Home Again

What a difference a day makes: Thursday's nasty hotel cost $150 per night and the one I’m in now? $120 for three nights. Why? Because now I am home in the arms of my alma mater, the place I still can’t drive past in my hamster-wheel travels  without  ditching my car and walking in the gates to sit once again under that big copper beech that’s been sheltering young women for a hundred years and more.It’s Reunion Weekend here at Smith and I'm staying in Room 109 Comstock,  as nicely monastic a cell as you could ask for. I have a window, as you can see and a desk, a bureau, a bookcase and a sweet single bed.Last night 4o of us hung out for a couple of hours in Comstock’s living room, once as  formal as all such living rooms were in women’s colleges. (This  is the place Julia Child went to school, remember - and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Sylvia Path and Barbara Bush  when she was Barbara  Pierce. I mean you can just picture the pearl necklaces.)My class was like that for oh, maybe about five minutes Freshman  Year. Then in came the Youth Revolution. I remember I cut a full 12 inches off that blue wraparound I came with in September, traded in the bra  for a halter-top and let my previously just-so hair tumble down in the curls God gave me.

We may not look much like the girls we once were but I can tell you this about the 102 of us here this weekend:  We seem as happy to be on this campus today as ever we were when youth and strength were ours and the days ahead were poised to open and open like flowers.