going back

I was back at my old Alma Mater today, taking a class for teachers. In the old physics building I'd spent so much time in, in the very class room where I learned from some of the greatest professors ever! I would argue with one, Dr. De Mayo, and he would go get some stuff and make me do whatever he was telling us about. One time he told us we could pull a car out a ditch using just a rope and a tree. The trick, I learned after hooking up my friend's Rather Large King Cab Truck to the rope and tree, is to push the rope perpendicular to the direction you want the truck to move. In other words, sideways. I've never had to pull my own car out, but it's nice to know I could.

Then there was Killer Keller, he always had a lit cigarette in one hand, gesticulating with it like a pointer. Saying things like (while jabbing at the green chalkboard with his smoke) "This damn part of the equation means.... whatever he was talking about. People could still smoke in buildings then, even in the halls. Don't remember if I did. Most likely.

Dr. Powell always has a corny joke, been teaching for 42 years now, long as I've been alive. He's probably forgotten more about astronomy that I'll ever know...

There were a few sad memories there too. My husband and I had been married about 5 years and were having difficulties getting along. Things were very rocky, we split up for a few months. All the while I sat in that building, in that classroom, pondering our life, learning some ugly truths about what we were both capable of, some important truths about myself. Mainly that even though I did not need a man in my life to be whole, I damn sure wanted that man in my life.

I walked through those halls sort of expecting something to happen. I don't really know what. Maybe I thought I would have some sort of epiphany there. I felt a different-ness in my awareness, though. Like I was looking for something. That expectation has hung around me all day, like the old cigarette smell of yesterdays...

I wonder what tomorrow will bring...