With great flurry and a flourish, it was over

by Nora Walsh, '99

While Anastasia, my housemate, took the carpets into her hands, I tackled the kitchen, hoping to eradicate all dust-bunnies, rust stains, crumbs, spills and dropped leftovers from our meals months ago. You don’t have to be a guy to live like a slob.

We disproved that theory quite well ourselves. I scrubbed until my fingers went numb and disinfected our kitchen floor for the first time since we lived there.

I prayed time would slow down just enough to have our cleaning marathon finished before the toughest judges on cleanliness arrived: my parents. And we did it, with about 30 seconds to spare.

“Did you call the restaurant? What time is our reservation? How many seats? Did I mention my two cousins are coming in from Montenegro and will need to be included?” Anastasia asked.

She hadn’t mentioned that. With my mop in hand, I called the restaurant and fixed that temporary trauma.“Did you get your gown yet? I think the bookstore closes at....”

Before she even finished I was out the door and off to the student center, probably the last senior to get the ceremonial threads.

But I gave over my last few dollars and was actually thankful that my parents would be here to pay for my meals for the next few days. I ran back home to find my parents already there and small-talking with my roommate.

I apologized, accepted a lecture for waiting so long to pick up my gown and hugged them. After all, they are my parents.

The funny thing is, during the preceding week, none of us could have anticipated this whirlwind otherwise known as graduation weekend coming, nor could we have prepared for the storm.

Instead, we were busy taking our finals and finishing our papers — the last ones as college kids.

All that week I knew something was coming. I mean, besides my parents. Something exciting, scary, final and, with me, most probably emotional. But the fears, nerves and finality of it all didn’t sink in while I had my gown on.

I would guess the same is true for most of my class. We weren’t worrying about our futures, dreams and aspirations just yet.

Instead, the women were busy trying to get the adhesive collars to stick to their gowns and not their hair, while the guys were plotting how they could get President Tipson to drop all of his marbles.

The actual act of graduating is about as emotional as taking an exam. During the ceremony, all I was thinking was how long would it be until I could take this furnace-of-a-gown off and worrying if I would pass out before it ended.

The English majors were not blessed with shade that day, and though it was a beautiful spring day, it felt about 90 degrees in the Hollow covered in black.

I could feel beads of sweat gathering under my cap as I wondered how much longer the ceremony would be.

Instead, for many graduates, leaving Wittenberg didn’t feel real until later that night, in the middle of a conversation with a friend that might never be seen again. That is what happened to me.

I was having a gay old time at one of those legendary Park Place parties (or was it College Ave.?) and while chatting with a friend that was bound for China for an indefinite amount of time, I realized how far China was from my hometown of Chicago or wherever I end up.

If you truly want to see people again, you’ll make the effort and it will happen. I’ve heard that a few times from people trying to downplay the finality of separation. But really, if one moves to a different continent, reunions become a little more complicated.

I left the party rather suddenly, realizing tears and beers don’t mix very well. It was late anyway, and I had to be all packed up by 9 a.m.

I hadn’t even started my annual shoving of belongings into garbage bags, so I headed home but not before giving my traveling friend a hug and a bon voyage.