365 Days Later

With the last few dollars in my pocket, I had a cab pick me up from the Writers' Conference on top of the mountain and drive me down to the campus below. In Middlebury, VT, this meant an older woman in her bedroom slippers ferried me down the mountainside, through Ripton, in the front seat of her luxury sedan. My friend Mica was one of the few students still around for the summer; even she would be leaving soon for a quick trip home to Argentina before the school year started up again. After dinner with another one of our friends, Mica and I walked through the heart of the town to the local grocery store at the top of the hill. The last time we'd made this trip, we'd been buying ingredients for a dinner we cooked at one of the language houses (one of the few times my senior year we found ourselves anywhere besides the Spanish house). Impossible, it seemed, that there wouldn't be any more little forays like this up Main Street. Impossible to imagine leaving this place behind after having fought so hard to make a life here. Impossible for me to stay.

We carried the beers we'd bought to a bench on the sidewalk that ran between the old town library and the parking lot where I'd parked my car every day during the summer after my junior year at Midd. when I was driving back and forth from Burlington. Mica knew how to pop the lids off the bottles by leaning the metal over a ledge just so and tapping the top at an angle with the heal of her hand. For a while we just sat, telling each other stories about what had happened, what would happen. And when the time came, we made our way up to the campus, my eyes wide open, trying to take in one last memory of this home.

We sat outside the new college library sipping our beers and watching the lights from my ride wind through the roads on its approach toward us. The old woman in her housecoat and slippers pulled around in front of us and let the car idle; the night was quiet, too still for a college campus--dark except for the tiny yellow "taxi" light the woman had attached to the roof of the sedan. No long goodbye would lessen the sting of this loss. I bummed a drag off Mica's cigarette, snapped a photo of the two of us sitting on the side of the curb, and slid into the passenger seat of the cab that would take me away from this place which had finally become my home four years after I'd first arrived here. I waved to Mica, and as the woman shifted the car in gear, Mica ran around to my window. When I rolled it down, she passed the last beer through to me and said, "You take this; you're going to need it tonight."

It's hard to believe that a year has passed since I sat with Mica on that curb at the edge of the campus. So much has happened this year that it's hard to believe I could have fit it all into just 365 days, and yet, when I think back to that night, I can still feel the blades of grass against my palms, smell the hot mix of asphalt and cigarette smoke--hear the deep rolling sound of Mica's laugh.

I talked to another old friend last night who was, himself, spending his final night in Midd. Perhaps it's every bit as strange to imagine my friends leaving Midd. as it was for me to imagine myself leaving. It's hard knowing that the sense of home we all made there is dispersing around the world, each of us taking a small piece of it with us when we go. But leave we must, and leave we have, all of us spreading to the far corners of the globe. As for my part of this legacy, the next few blogs will hopefully catch you guys up on what all I've been up to this past year, just as my future blogs will keep you posted on what I'm up to over the next two years. Oh, and for any of the fellow Middkids reading (you know who you are): since we haven't been able to squeeze in a reunion before I leave, I'll be planning on one as soon as I get back. Love you and see you all then!