The End of an Era, and the Beginning of Others

I haven't been blogging much for the past few weeks, but it has been for good reasons--namely, that I was too busy having fun with family and friends at home! I also took the (financial and mental) plunge and replaced my six year old IBM with a MacBook Pro, and am still (SLOWLY) figuring that out. Then I flew back to Indiana in some hurricane rain a week ago, started classes, my cousin flew in for a visit, I got sick (the third day of the semester! personal best or worst?), so my cousin's visit was basically spent with her making me tea and jello, me napping, and us watching the entire series of Generation Kill. I taught the first sections of my class and survived to tell the tale--they went pretty well, actually, although I sort of over-dosed on cough drops in order to be able to speak. My cousin left (and I miss her!) and we had our annual art history picnic and I was so tired that I went to bed last night (Saturday) at 10:30, and slept for 11 hours. But the most important thing that happened in the past few weeks was this:

One of my best friends got married.



It was a busy, crazy, fun few days, as it was also sort of a college reunion as well as a wedding. It was a small wedding that the bride and groom basically planned and executed all on their own, because they are super talented and craft-y! There were 5 of us, including the bride, who all met in college, and it was the first time in over a year that we had all been together. One way in which you can tell that you are with good friends is that you get back together and it feels like nothing has changed. We're all spread out (although I'm the only non-East Coaster now), but still close. I wish I could see them all more, but we make do, and for now that is ok--and it just makes our reunions that much better.

Here is the (abbreviated) story about why this wedding and bride (T) are so important to me. I pretty much hated college for most of my first semester. My roommate and I got along really well, but she went home every weekend, so I was frequently bored, homesick, and wasn't making many friends. But then I met T through a mutual friend and immediately thought she was cool. She had really eclectic and awesome clothes, she was nice and super smart, and she was kind of a rebel. Case in point: we all had to go to this (stupid and sexist) rape training where they gave us whistles, and she blew her "rape whistle" in the hall of our dorm, which we were NOT supposed to do, and she did it because someone told her not to. Another case in point: two years later, when I was studying abroad in England, she stole some plastic grapes from the Studio dept. and mailed them to me. (Is it bad that I'm sharing this story on the internet? I still have the grapes and could return them, although I won't.)

Shortly after our first meeting we started hanging out a lot, and it turned out we had similar tastes in humor, books, and movies. We watched all of the Winter Olympics that year (despite not being big on sports, I LOVE the Olympics, and T is an ice skating fanatic), and after that we were friends. She was one of the reasons why I came to feel comfortable at college, she taught me how to purl, how awesome Ricky Gervais is, and the proper way to decorate sugar cookies. After college, we both had mind-numbing desk jobs for a year, and emailed each other near-constantly. Most of our conversations now occur in text form (neither of us being big phone talkers) with occasional calls and letters thrown in for good measure. I value her opinion more than I do many other people. Being there for her wedding was something that was very important to me.

At the same time that it was a joyous and lovely occassion, there was still a little selfish voice in my head, which kept whispering, "change, change, change." Although I have two other close friends who are engaged, this was my first close friend who has gotten married, and it is wonderful that is she is so happy, but afterward I kept thinking about distance and growing apart, for all of us. As we develop our own lives outside of college, will we remain friends? Or will life and grown-up responsibilities take over? I am quite confident that we will still be friends, but then I look at my parents, who so infrequently talk to their college friends, and I don't want that to happen. Maybe when you are in your mid-20s, as I am, change seems more scary than inevitable. I don't know.

Change can be great, of course, and it frequently is. But it hasn't seemed so this year. My grandmother died in April, and although I am finally able to go grocery shopping and look at the buttermilk without crying, I can't watch Jeopardy or the Weather Channel without feeling like someone punched me in the stomach. At the same time, I'm not sure I want that feeling to go away--I don't want to forget her. I think eventually there will be the remembrance without the sadness, but it hasn't happened yet. My grandmother had been the matriarch for the past 35 years, and things are different now. I'm not used to it.

In a less profound example of changing, Harry Potter ended, at least officially. And it was weird for me. I genuinely enjoy the books, not enough to read them over and over, but they were an indelible part of my childhood. They were also one of the first things that T and I bonded over when we first met. Harry Potter has been a constant in my life, a cultural touchstone that has linked me to my friends from home, from college, and from grad school. That first semester of college, whenever my roommate or I were sad we were turn on our Christmas lights, make a pot of tea, and read Harry Potter, and everything seemed ok. I have no book now that will do that.

This post is about change, but the wedding was at its core about love: between a couple, between friends, and between families. It happened the same weekend as a horrible hurricane, which seemed to highlight our luck--that we were safe, that our loved ones were safe, and that we all had each other. The night before the wedding, we had a pseudo-bachelorette party (if you know the bride, you'd know how lame she would think a bachelorette party would be) where we painted mugs with the 8 year-old junior bridesmaid (who is also T's niece). Out of the blue, the bridesmaid asked, with great concentration, "why is college the best time of peoples lives?" We looked at her. She continued, "people always say that college was the best time of their life. Why?" We thought about it for awhile, and came up with some reasons. It's the first time you're away from your parents, and you can sort of make your own decisions. You have more freedom in what classes you take, so you can (hopefully!) find something that you love and are passionate about. And you make really good friends.