"weird nice people": "like something from a story"

Surprised, I opened the blinds this morning and found grey rain slanting down onto the slick street outside. Remembering last night’s resolution to enjoy each moment fully, taking pleasure in its spirit, I splashed to the caf for breakfast happily. I met Rachel for breakfast, and we chatted about her plans for the play this summer. After breakfast, we skipped from puddle to puddle through the rain, our shoulders jostling against each other under Rachel’s umbrella. We said our good-byes in the rain in the little corner between Zink and Oliphant.

I squeaked up to the third floor of Zink, where I settled down to take the MBW final exam. When Dr. F handed out the exam, I immediately scribbled down my outlines on the exam paper, as a "memory dump", then began to write. During the exam time, Dr. F marked the passing hours with funny notation: she'd write 1 hr., 4 mins. remaining, and grin at us. I grinned back. I was the second to leave.

After the exam, I marched back to my room, not allowing myself to think about school. For awhile, I just sat in my room, checking my e-mail and writing up yesterday's journal entry. At ten forty-five, I sauntered downstairs to meet Syneva, who had offered to help me move out. She told me that she, too, is moving out, and has spent all morning washing windows and vaccuming floors. We went up to my room, where Syneva bustled into action while I stood slightly bewildered at the mess. We stripped the sheets and blankets from my mussed bed. She folded them efficiently, while I pulled the remaining "National Geographic" maps from the walls.
I was in the midst of shutting down my laptop and disentangling the mass of cords around it when Tara and Asher unexpectedly stepped in through the open door. "Hi! Do you need any help?" Tara asked brightly. Too confused to be much surprised, I immediately asked Asher to help me set up the second bed. When I moved in last August, my father dismantled it and we stored it under the bed I slept on this past year. Now, it had to be reassembled. We shoved suitcases and a small chest-of-drawers out of the way. Tara and Syneva held the head and footboards, while Asher and I lifted mattress and frame together. We clumsily slid the frame into the sockets on the head and footboards. Asher had to sit down heavily on the contraption in order for all the latches to click. Tara and I blew on the dusty mattres pad to clear away some of the flecks of lint and hair.

When all the suitcases were zipped up, we each took one. Asher managed to fit all four suitcases into the trunk of the car, plus my pillow and comforter, which Tara and Syneva hadn't been able to squash into the largest suitcase.

"Is that all?" Asher asked after everything had been stowed neatly in the car. "Yep," I said, "thanks for your help." I said good-bye to Syneva outside Lottie. Then, until check-out time, I joined Tara and Asher in Tara's room. At eleven-forty, I checked out of my room. A nice young Black woman, an RA, led me upstairs, gave my room a cursory glance, and informed me that "Everything looks fine." I turned in my key and sprinted down to Alisha's room.

Last week, Alisha and I had planned to go to lunch together this afternoon. We decided that we'd just walk over to ACAC. She gathered up her keys and her jacket, and we stepped outside. It had begun to rain again, a fine, gentle, pattering rain that flecked my blue T-shirt as though it had been a robin's egg and caught in my curls. Alisha and I commiserated about being exhausted after finals.

ACAC was warm and bustling. People Alisha knew kept stopping her to say good-bye. Like watching sand trickle through one's fingers. Alisha bought a cup of soup, insisting that she was full from having gone out to coffee earlier. I bought a chicken quesadilla, and we sat down at a little table together. We spent the next two hours talking and eating. People passed in and out. Gradually, people left the eating area. Professors and administrators in business suits returned to their offices. Parents reuniting with their children went out to pack up rooms. Two girls with plastic sacks full of animal crackers went to return their books. A constant stream of athletes, their arms loaded with thick textbooks, kept marching past us, on the way to the bookstore to sell them back. A young man came out of the food court with half-a-dozen plastic sacks full of Gatorade. "Looks like he's trying to use up dining dollars," Alisha said. I chuckled. ACAC staff in blue shirts and khaki trousers sat at nearby tables, sipping black coffee and laughing uproariously in the break between shifts.

We talked about almost everything: Alisha's "unique" theory of government (according to her Liberal professors), and final exams. She asked me for recommendations for reading and listening over the summer, and we discussed books: Lewis, Tolkien, Cooper, Alexander, Barron, Chesterton, Sayers. She told me about a group that she, Tara, and Katie like, "Mediaeval Baebes", and asked me for suggestions, so I told her about Loreena McKennitt, Altan, Cathie Ryan, Kate Rusby, Solas, and Chris Thile. We talked about movies, too, trying to think of good ones (and failing!). This discussion about books, music, and movies led to philosophical ponderings about art. Alisha told me that she's very grateful for people like Matt and Tara, English majors who are "redeeming" the field. "God never leaves anything alone. He has a way of worming into everything," she chuckled, "and I love it."

In the midst of our conversation, Asher stopped by. "Hi, girls. I've got eleven dollars left on my card. Do either of you want anything?" Still full from lunch, we both declined politely. "Fine!" he said, rolling his eyes and grinning at us. He marched into the food court and returned five minutes later with a bottle of water for himself--and two purple lighters, which he tossed onto the table between the two of us. Alisha and I laughed at him. He poked my hand and Alisha's hand with the handle of his red umbrella, then stumped off. "I've decided that all the weird, nice people on campus are in RUF," I laughed.

At two forty-five, we reluctantly walked back to Lottie. I flopped down on the floor in Alisha's room between a stack of textbooks and a dresser plastered with photographs. Alisha checked her e-mail and called Tara to tell her that we were ready to go out. Tara skipped down to Alisha's room. She got her hair cut this week, clipped just above the nape of her neck. It makes her look older and prettier--her eyes seem to sparkle more, somehow. Rachel came along, too.

We were all very jolly.

Turning a corner, we pulled past the Albertsons, the Walgreens, and the Blockbuster into the Braums parking lot. "Hmm, looks like a seedy place," Alisha muttered as we climbed out of the car. A couple of rather suspicious looking-characters walked past us in baggy shirts and ratty jeans. We timidly stepped inside. Two saggy women sat at a table near the door. Four paunchy men were lined up at the ice cream counter. They all had goatees with some sort of strange white goo in them. Alisha thought they must be trying to dye their beards. One of the men flirted with the freckled waitress as she served up his malt, while another man ordered two cheeseburgers. "Brandon!" the waitress shouted sharply. "Sounds like Brandon had better come out," one of the men said snidely. In a few moments, said character did appear, and a most sleazy looking person he was: a long, pale young man with washed-out, blank blue eyes and a lackadaisical air. He slouched over to the grill and proceeded to make the cheeseburgers. "Glad we're not ordering meals," I whispered to Alisha.

Once we'd all purchased our ice cream, we decided to venture elsewhere rather than to stay in the seedy restaurant. "Wow, that was a weird place," Alisha sighed with relief as we left. I suggested we drive to Woodward Park, so we did so. The town changed as soon as we crossed twenty-first street: from little run-down houses and greasy fast food joints to grand business complexes and elegant restaurants. We drove through the park, the green shadiness of it beckoning us in. I parked near the fountain where my mother, Rachel, and I had eaten supper last fall before going to the Philbrook.

First, we sat down on the bench by the fountain to finish our ice cream. We argued as to whether the fountain was level or not: by a trick of the slope of the hill, the fountain appeared to be at an angle with the bench and with the hillside, though Alisha insisted that the fountain was level because the water was at the same depth all the way across. The fountain burbled placidly. Hot poker stalks, daisies, and little blue flowers poked cheerfully around the fountain through a canopy of dew. I slurped down the last of my ice cream, the cone shattering in my hands and splattering my fingers and my jeans with sticky drops of peanut butter and cream.

Alisha and Tara pulled out their cameras and started to take pictures. Tara was fascinated by the monumental trees: oaks, elms, pecans, pine, and spruce rising up and up in mighty tiers above the level lawn. We seemed to be in a great hall, its ceiling low and grey, supported by green tapered pillars, its floor velveted with green carpet.

We set out into the park with delight.

Passing through a line of evergreens on a little muddy path, we entered the rose garden. Level by level, we explored the garden, moving "further up and further in". Beds of roses stretched before us, patterned oblongs and squares and ovals of red, pink, maroon, crimson, cream, and yellow. An enormous, delicately-petalled rose opened near the path, its petals glowing with a color between deep orange and magenta. I stooped to sniff it with sheer joy.

Terrace by terrace, we strolled through the garden. Our feet sank into the deep, wet grass. Puddles spread serenely on the paths between the bushes, whose roots were bedded deep in pine needles. I smelled a rose called Dainty Bess, a tea rose, whose smell was strong, sweet, and pure, tinged with that faint aftertaste of English Breakfast tea. Each flower had four simple petals which cupped upward, and in the hollow of each cup was a mass of saffron pollen tendrils, damp with rain. Nearby, the four of us stopped in front of a mass of vibrant roses--vivid orange-red glowed in the green-and-grey gloom like fireworks. "Roman holiday", as they were appropriately named. Just then, two elderly ladies in business suits stopped by. "Here, let me take your picture!" one of them offered jocularly (I had just made up my mind a few moments before to find someone to take a photo of all of us together, even if I had to ask them myself). The four of us sat on the edge of the path in front of the roses, and the woman took our picture together. Her companion, glancing about her, noticed just after the picture was taken that the roses across the path were Friendship roses. "Oh, you should take a picture in front of these," she cried. However, her companion did not seem so inclined. After they moved off, Alisha and Tara photographed Rachel and me with the pale pink, fleshy Friendship roses, and then I photographed Alisha and Tara.

We explored the whole rose garden. The delicate, faint scent of roses, mixed with the smells of wet earth and rain and crushed grass, hung always on the air. On either side of us ran lines of tall, dark trees. We were caught in a rain-wet hollow, a dab of color on the watery earth, as though someone had swiped a streak of crimson across a green watercolor. Or as though silk French knots had been tied on green-and-grey canvas. Everything was cool, wet, serene, still: the stylized rose petals, the interweaving patterns of thorn, leaf, and branch, the familiar-but-novel sprinkle of rain over trees and grass. A great blue heron soared majestically overhead, painted on the sky with sure strokes as though from a calligrapher's brush.

As we drove back to campus, we passed the northwestern corner of Woodward Park, the "front" of the park, where the great bronze statue of the Indian on horseback with open arms stands to welcome guests. "Oh, look at the statue!" "Did you see the bridge? What a lovely stream!" "Oh, there's a cave! Oh, we must go back!" everyone exclaimed as we drove by the park. "Yes, yes, I'll write on my calendar 'tulips' at the beginning of April, and 'roses' at the beginning of May, so that we can come when they're in full bloom, and we must come here in the fall for a picnic--think of how lovely it will be!" I laughed.

Back on campus, I hugged Tara, Alisha, and Rachel good-bye for the last time.

I set out on the drive home, trying resolutely not to be sad. I said good-bye in my mind, murmuring the names of people and buildings aloud as I drove through campus, then out, onto the highway, and home.

At home, Sandy was in the workroom window and everyone was eating supper. Brother1 and my father helped carry all the suitcases in. Brother1 showed off by carrying the two largest suitcases himself, one in each hand. After supper, my father went to a church session meeting, while Brother1 and Daisy went to robotics. "Wear something warm," my mother advised as they left. "Hey, I'm allowed bare arms," Brother1 quipped, "it's in the Constitution." I groaned, and my mother shouted jokingly, "Get out!" (Pun: Bare arms (arms as in part of the body) and bear arms (arms as in guns)).

Between washing the dishes, my mother watched the first half of LWW with Brother2 and me. Brother2 sprawled on the sofa while I sat cross-legged on the floor with my laptop, surfing Amazon and looking for used volumes of Browning, Tennyson, de la Mare, and Hopkins. Brother2 and I chuckled at the jokes together, and he shared with me bits of trivia gleaned from the internet and the DVD extras about the "making of the movie". Halfway through watching (just after all four Pevensies had blundered into Narnia), my mother shooed Brother2 off for a bath and a poison ivy treatment. After his bath, we watched to the point where the Pevensies reach Aslan's camp. Then my mother decreed that we turn it off and go to bed.