Ten Years

It's been a restless, strange week. The kind of week where I just wanted to get my bearings and life came at me instead. I find myself knee deep in a bunch of work I took on before I left for Spain.  I am re-writing my novel and re-inhabiting a world I thought I'd left.  And it's summer.  When did that happen?  Hot, sticky days.  Late afternoon thunderstorms.  The fan is whirring and my tomatoes are epically thirsty.

It's reunion weekend at my alma mater, Cornell University.  I won't be there.  But my heart is caught.  It's been ten years since I graduated.  I'm trying to process that.  So much has happened in ten years.

I have no idea why...but I'm thinking of these stairs I used to take from Collegetown to West Campus, along the rushing waters of the Cascadilla gorge, past the law library, or was it Hughes?  I am desperate, suddenly, looking at online campus maps, trying to find the exact location of these stairs.  I had taken them so many times.  More than I can count. It's like I took a photograph that doesn't exist, of all of us, laughing, in the middle of the night, walking these stairs.  I could find them, without any effort, if I was there.  But placing it, arranging it next to one building or another...I can't.

So. Ten years.  Where were you ten years ago?  I was taking those stairs.  And now I'm here.