted her to know heartbreak, but understand that it would not break her.

I wished to tell that sluggish sophomore who slept until noon to get off her butt.  To go to that tennis match, to that lecture in MemAud, to her professor’s office hours.  I wanted to remove the net, lift the fog, shine the beacon on the fact that she was living in one of the most innovative places on the planet.  A place teeming with opportunities. With ground-breaking research.  With humble brilliance. A place inhabited by the world’s coolest nerds.   I wanted her to immerse herself in the campus’ heartbeat.   I wanted her to be worthy of her admittance.   I wanted her to have the courage to fail.

As much as I enjoyed the networking and the quirky micro-lectures that day in Chicago, I struggled too.  I listened to the almost farcical acceptance rates and staggering statistics of qualified applicants and was reminded what a rare privilege I had been given.   I reflected on my journey since graduation and what really stung was what I had not yet accomplished.  

Today I have a sales job that affords me the ability to work from home and spend quality time with my kids, but it is not at all what I thought I would be doing.   I had big plans.  Write a book.  Attend law school.  Climb the ladder.  Do what Stanford students do.  Excel.  Succeed.  Inspire.  Set the bar.  Instead, my life seemed a little less glossy, laden with diaper blowouts, lukewarm macaroni and cheese, and mad dashes from swim class to tot camp and back to my email inbox.  I found myself doubting.  Have I contributed enough?  Challenged myself enough?  Have I given back and done myself proud?  Have I pursued my passions?  Am I a good enough mom?

    

Looking back, there here is no denying my Stanford experience was exceptional.  In high school, I was robotic. Like many of my fellow classmates, I studied compulsively, played sports and followed the rules. But, in college, I let my hair down. I was still serious, but relished interludes of pure adolescent fun.  I went out for greasy Jack-in-the-Box fries at 2am - on weekdays!  I tried my hand at polo, mastered pool on a wobbly dorm table and took up jogging around Campus Loop - albeit slowly.  I took an epidemiology class for non-science majors and got to hold an actual human lung.   I traveled down the coast during breaks, camped outside for 6^th Man basketball tickets, and rang in my 21^st birthday in Vegas with three friends and $76 in my bank account.   I let myself be flawed.  I flirted.  I flourished.  I fell on the ski slopes.  I fell in love.  I fell off my rusted, sea-foam, Schwinn ten-speed bicycle, on several graceful occasions.  I fell hard for Stanford. 

So, yes, I would do it all again.  But, as the day drew to a close in Chicago, I realized, not at the expense of my present.  Last week, I got to see my eight-month-old crawl for the first time.   I was witness to it because she made her inaugural move on our living room rug during my lunch hour.  I recognized that the choices I made, the mistakes I committed, all perfectly paved the most imperfect path to my current life.  I know any minuscule shift in whom I met, what I studied, where I sipped my CoHo Frosty Mint on some innocuous Tuesday morning could potentially have reconfigured an entirely different outcome for me.   I am old enough to embrace the fact that you can never really go back.  I am wise enough to recognize that the honey-drizzles of nostalgia can make the past taste sweeter than it actually ever was.

My college experience was meant to be lived once and while I was young.  It was meant to catapult me into the world and mold me into an adult.  It was meant to be lacking and languid at times and exquisite and emphatic at others.   Still, I would like to challenge my thirty-five-year-old self to some slam poetry from time to time.  To get out of my comfort zone and think again.  Dream again. Let my hair down again because the gift of the present is that everything is forward motion.  I have nothing to regret yet - except if I were to ever indulge in another nocturnal French fry binge.  Because, let’s face it, no one has the metabolism of an eighteen-year-old.