By Val Dunn
Elm Staff Writer
Two weeks before returning to my sophomore year of college, I found myself in the unusually turbulent body of a favorite lake, swimming into a midnight storm. The water of the lake trembled with the coming squall, and I rose my head to the surface, shaking with the danger. With a breath of clarity, my eyes skimmed the surface. I saw the lightning in great flashes. The thunder, when it came, tore through the summer night. For the life of me, I could not remember what had first drawn me to the water, what madness had possessed me to swim in a tempest.
After my argument with the sky which the sky won, I pulled myself reluctantly from the water onto the clammy dock. Wrapped in a towel, I shivered, I survived. At that odd moment of self-induced danger the end of summer struck me, and I came to realize the difference of a year.
I could scarcely remember a year ago. I knew with certainty that two weeks before the start of my freshman year, I would have woken to the scent of dew and stale sparkling cider. Lawn parties were my specialty when I had gobs of friends to entertain with the gem of companionship, made rare and precious by our impending deadline. College made Gatsbys of us all last summer. We would fall asleep as dawn broke, four or five of us at least, talking and conjuring extravagant possibilities. The juxtaposition of our age tormented us with giddiness. Just finished our senior year, we had the world at our feet, waiting for that very world as we knew it to leave us come fall. In addition to the parties, we had little pragmatism, and our priorities were things of wonder. My mother fretted over helping me to buy book and bed sheets and breakfast bars. I fretted over the end of my childhood while watching the final “Harry Potter” film. A stack of graduation presents begged me for thank you notes. I hounded an old friend, clinging to her and begging her not to leave me even as I prepared to leave her. My education level and my age demanded I grow up, and I merely wanted to ride my bike into sunsets. Beyond the sunset came my first year of college which asked maturity of me, but at no sacrifice to my youth. So I survived. The summer after my first year, the mysteries and wonders once held by my hometown faded. Some had even fallen tremendously from grace. I worked constantly and kept late nights on the lawn only twice. The friend I had loathed to leave hardly ever saw me. I rode my bike into fewer sunsets and instead suffered from a sense of continuum. But I grasped a sense of thoughtfulness and peace in a visit to the lake. I realized as I watched the lake, an entire year had passed between summers. Sodden from a grimy lake but untouched by the lightning, I laughed with increasing dread for my future. Summer was losing its power to suspend reality, and I wondered how many more I might have before the hot season melted into the rest of the year. The timelessness, the golden twilight feel of summer after senior year, trickles slowly into the past even as I think of it. Like my night in the lake, I must remember to pause and examine where I have landed. What I find is often terrifyingly beautiful, much thanks to the year it took to arrive. May the fall beckon the same for you.