19 June 1998: Visiting UConn

When RDC and I stepped outside the terminal, I breathed in deeply, savoring the permanent low-tide stench of Logan that is a better welcome than the inland tedium of Bradley. My first hint of home came from a different state but from the same source, pungent salt water. As I drove us homeward, the clouds cleared enough that I saw starlight sparkling on the lakes alongside the Mass Pike. The wrongest-feeling aspect of Denver is the absence of natural ground water. When the ground is ooshy, it is because a sprinkler's been on too long. Funny how after three years, the way still felt familiar and the air mine own. Even along Interstates 90 and 84, the air was redolent with wet summer smells.

In Coventry, we staggered toward the house with no thoughts but of bed, until I stepped onto a gravel walkway and realized what city feet I have. In the house, RDC warned me in time so I didn't trip over the kiddie gates in the kitchen doorways. And either the headlights or our whispered conversation woke up RRP, who came out for a hug and a pee before we all collapsed.

Friday morning dawned bright and clear, which was kind of it, as it was to be my last nice day in Connecticut as well as my first day at all. When I woke at 9:00, RDC had no intention of moving, but six hours of sleep were plenty for me so happy to be home.

The sky was blue and the air moist and fresh, a beautiful day. I left RDC to sleep more as I scurried off to Storrs. Coventry is a pretty little town, if hickish. The air was fresh because it had been raining, I confirmed as I drove over the Willimantic River and saw how brownly it poured runoff over the dam. Driving up South Eagleville, I was dismayed that I steered the car onto Separatist, as if I still lived in the Orchard Acres tenement. I veered right in time to avoid that little jaunt down memory lane, saw the new baseball facility, the monstrous new ice arena, and around the curve and down the hill past Gampel Pavilion for my first look at the campus proper.

And indeed the grad field is a parking lot and the plastic is off Homer. Stunning. I drove down Fairfield toward the Co-op, forgetting that that little road between Homer and the Co-op is one-way. And filled with construction, so no parking there. And the Terrapin's faculty sticker is three years out of date. Back up Fairfield, south on Stadium, down Frat Row to South Campus! Those new dorms are beautiful! Mirror Lake continues not to live up to its name, I noted as I failed to turn at JHA to get to the Co-op lot, so I just continued on Fairfield again and north on Stadium to omigawd a parking garage. Outstanding. This is very exciting and makes me wonder if the parking lottery and so forth have made parking for students either available or accessible. I bet parking is still free and aflood with shuttle buses for basketball games.

Finally on foot, I sped off to Wilbur Cross, Tevas velcro'd through a strap of my backpack. I jumped the orange plastic chain-link fencing around MSB, knowing the "No Trespassing" sign wasn't intended for me, trotted along Auditorium, and skipped around a corner and nearly crashed into George!

"George!" I cried ecstatically, as he recognized and hugged me all in an instant. When this doesn't happen at UConn, when I can't scamper the campus and recognize people, I shall know I no longer belong. And of course George, a fellow medievalist, one-time Admirer of Lisa, and generally Fun Person, was the perfect lost acquaintance to be my first contact and nearly the first thing to happen to me upon my prodigal return. Parking in the garage hardly counts.

I bounced him, of course, I couldn't keep still. So happy to be there, to be home, for the weather to be beautiful, to see someone I knew straight off. But I didn't know everything, even if several different people had told me of it. I pointed east. "What is that?" I inquired of a seeming skyscraper. The new chem building, he told me. It was vast and ungainly from that angle, but despite its placement, Swan Lake is safe. I gave him our address as we gossiped and then hopped along on my merry way.

I considered detouring through Wood Hall, just for old times' sake, but unless I was going to enter the building illegally, the humor and nostalgia values would be minimal, now that JUMB is elsewhere and Ludmilla gone and George, obviously, not in his office at the time.

Between Wood Hall and Wilbur Cross I did, of course, bounce the Bouncey Thing. I realized, bouncing, that this would be an excellent subject for a web cam. The lighting might be problematic--I don't remember when the Bouncey Thing was removed to there from its earlier location on the other side of Wilbur--but I think Bouncey Thing Action is worth watching.

Then Wilbur Cross. Still the black and white tiled floor. Still the Schedule of Classes stapled to the wall, this semester its pages as aligned as Arlington Cemetery. From how crookedly I, in comparison, used to post the thing we can perhaps infer that I prefer overgrown old New England cemeteries.

Zooming around the corner to Scheduling, scaffolding brought me up short. Naturally I had to make an entrance. Would LEB be in Bob's old office, now that LEB was Bob? Would I have to run the gamut of Debbie and Linda before getting to LEB? Why was the service window closed and the door open? But through the open door I saw a slender woman with silvering hair wearing something handmade out of fabric only a Confirmed Autumn would wear. I leapt for her and seized her around the waist. "Lisa!" she squealed in her Laurie-squeal. "I didn't expect to see you until next week!"

I saw the devastation in the office, greeted Debbie, was introduced to a summer student, wondered if the current batch of students get as close to the Scheduling Ladies as most of those did in my overlapping batches, admired how tidy and organized the Augean storage room has been rendered, saw someone who used to be an Add/Drop lady but now has My Job (editing the Catalog and maintaining the Registrar's web site), and met the new Registrar, who doesn't seem like the type to bring coffee heavily laced with brandy or rum or whatever it was to Add/Drop. Furthermore, he has long hair.

Off to the Co-op. I saw Suzy. She doesn't like Amazon. She does like Wally Lamb's new book, I Know This Much is True, which I, happily and appropriately, first saw in her store. And bought, along with a new sweatshirt, which seems luxuriously thick and whole compared to the t-shirt-thin tattered and Blake-ified garment currently hanging in my closet.

Also I saw, chatting by the General Books Desk, CEZ, whom I had for Ancient and Medieval Political Thought eleven years ago in my 3rd semester, my first Upper Division class, and SPB, director of Women's Studies, whom I had for my last UConn course, four years ago. I recognized CEZ right off, as he was facing me; but I saw SPB first from the back and thought CEZ was talking to an unknown short little bald man, so my recovery when I saw that it wasn't an unknown short little bald man but a known short little bald woman whom I didn't get along with was less than subtle, as was my ebullient greeting for a non-major professor in my ancient past compared to the cordial one for the director of my third and most recent major. Oops. Hey, I like not being subtle.

Another one-time admirer of Lisa is still at the Co-op. At least Scary Guy (another admirer) never worked there so I'll never have to deal with him. And DWD is probably off in some militia camp by now. Another old-timer (but not an admirer) is still in textbooks; I see that his attempt at escape was futile. These are the people I keep in mind when I miss home. I do not wish to be a fixture in as dead-end a job as I would probably be if I had stayed. At the cash register, I saw some fixtures of cashiers too, and am once again grateful. "Are you a member?" my cashier asked, and my gratitude flagged. "No." I'm not even a member of the book club anymore.

Tevas strapped to backpack again, backpack now burgeoning with Wally's 900-page second novel (which Suzy says is not sophomoric) and sweatshirt, I ran to JHA. Funny how the corner to corner campus run seemed such a trek when I was there. Visiting, though, my 5280 lungs burgeon with this nearly sea-level oxygen. I remember stomping up two whole flights in my laziest days, second semester freshling year after mono and sophomore year while lumpy. Ha.

In JHA, no one was on the third floor. The English Office door was closed, which worried me until I remembered that this was summer and the air conditioning was on. None of my favorite professors was on campus, of course; did I really expect it? Nor was anyone else in the office except the secretary, who remembered me and allowed me to use her phone.

I called RJH, who would be happy to see me whenever I showed up at his house. I love him. Down and out of JHA, past the new Dodd Center, which although I had never seen it complete did look natural to me because it was begun before we moved. When else would the President visit UConn?

HBL. Up the plaza steps, into the south entrance, through the 24-hour room, which, in the summer without its pall of tobacco smoke, looked odd. Clean, even. Out of the 24-hour room to the west entrance to the Plaza. The Plaza! Handsome, open, looking like a university library setting and not like a low-budget state building. It's lovely! Circulation is on the Plaza now, which dare I say makes sense. RDC had told me that Barbara from his office still remembered me because of my handshake. What a compliment. I like my handshake. So I saw her and RDC's old boss.

I skedaddled to the fourth floor. I have not seen the view from 4N for ten years, nor E, nor W. All of north campus is an impressive view, but I had forgotten how lovely the succession of hills to the east is. I looked out over the countryside, savoring the gentle, rolling landscape. Home.

Out again and to the Student Union, because some former Add/Drop ladies work Orientation now. Through Jonathan's, still the stench and wretchedness, as ever; how it survives I've never understood. Up to the third floor I yomped, to hear another glad expression of surprised recognition. I chatted with the former Add/Drop contingent before running through the Union (where the game room has moved but the offices of WHUS retain the same yellowing comics) back to the Terrapin.

I picked up RDC and we headed to Old Lyme by way of RJH's house. We visited, but not nearly long enough. RJH is one of the few people I know who finds me witty yet whom I respect. Whom I can talk with for hours about anything. Who shares with me an interest in the arcane and elite along with a predilection for the vulgar and popular.

And off to NSF by way of Route 82, which if not the faster is the prettier and maybe more direct way. I know I've developed from CLH an aversion of Going Backward, so going all the way south to OL before turning north again on 156 makes squirm. Route 82 passes through much more rural country and only barely passes through Norwich.

In Fugly with me once, CLH commented on how carefully I drove Forest road through NSF to Uncas, but I suppose she was comparing Fugly to the Torino, which was (eponymously) bull-like. Once finally at Uncas, my only restraint was that I had to stop in an outhouse to pee and change; and that was a good thing because it gave RDC a chance to catch up. He might not have been running, but I was.

I love my lake. We swam, RDC only barely and I to the east end. I stopped swimming to the south side not because of the No Trespassing sign on the dock that's there all the time but the black snake on the dock that was there the last and final time I swam over. At the east side, with barely a break in the trees as a landing spot, where I would usually take JPS, I saw a pair of golden retrievers with their human. A single retriever can fulfill my whole canine RDA, whereas boatloads of Pekingese leave me starving.

The main beach at the lake has been refurbished. Imported sand overlays the old stony beach while just a bit up the hill, actual grass has been planted. And new railroad ties mark steps down the slope. I looked for the rockpile, but this is the first time in ten years I have swum at Uncas without contacts, so I couldn't use my regular onshore points to triangulate its position. And the lilypad garden is small and patchy this year, so its boundary was little help. I gave up.

We lay on the beach for a while before heading to the Cape for a quick visit before joining RRP in Coventry for dinner. JCW was there, but then as ever didn't seem inclined to chat. I scurried upstairs to see DEW, and there she lay, napping on her bed. Despite everything she's been through in the past near-year, her face seemed one of gentle repose as she slept. I was overcome with love. But I didn't wake her and away we crept, north to Coventry.

Dinner at the Bidwell with RRP and MPR was fun, the first of several amusing conversations with MPR and the first (of several) whose sole purpose was to acquire and consume whatever caffeine was available.

And shockingly, this Friday night music at the Bidwell was neither conversation-numbingly loud nor mind-numbingly bad nor both. That's a first for me. A little welcome-home treat.