Day 1, Weekend 1.

It’s 8 am on my first day of classes, and I’m two hours early. The weekend college administration announced that they would be out here this morning with snacks and coffee before classes begin. I guess I wanted the full-on welcome, and man are they giving it. Dean Williams is a huge cheerleader and she’s full of positive energy. I never say shit like that but there you go. I’ve met her several times and she pretends she remembers me, so I’m a bit of a fan, if only for the consistent effort she makes. Almost all of the people at this place are like this: enthusiastic, supportive, kind. 

I’m sitting here outside the cafe, under a beautiful old tree, wishing, a little, that I had slept in more, but enjoying the people watching. Tomorrow my first class is at 8 but honestly I couldn’t sleep anyway.  

(A bee just landed on my bottle of water.)

It occurred to me that the book I need for one of my classes and ordered from Amazon won’t be delivered until NEXT FRIDAY, and so I should’ve probably gotten it from somewhere else. 

Well, I have some time, maybe I’ll be able to track it down for tomorrow. 

All week I’ve been getting emails - apparently they don’t separate out the weekend college student emails from the regular university students. I like it, but I don't. Anyway, they have been sending welcome messages and photos of girls moving into the dorms wearing MSMU sweatshirts and emails from IT about outages and issues with connectivity between the two campuses and the music classes I could be taking if I was a normal student and it sounds so easy and amazing and can you imagine the different path my life would’ve taken if I had known I could do this 25 years ago? 

And the funny thing is, and maybe I shouldn't write this down, but I also have the idea that I could so easily walk back to my car and drive away and never, ever come back… well, that idea is pretty strong too. I wouldn't be me without that thought. Not doing it, though, is a step in the right direction.