All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [15]
I’m here for my twentieth college reunion and wander around the stately campus, with its ivy and dark red bricks, 1970s-era dorms, and modern concrete arts center, which, though familiar, seems as foreign a landscape as when I first arrived from Colorado. I came here as a chubby seventeen-year-old from Littleton, wearing a blouse I’d sewn in home ec class with little pink flowers sprinkled on a western yoke, and spent most of my first year trying too hard to catch up with the fast company, prep school kids and punk-rock New Yorkers. I had wanted to go far from Colorado, to have a completely different experience, but I’d had no idea just how far away it would be.
Now the recent graduates all look as if they’re about fifteen, wearing private galleries of tattoos, taking themselves very seriously, gesticulating while they speak. I remember being that earnest, drinking too many cups of coffee too late at night, smoking clove cigarettes, arguing about something very important and abstract, no doubt related to feminism, such as whether we’re all eventually headed toward androgyny or if you have to be a lesbian to really be a feminist (I remember announcing to my mother that I was a “theoretical lesbian” who just preferred sleeping with men, which didn’t much alarm her). I felt that my brain was on fire in those days, and only constant conversation and massive amounts of reading—along with a few hits of pot—would keep it stoked.
Crossing the campus, I run across bald-headed dads and weary-looking moms who capably keep half an eye on their children while talking animatedly to other moms, women they haven’t seen since senior year. It takes me a while to realize that these nearly middle-aged people are from my class, i.e., my age. Everywhere are tidy groups of alumni in summer outfits, khakis with webbed belts, white sweaters slung around tanned shoulders. I half expected everyone to be wearing the same jeans, T-shirts, and flip-flops they wore the day after graduation, to have untamed hair and skinny midriffs, looking as if they just stepped out of dance class. Instead, they look so grown-up and responsible, so purposeful and prosperous, so paired off.
Seeing them, I feel as if I’ve truly arrived in the heart of the strange territory that is forty and hope these people, who seem to have figured it all out, will give me some clues. I’m among my peers, who had similar opportunities and went to the same freshman orientation but who look so much more settled than I am. Forty doesn’t appear to be so foreign to them: their lives are full of milestones—jobs, marriages, moves, birth announcements, kindergarten, grammar school—that have clearly marked the path along the way. They look satisfied and well tended, exuding a quiet air of accomplishment (though here in academia I have to remind myself that reunion attendees suffer from selection bias—no one who has made a real mess of his life shows up).
For the most part, it’s an air they’ve earned; I know because for years I have been the class secretary and recorded every award, entrepreneurial success, artistic achievement, or PhD my fellow classmates have amassed. It is an impressive group, full of creative thinkers, scientists, and humanitarians. They are people I am proud to know; some of my richest and most enduring friendships began here. The cliché about Wesleyan was always that the student population was “diverse,” and they have indeed proven themselves to be a group of individuals with singular talents. They are always writing in, apologizing for their slight contributions to the notes, saying they’ve done