Parlor Talk
The minivan with Maryland plates is straining to contain four years of books, blankets, clothes, electronics, and unidentified gear. The new graduate's parents--hours after proudly snapping photos of their daughter in cap and gown--look bewildered by the array of stuff. On the sidewalk is a lacrosse stick (they didn't know she had one), a large stuffed bear, and a plastic laundry basket full of rumpled sheets.
Their daughter is distracted. Friends keep interrupting, hugging, sharing quiet words. Packing the car doesn't mean much to her. This last day of college has been filled with rituals--other people's rituals, mostly. Her diploma, cinched in garnet ribbon, sits on the dashboard, alongside the rose she wore at the ceremony, which is wilting now but still quite beautiful. Her head is bursting with ideas and plans and memories. Like a frown, a wandering cloud eclipses the afternoon sun. A nervous breeze tugs at the corner of one of her sheets, filling it with warm June air, urging it to fly from the basket. Upstairs, her room is echoing and empty; a few hours' drive lies ahead--and a life.
She can't take Swarthmore with her. What's in the car are just her things. Most could belong to any student--notebooks, CDs, a computer, a file of graded papers--yet she has with her other markers of her college years: a china mug from orientation, a T-shirt from Peru, two treasured ticket stubs, a deck of cards with all the aces missing. (Along the way, she's discarded more aces than she's saved.) At this moment, it's what's in her mind that really matters.
The last thing in the car is a potted ginkgo tree--a gift from the Scott Arboretum. She remembers the coleus the arboretum gave her freshman year. It got all leggy in her dorm room, reaching for the sun, then died the summer she saw Machu Picchu. The baby tree will have to ride to Maryland in her lap. She'll try to plant it somewhere--but there's so much to do ahead. No promises, she thinks.
Her friends are gone now, and that breeze is threatening rain. Start the car; it's time to move on.
--Jeffrey Lott
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