Because I can-because it's been nearly a year since I graduated, and because that means I'm imbued with the power of perspective-I'm going to tell you how to say goodbye to Duke.
You have to know where I'm coming from.
As of last year, all I knew about moving past college was what I'd seen in Brat Pack movies-that "St. Elmo's Fire" scene where they all pour out of Georgetown into, um, the post-collegiate bar scene in Georgetown. And it was hard for them, with the adjustment and the professional world and all. And Demi Moore had a breakdown, and a BeDazzled-denim crisis. It was Real Life.
Anyway, I knew that graduation would be emotional-in that way, at least, I was prescient. And so in early April last year I started scribbling in the margins of my class notes about the ways that I would say goodbye.
I tried three times.
The first was going to be a big, loud, crazy-sexy-cool farewell. A party to end all parties under the big oaks in my beloved Trinity Park. It would be a Kenny Chesney-saturated beach party with icy drinks and dancing and long, sweaty hugs goodbye.
So the six of us-the Boys Apartment and the Girls Apartment-tossed some worn $20s into a pile and nominated someone to drive out to a dude's house in Apex-a licensed Margarita Man who complemented a sad day job with a side gig renting frozen beverage machines. He kept an army of them in his garage with a golden retriever and a Sea-Doo. We hauled the thing (a margarita machine, not the Sea-Doo) and a few gallons of mix back to our place, dumped in some tequila and triple sec, plugged it in and called everyone we knew.
But no sooner had we softly swirled 60 deliciously frozen margaritas into some waxy Dixie cups-enough just for one round-than the thing started generating plumes of thick, black smoke. And making guttural, growling, deeply unnerving sounds. And skittering wildly on its four legs. Within minutes, our guests were gone, and the tequila-sludge was flowing through the pipes of the Durham County sewage system.
So much for drinking goodbye to friends, as Kenny would say.
The second goodbye was going to be my refined and familial farewell, in which I would have dinner with my parents and sisters somewhere lovely, toast champagne and laugh a lot about my silly Chronicle columns, ridiculous boyfriends, turgid papers and other casualties of college. I plucked a sunny dress off a rack for the occasion-"Does it look graduate-y?" I picture-messaged my youngest sister-made a big dinner reservation and charged my camera.
Instead, my father was the only one who could make it.
"Your mother was tied up and your sister had a thing and she wishes she could but you know your grandmother isn't up for traveling."
Me and my dress swirled our Alsatian wine and felt old.
The third goodbye I craved, of course, was ceremonial.
There's no use in building suspense here, because you probably know how poorly last year's graduation ceremony went. The global warming speech on the coldest May day that any of us can remember. The bone-soaking monsoon that probably killed somebody's grandparents. The rude hecklers throughout, screaming and shouting at the speakers. All I could think about while sitting there, staring vacantly ahead, 40-degree raindrops beaning me on the mortarboard, was how I felt a stronger connection to the syllable DUKE when I used to jog around that football field late at night, dodging the sprinklers' spray and thinking what if I was returning a kickoff? FOR THE TOUCHDOWNNNNN.
The real truth is that saying goodbye to something formative like college-or high school or your single days or your first job-is too hard to do in a Senior Week or a Graduation Day or even a beautiful, Alsatian wine-soaked dinner. Even if you're as ready to leave as, at times, I was; even if you've got things ahead of you to look forward to and aspire to and at which you yearn to succeed.
The End is too important and too attenuated a process to attach to a single moment-and it seems silly to ever expect that we could find relief in something so brief. When in nature do you get a clean break?
I feel good now.
It's been 11 months. I've rehabbed and gotten clean and subbed my lazy Sunday Elmo's habit with some New York City diner omelettes. But it'll never be the same-it's twice as expensive and half as good, and I've not yet found a surrogate for those cooktop-seared buttered biscuits that make my eyes fog with joyful tears.
But then, that's always a reason to come back.
Sarah Ball, Trinity '08, was the editor of Towerview in 2007. She is currently a writer for Newsweek.
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