What will going back to my former college decades after I went there be like?
I imagined back when I was 18 or so that I would drive up to my 10th high school reunion in my black Porsche, streaking back to upstate New York from my walls-made-of-windows condominium in Manhattan, these luxuries afforded by my career as a lawyer.
Going back: How accurate are memories of places from your distant past?
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini
By the time I turned 28, I had no desire for a Porsche, a post-war condo, or a career as a lawyer. I happen to have attended two high schools and, as memory serves, both had their 10-year reunions for my class on the same weekend. I attended neither, opting instead to explore the South. I headed to Charleston, visited a plantation, ate seafood on Sullivan’s Island, and slept for a while on the beach at night.
I imagined when I was 22 or so that I would return to my college at some point far in the future as a novelist, for a reading. I would embody all of the creativity that surrounded me. I would listen to the vast pipe organ being played in the chapel.
I went to two colleges. I lived for many years in the same city where my second college was located, and went back often to take classes, or just pass through. Located in the heart of Washington, D.C., it is hard to miss if you live there. There wasn’t much in the way of nostalgia for that school. It was always there. I was always there.
Going back: Dreams change; do memories, too?
Photo credit: L. Tripoli
By the time I got back to my first college, it was far in the future. I embodied only some of the creativity I had been trying to grasp there. I was a published author, although my book is not a novel. No one would want me to read it aloud. In my one-time college, the sameness of the place, and the accuracy of my memory of it, both surprise me. I still love pipe organs.
This week, what I learned when I went back.
—Lori Tripoli