In our college town, a period of near-silence sets in each August before school begins. If you’ve ever gone out driving the day after Christmas, you know the kind of quiet. Instead of the grays of winter, the palette is summer’s burnt browns. Hot pavement ripples the air.
Behind climate-controlled walls, store owners concoct their plans. The undergraduates arrive in two weeks. Local shops and big chains lay out their finery, aiming to secure the students’ four-year loyalty. Soon, my sleepy grocery will become a hub of anxious parents shepherding their beloveds through the aisles in search of a favorite cereal or cookie. Earnest employees will greet them at every turn. “Try some antipasti?” a matronly lady will ask by the deli counter. The Dixie cups on her tray will bear the University logo and hold an assortment of artichokes and olives. She’ll stand on sparkling white floors—an angel in a vaporous double helix of Chlorox and Tuscany.
Across the strip from the grocery sits a vitamin shop that caters to college athletes. It was built three years ago in the style of the University, with brick walls and white columns. Before, an old gas station stood on the site. I stopped there only once, on an empty tank one December night. My cold, nervous hands held the pump while my eyes locked onto my newborn daughter in the back seat. I could see her in the floodlights, screaming with colic through the closed window. Ten feet away, semi trucks roared past, drowning out her muffled wails. How could I, a flimsy veil, protect her from the world? Years later, when bulldozers slid the station’s dusty remains into a dumpster, I watched from the stoplight and was glad.
Children don’t choose their parents. Nor do adults. A mother may take the form of a stockboy, pointing you and your college freshman down an aisle. A father, disguised as a wrecking ball, may demolish a scene of self-doubt. At the deckled edges of parenthood, comfort is nowhere to be found. It is everywhere.
Some of Life’s cyclical rotations remind us of the bitter–sweet nature of our existence. A college town stands as one of the shining examples of how Life goes on – from nervous, greenhorn beginnings through golden, celebratory triumphs of commencement. Another very rapid rotation is the euphoria we feel at the very end of 9 months, anticipating then experiencing childbirth; followed by the anxious, seeming endlessness of life with our newborn. But with these rotations can come the advent of the long view and calm.