Today, for the first time in months, it really felt warm outside, really felt like Spring. When I went downstairs to the laundry room to start a load of jeans, I even encountered a wasp, which successfully chased me out of the basement. I spent several minutes deliberating and opening the laundry room door to see if the coast was clear before despairing and going upstairs to get my boyfriend. Naturally, the wasp was gone when we both got back downstairs, successful in its mission of making me feel extremely stupid.
Outside of reminding me of my apaphobia and knocking my self-confidence down a couple notches with each bee I react to, Spring in Blacksburg reminds me, at every turn, it seems, of that Monday two years ago, which I still think of as the last Monday for reasons I can't explain. This past Friday I subbed for a friend's composition class, and while we were waiting for all of the class to arrive, the chit chat turned to weather, and how it can go from 70 and warm to 30 and snowing in a day in Blacksburg. Or vice versa. Looking at those young freshman faces and thinking about abruptly changing weather, an image of the morning of April 16th crept into my head--walking to GBJ through flurries, watching the snow through the big windows while listening to my iPod before class, suddenly seeing everyone around me get up and peer out of those same windows at something, waiting several minutes before I got up and peered too...
They weren't even there, these freshman students. None of them, probably, were there that day. They don't know. They don't feel a certain shade of sunlight and a particular strength of wind and suddenly feel that it is that day again. Do they? Are they drawn, this time of year, to stories about gunmen?
Somehow, I feel as though the presence of these new people encroaches upon something that belongs to me. To us. I don't want them to enjoy their Thursday off this year. I don't want them using it to go to the river or as an excuse to have a four-day weekend. If they weren't here then, I don't want them behaving as though they were, I don't want them standing on the drillfield with candles and taking part in a vigil, because they weren't here. It somehow...makes it all shallow, if they don't understand. It makes it shallow if they pretend to understand.
I wish that, for just that day, everyone else would go away and leave us to our reflection.
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trying to make life make sense (and ultimately finding out that it doesn't).
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- Katherine
- Clarksburg, West Virginia, United States
- A corporate peon trying to maintain some connection to the academic/intellectual world (and preserve some family history in the process, of course).
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1 comment:
I understand what you mean. For some reason, it cheapens what we feel inside. It's not that it's their fault or that their intentions aren't good; it's just that when they say that they understand, deep down, you know that they don't.
I remember the odd feeling in the air that something wasn't right, an uneasiness in my soul. I remember hearing screams as I walked between Pamplin and Burruss and then going from a walk to a jog to my car. Wondering why there were more cars than normal in the parking lot. The chill I got when I dialed the VT emergency line and heard the message.
So, I can say that I understand how you feel/felt, but do I truly understand? Everyone experiences things differently.
That was more than I planned to write.
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