swarthmore’s graduation could not have been more different than cornell’s except for the fact that all weekend it remained rainy and cold. last night i dreamt that the rain turned to snow and someone informed me gravely we were just skipping summer this year. in the dream, i cried.
in real life, i’ve been doing far less of that than i expected. at points i’ve hit Sad, like when i realized, after humming through the song in my head several times, that the song in my head was eerily appropriate and far too depressing:
… fun, isn’t it? but nothing stays
in a year or so
it’s gonna change, you know
but it’s heaven nowadays
but i made it through dinner with ben and the russian hoardes without too much trouble, not breaking down even when member after member of his family rose to toast him. i made it through baccalaureate. easy enough since it seemed to have been declared a charisma-free zone. i made it through the last day, and the last night, and through seeing him in the cap and gown; through commencement, through picture-taking, through waiting for him while he went to check out green bottle.
the night of green bottle, he’d been packing and i’d dozed off. around 1, he whispered that he was just going to see what was going on the party. that whisper hit me like an injection of mountain dew. suddenly i couldn’t go back to sleep. until 3, i paced, fretted, and watched the clock. he finally returned, chagrined to see that i’d been reduced to the state of a 50s hausfrau.
it was a wonderful few days. most seniors i didn’t get to say goodbye to, not in so many words. many i’ll quite likely never see again. but i wish everyone the best: patience when luck runs out, and luck when patience runs out.
right now i’m just glad to be home and not to have to move for a while. i want a soft room with muted, if any, stimuli. i want soothing ocean sounds. i want not to have to think about the future, which i hate. the thinking and the future itself. i want not to have to move stuff or shlep bags. i want sleep. luckily i think over the next ten days this can all be arranged — at least til my little brother’s high skool graduation, after which i have to leave for comotion and my summer starts for real.