This story unfolded for me at UC Davis, over the years I was there; basically late 1992 through early 1995. My experiences at the university were absolutely the most life-changing and shaping ones of my life.
I hope you'll bear with me for this story. It means a lot to me, but it is too long for one blog post. In it, you'll find there are characters; people I know and love. Most of all, as I re-read this story for the fist time in a long while this evening, I am taken all the way back to 26 years ago, when I began as a full-time student a UC Davis. I hope that it an transport you, too.
I’ll See You In the Fall - by Nikki Holmes, ©️ 2002, 2018
By the time I arrived at UC Davis, I’d been a student again
for about three years. Returning to
college at the age of 28 held both perks and drawbacks. At Davis, I worried about being viewed as
‘old’–I was 31 when I started my first full-time quarter there–and I wondered
if I could keep up with the competitive population of each of my classes.
I loved the feel of the campus, and this bolstered my
resolution to keep fighting. The UC
Davis campus felt like an old friend to me.
I’d attended summer classes there during my Junior College years, hoping
to get ahead on my coursework, and to prepare myself for the pace of university
classes. Summer was hot and quiet at
UCD, but the Fall–the Fall season at UCD was amazing. While the many trees were busy turning their
cloaks to gold and red, the bustling pace of student life belied the onset of
winter. Instead, the colors and coolness
which chased the last days of summer into the horizon seemed to herald promise
of work, enrichment, rewarded effort, and success.
Most of the students were in dorms or shared houses where
they interacted with each other. I was
self-supporting. Though I was out on my
own, at least I did not depend upon my parents for cash to live. Thus, I was able to choose where I lived,
ate, and played. It felt like a
hindrance at first, but later I was able to see the advantage of this.
Other things, too, affected my view of college life. I’d spent a decade of “twenties” driving
tow-trucks and–briefly–big rigs; installing burglar alarms; trying to be as
tough as ‘the guys;’ riding broncs, skiing ‘balls to the wall,’ and downhill
mountain biking in the same fashion on the same slopes in the summer. I wondered if I could possibly convince my
fellow students that I belonged in college.
Just as I entered my first semester of college, I met the
man I’d marry. Initially, the
relationship helped buoy my outlook at school.
He was a Navy Seal, and an EOD tech, and his ‘go get’em’ hoo-yah attitude
evidenced his support of my endeavors.
We married just before the beginning of my fourth semester
at school. As the date approached, I
remember my father phoning me to ask me if I really believed in what I was
about to do. As it turned out, he’s never
let me forget that phone call.
Ultimately, we divorced.
It was the morning of a hot summer day when I last saw him, and his
disappearance from my life was sudden; less expected than perhaps it should
have been. In the eighteen months
between our wedding and the day we separated for good, I spent a lot of energy
trying to make order out of my confusing life with him. I’d had so many opportunities to marry before
I chose him. Why had this not
worked? What had I not seen?
The first winter of our marriage, I attended an intensive
self-awareness-type workshop, hoping to figure out what I couldn’t see about
myself. The most common comment in
feedback was ‘not trustworthy’ or ‘closed’ or ‘can’t tell’...can’t tell? What does that mean? More than once, somebody actually gave me
that comment in feedback. They stood in
front of me and stared into my eyes, and said, “Can’t tell.” If it had happened once, I’d probably have
ignored it. But, it happened a couple of
times, and I thought, ‘am I shutting the world out?’ Walking from the meeting hall the last night
of the workshop, I hugged my coat close to my body. Looking up at the leafless limbs of the
trees, I considered this. I did not want
to live in a cold, lonely wintertime of a life.
I wanted the gentle breeze of companionship and love, the rich tapestry
which is woven by close friendships.
I weighed the likelihood that those people–not myself–were
having a hard time either accessing their feelings, or perhaps sharing those
feelings. Of course, being who I am, I
still couldn’t stop thinking of the comments–the body of them–as a whole. Certainly I’d never been accused of having a
hard time being in touch with my feelings.
Nope, that had never been an issue.
Of the revelations which came to me in this time of introspection, none
answered my questions about my marriage and the course it seemed to be taking,
but they helped me with my own mind.
During the rest of my few semesters remaining for me at
junior college, I made myself get around to doing things I’d fantasized about
but put off: taking an acting class, getting back into dance–I took two years
of jazz dance then--and I went back to skiing, which I’d put down after meeting
my husband. I hoped that my persona, the
“me” that people met, was changing and becoming more approachable. I wanted to be perceived as trustworthy and
open, and I definitely wanted people to be able to “tell” what they
thought about me.
The acting class was the most useful to me as an
introspective tool. I found my
weaknesses. I learned what lines I
resisted crossing, and then I made myself cross them. These were not spectacular
accomplishments. The things I did were
not for others, they were for myself.
Doing such things gave
me some personal power I’d relinquished.
I re-learned that I knew what was in other people’s hearts if I studied
the people, and that I also knew their fears as well as if they were my
own. In fact, I knew their fears because
they were often my own. But, knowing the
fears I owned gave me the ability to control them.
It was at this stage that I arrived at UC Davis, and the
knowledge I came armed with was mostly knowledge acquired by living and healing
rather than by studying at my junior college.
My concerns of being viewed as a square peg were perhaps unfounded, as I
felt primarily ignored by much of the student population. Soon, I realized that I was not feeling much
different than the rest of the newcomers.
By February of my first year, I’d settled in, but had not
met many people yet, as I was not a Davis local, but was instead a
commuter. Davis–the school and the
town--is not a hospitable place to those who choose not to immerse themselves
in the entire academic and local lifestyle, and thus I was not a part of much.
I was also struggling painfully through my classes. In the beginning of the Winter quarter, my
home caught fire, affecting me more deeply due to the fact that I was in the
throws of divorce, and the loss of keepsakes and memorabilia felt like one more
injury tossed upon a year of loss.
Though I was finding it difficult to complete my coursework,
I fought onward. One class in particular
was daunting. It was my Thermodynamics
class. The class was so full of students
that if one wanted a decent seat, one had to arrive 20 minutes early. I always needed to be close to the front, or
I couldn’t get adequate notes, so I was usually there early. There were even some students who would sit
on the floor up front of the middle aisle because the seats were all
taken. Of those, the usual suspects were
mostly late-comers to the class meetings.
There was one student, however, who always was there, on the
floor up front, legs crossed over each other in a yoga-style posture. She was only just a note in my field of
attention when she first began the class with us in January, but as the weeks
wore on, I paid more and more attention to her.
She always had the answers that the teacher sought, and more than that,
she asked questions on topics I hadn’t even read yet. She irritated me. And, to add insult to injury, she was
arriving in class later and later, but she always had her homework done. By contrast, I was regularly four or
five assignments behind.
About the time I began
to notice her, I also noticed that much of that early morning class walked
straight from Thermodynamics to Dynamics each morning, and I began to try to
find small clusters of students who I knew were walking to my next class, so
that I could walk with them, and get to know them.
One day, I walked along with a young woman dressed in tight,
short, shorts and matching crop top and shoes.
I found that she was a former aerobics instructor, and, despite being
only 20, she too, was going through a divorce.
Not that I wanted to focus on that, but it gave us some common things to
relate to each other by. The
conversation finally came around to the little hippy girl who always sat on the
floor of the classroom in Thermo. My new
acquaintance, Phyllis, was also rubbed a bit the wrong way by her.
Later, by myself, I thought about the feelings Phyllis and I
had talked about. I asked myself why we
should be irritated by the girl. I
understood. It was because we felt a bit
threatened. As that awareness dawned
upon me, I resolved not to let such petty concerns cloud my perception of a
person. There would always be somebody
who could do anything better than I.
Besides, I really liked the way she showed up in class looking as though
she’d just rolled out of bed. I was sure
that she had just rolled out of bed.
The class was at 7 am. Her hair
was never brushed; it was always unkempt.
Hers was a noteworthy act of subtle dissent in a class run by a
wet-behind-the-ears Ivy League assistant professor determined to make a name
for himself by failing half the class.
The next time I saw her was several weeks later. She’d been absent. She came hobbling in on crutches, sporting a
hefty leg cast. I sat in the front row,
at one of two tables which each were populated by three or four of us. There was an extra chair at our table, and I
was ready to clear it off for her if she made her way to the front, but she
simply sat in a chair against the back wall, and hoisted her pack to the floor.
The teacher was in the process of calling roll. He arrived at her name, and they proceeded
through the same ritual that they always did when she was there early enough to
hear roll called. He internally
corrected for the ‘last name, first name’ format of the roll sheet and called,
“Martha Bailey?”
To which she answered in a confident, sweet-but-no-nonsense
tone of voice, “BAI-ley.” He stopped,
and looked at her as though they’d never done this before, and she replied for
clarification, “It’s Bailey. Just
Bailey.” And the prof proceeded,
absently acknowledging her by noting that she was present, then calling the
next student.
Though I’d heard this ritual every day that she’d been in
class, I’d never considered it before.
He was pushing back. I was sure
it was her non-chalant way of showing up late, but still knowing enough to
teach the class–almost-- and her unwillingness to make a neat appearance to his
class. He wanted his star pupil to meet
his standards–all of them. I
liked her.
After this exchange,
I thought about the weeks she’d been absent, and remembered that the days her
name had been called with no response, I’d looked around and seen in the faces
of my fellow students a strange, cold, and common look which, if translated,
might have read, ‘fine by me...it’ll help the curve.’
I hoped my own countenance had not looked the same, but
doubted it had, as these last weeks I’d been looking forward to seeing
Bailey. After class, I found myself in a
jam at the door, directly behind the cause–Bailey was trying to get her pack
on, but was having a problem balancing on the crutches as she tried to lean
over for her pack.
I grabbed the pack off the floor and hoisted it–it had to
weigh fifty pounds; even more than my own–and turned it around so that the
shoulder straps were facing her. “Here,”
I said, “try this.” She smiled and
slipped her arms and shoulders into the pack and started out the door. She thanked me over her shoulder because she
couldn’t turn in the tightly packed doorway.
Next class, I noticed that she had made her way to the front
again by being one of the first students into the classroom. I was also one of the first, as usual, since
I was trying to keep claim on my seat at one of the front tables. I figured she’d have to wait for everybody to
exit the classroom before she could leave.
At the end of class, I watched as Bailey made her way to the
podium to speak with the teacher. It
almost seemed that she was intentionally delaying her departure–perhaps until
the way was clear for her? I approached
her and the prof as they chatted, and when she looked ready to leave, I said,
“I’ll carry that back pack for you.” She
looked at me blankly. “Here. Give me your pack,” I said as I reached for
it where it sat on the table next to the podium. Still she didn’t answer.
I hoisted the massive pack onto my left shoulder, switching
mine to my right to counter-balance the load.
The weight of the packs felt mostly even. “Where’s your next class?” I asked Bailey.
“Wellman,” she answered, and I realized I’d committed myself
to a long walk most of the way across campus, and in the opposite direction of
my own class.
“Let’s go,” I answered, unwilling to show anything but
determination. As we walked from the
building, I felt the first puff of warm air I’d felt since the previous Fall,
and was pleased to think that Spring was near.
I found the silence between us disconcerting. I had to break the ice. “How did you do that,” I asked.
“Skiing,” she answered.
“I was on the first trip of the year with the ski club, and I just hit a
bump wrong.” I mused about that
revelation. I’d considered joining the
ski and snowboard club, but had never gotten myself over to any of the
meetings.
“Are you in that club?
I keep meaning to go to the meetings.
Skiing is my favorite winter entertainment. How do ya like the club?” I responded.
“Actually, I’m the treasurer,” Bailey replied. “It’s a blast. We have, like, two hundred members or
something unreal like that. You know Thor? He’s the president.” Thor was another ‘brainiac’ who was in my
Thermo and my Dynamics classes.
He was completely nice and cute and friendly, and frustratingly, he got
all A’s. Well, at least it was nice to
know there were some engineering students in the club. I had assumed that it would be populated
primarily with shredders from the liberal arts college. Once again, I had jumped to an incorrect
conclusion.
We were approaching Wellman.
“I can take my pack from here,” Bailey said.
“I really don’t mind going on in with it, if you’d like,” I
answered. But, Bailey was reaching for
the pack, and had it, so I said my goodbyes and headed back for the chem
building where I was now ten minutes late for my Dynamics class. When I arrived, I saw an empty desk next to
Phyllis, and I quietly sat down, noting a strange look on her face as I did.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“I carried Bailey’s pack to her class for her,” I
answered. She looked at me strangely
again.
“You carried her pack?”
“Mmmm Hmmm,” I answered, and left it at that.
== To Be Continued - Part 2 coming soon ==
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| Friend Phyllis, from my UC Davis years. Lost to MS and its complications. You are missed, sweet friend. |
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