Time Ticks On

Tomorrow I'm taking my family to visit JMU, my alma mater, the place where I got my undergraduate degree and my first taste of independent living.

As I show my kids around campus, I will probably be pointing out the dorms where I lived, buildings where I took classes, D-Hall where I ate many a sumptuous meal, PC Dukes where I lived on soft pretzels, baked potatoes and those oh-so-gooey chocolate chip cookies; the list goes on and on. The campus has changed a lot. It now exists on both sides of the interstate and is much fancier than when I was there. I remember working out in the "weight room", a tiny, smelly room with three ancient stationary bikes and the standard workout equipment. Now they have a state of the art fitness center with a climbing wall and sweeping views of the Shenandoah Valley. The book store where I worked no longer exists; it is now its own free-standing building with two levels and a mind-blowing selection of JMU paraphernalia. The stadium is twice the size as it was when I attended and has actual concessions and a jumbotron.

What my kids won't get from this tour is what impact this place actually had on me. I won't tell them about the feeling of elation that I had when my parents dropped me off at the start of freshman year and I suddenly realized that I was FREE! Free to go wherever I wanted, eat whenever I wanted and best of all, stay out as late as I wanted without having to call anyone. For the first time in my life I only had to answer to myself. I can't describe how exhilarating that felt. Some of my suitemates were homesick, not used to spending time away from their families. Not me. Years of being shipped away to summer camp for weeks on end had prepared me for this moment!

I won't tell my kids how the only way I got through the 8 a.m. classes was the knowledge and anticipation that I could hit D-Hall right afterward and eat a plateful of chocolate glazed donut holes. I won't tell them about the late afternoon happy hours along fraternity row, where beer flowed freely, no one checked IDs and no one really cared how early in the day it was. I won't tell them how it took me three years to finally settle on a major, only to change my mind yet again once I graduated about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I will tell them how much I loved it there, how I marveled at the fact that I was going to spend four years of my life there (oops, make that five), how living in a microcosm of people who are all within your age group is the coolest thing in the world, how I hope they have the same memorable experience that I did.

Don't get me wrong - college was not without its difficulties. I struggled to choose a major and still feel that I floundered for the first few years, not knowing which path I should take. I had my heart stomped on more than a few times. I had moments of intense loneliness when I felt that I would never find my place in this world and would never truly be happy. But those moments were short-lived. I usually snapped out of it and reminded myself of how lucky I was to be there. Some of my best friends are the ones I made in college. There are days when I think back to my college days and have sudden pangs of sadness that those days are gone and will never come back.

Time ticks on. My son is almost as tall as I am. Sometimes, in a certain light, I could swear he has a mustache. In less than six years he will be off to college. How can this be? Wasn't I a college student not that long ago? Oh, wait - that first day of college was just over twenty five years ago. I am more than twice the age now than I was then. I remember standing in front of the mirror in my freshman dorm, plucking a lone gray hair from my temple, wondering where it had come from. I was really just a baby then.

When I go to JMU this weekend, I'm not sure I will be able to picture my eighteen year old self on that campus anymore. I think I WILL be able to picture my future eighteen year old son there. I hope he does too.

Me in my freshman dorm in 1988