Life In A Word

aggrandize

On a recent trip to Sweden, my wife and I went to an “ice bar” in one of Stockholm’s downtown hotels. The experience is unique and exactly as advertised. You enter a small lobby adjacent to the hotel, where payment gets you admission and a drink. Then you don parka and gloves and pass through double-doors into the bar itself. The temperature immediately plummets to well below freezing, and everything – I mean everything – is made of ice.

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The photo above is the ice bar itself, where drinks are prepared and served. If you look closely you can see the “glasses” lined up along the back – really just big cubes of ice hollowed out to hold the alcohol. Once you have your drink you’re encouraged to seat yourself at one of the nearby booths. Your table and chair are made of ice. Several free-standing ice walls define the space. The lighting changes slowly – different colors and levels of brightness – to accentuate the nature scenes and cityscapes expertly carved into the walls. The entire facility is melted and reconstructed twice a year.

As I think back on our ice bar experience I realize this is an example of reinventing a rather ordinary activity. Take away the ice and all we’re doing is having a drink in a bar. The genius of the ice bar is that its inventor realized people would pay good money for the novelty. This, my friends, is how you aggrandize an everyday activity.

If you’ve heard of ice bars you’ve probably heard of oxygen bars too. Another clever soul realized people would pay good money ($1/minute!) to consume flavored varieties of oxygen. Throw in the purported health benefits and the customers came a-flocking. I won’t cave into an oxygen bar anytime soon but I might pay good money to see the patrons themselves – fitted with an apparatus that goes around the ears and up into the nostrils – breathing what is obviously available for free in the atmosphere around them.

Los Angeles boasts a gourmet water bar, which includes a 46-page menu of bottled waters; some as much as $20/bottle. And for $50 you can take a water-tasting class. The venture has been described as a “rousing financial success”, expanding recently with two more locations. Consider that California – drought-stricken as this generation has ever experienced – boasts a thriving pay-for water business. I admit I’ve had my share of bottled water, but I’ll sooner pay $25 for my ice bar drink than $20 for my water bar water.

We are a generation that aggrandizes; infusing new life into run-of-the-mill doings. Movies have evolved from silent to “talkies”, from black-and-white to color, from two dimensions to three, and from sound to “surround”. Bowling and miniature golf offer glow-in-the-dark versions. Ski and snowboard at night under the lights.

Just before our trip to Sweden we also visited Denmark, home of the famous author Hans Christian Andersen. If you know Andersen’s story “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, it’s a fitting fairy tale for the subject at hand. The emperor wants a stunning new outfit for the royal parade, so his clever tailors convince him to spend a couple of trunks of gold coins on invisible clothes – so stunning they are “like nothing he’s ever seen”. Thus the emperor parades in his underwear while the tailors escape with a small fortune. Money for nothing.

Maybe we need to reconsider how we spend our hard-earned dollars on things like ice bars and oxygen and movies. Aggrandize all you want, but in the end isn’t it really just about the drink?

naive

Someone once described me as “wet behind the ears”. At the time I didn’t realize I was being called naive. I thought it really was about the water. You know, do a better job toweling off after the shower. Use the hair dryer longer.

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Now that I’m older and supposedly wiser, I still believe it’s about the water. For an opening argument consider my astrological sign. I’m an Aquarius – the so-called water-bearer. Aquarians are more nobly representative of “the Gods nourishing the earth with life-giving energies”. Not from my experience. We January/February birthdays are all about the wet stuff.

I should have seen this coming, really. Twenty-eight years ago, in the San Francisco B&B where my wife and I spent our wedding night, we awoke the following morning to a steady drip onto the middle of our bed from the ceiling above. What a fitting prelude to the years that followed.

The ball really got rolling (correction: the river really started running) with the handful of houses we’ve purchased over the years. Our first place – a townhouse – was built on landfill. That landfill began sinking years before we bought the place. There weren’t water problems to speak of, but the bulk of our monthly homeowner’s dues paid for fixes to the leaking underground plumbing (not to mention the lawsuit that came with it).

Our second house – a modest old lady from the 1940’s – endured the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. There wasn’t much damage, except the water heater fell over in the garage, and for awhile we had a nice little stream from our driveway to the street.

It gets better. In fact, our third house was the piece de resistance of our liquid adventures. This place was somehow built without a french drain; essential for transporting water away from the building foundation. In the spring of that first year therefore, the melting snow turned our basement into a scene from Titanic. You’ve heard the term “floating ceiling”? This was “floating floor”; carpet, furniture, and all.

The house we live in now – on several acres of land – includes a retention pond that is part of a network of neighborhood creeks and reservoirs designed to move water safely through the region. But we had no idea the previous owners dug out our pond much deeper than its engineered specs. So the first really good spring rain not only overflowed the pond, but broke the dam to the creek that moved through downstream properties. The result: a custom-made flash flood. Our neighbors received so much surface water they should have gone into the rice paddy business.

In my research on astrological signs, I came across the website beliefnet.com, which hosts a ten-question quiz to determine which element – air, earth, fire water – best describes a person. On a 0-100 scale, a “water person” is between 21 and 50. Does it surprise you my answers rated me a 41? Then again, I’m not sure how much credence I can give to a quiz where “water people” are described as “go with the flow”, “bubbly”, “enjoy meditation especially in steam baths”, have eyes that are “deep and liquid”, are “prone to tears”, are “inconsistent as the tides”, and possess a wonderful sensitivity that can “go overboard”. Somewhere the water gods are laughing at me.

You think I’d learn. Every summer we spend our vacations at the seashore. Last month we took a cruise. Most hours of the day my companion is a glass of water. For heaven’s sake, do you SEE the banner photo I chose for my blog? It’s as if I’m taunting those gods of Aquarius. But I think this is more of a fate thing. And I’m not naive about this anymore either. I’ll bet you a case of Dasani it won’t be long before something new rains on my parade.

extraordinary

When my wife and I took a cruise last month, I had one of those smile moments on board that did not fully explain itself until much later. You see, the cruise was a tour around the Baltic Sea, where you wake up in a different port each morning and spend each day off the ship exploring the cities. Translation: the only cruising you do is at night while you are sleeping.

But that’s not entirely truthful. Fact: if you travel on the Baltic Sea from Tallinn, Estonia to St. Petersburg, Russia, it takes a full day to get from one to the other. Which means you actually do get a “day at sea”. Ours was a Sunday. And Sunday includes a Sunday afternoon. So on that Sunday (smile moment), I found myself humming the tune made famous by Marvin Gaye:

“Cruisin…’ on a Sunday afternoon. Really… couldn’t get away too soon…”

For those of you in the know, I found out well after the cruise that I need to work on my Marvin Gaye lyrics. It’s actually “Groovin’… on a Sunday afternoon”. Well okay, maybe I was crusin’ AND groovin’ on a Sunday afternoon. I’m just glad I wasn’t singing out loud.

I want to share a few details about this cruise; the jaw-dropping experiences that add the “extra” to “ordinary”. “Ordinary” my wife and I have already experienced, several years ago on the only other cruise we’ve taken. “Extraordinary” arrived last month in the form of the cruise ship Marina, a 1,200-passenger stunner that is the newest member of the Oceania fleet.

Here’s an example of extraordinary. When we arrived at our cabin door after boarding Marina, we were greeted almost immediately by our room steward; a lovely woman from the Philippines named Remy (another smile moment, as we have a dog by the same name). Remy gave us the full “tour” of our cabin and insisted we call on her day or night for anything we needed. Then she disappeared almost as soon as she arrived. But we saw her several more times in the hallways, and she always greeted us by name. “Good morning Mr. and Mrs. Wilson”. “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. Wilson”. How does she do that? I know she was room steward for a dozen other cabins and there’s no way I would remember all those names after a single, brief introduction. Extraordinary.

Here’s another example. When my wife and I returned to Marina from our daily “land excursions”, the crew arranged afternoon tea in a beautiful ballroom near the stern. Dozens of small tables for two or four, with comfy chairs, tablecloths and steaming teapots (we always chose the peppermint). A black-tied four-piece string quartet would entertain us. A waiter materialized with a choice of sandwiches (with the crusts cut off no less) and several scrumptious desserts. It was that feeling of being under-dressed but over-pampered. It was also the feeling – apparently – of English royalty. Extraordinary.

Final example. Our cruise line offered on-board culinary classes, so we just had to bite (ha). We donned our chef whites for three blissful hours one afternoon, preparing and tasting delicious pasta dishes and sauces. It was a scene right out of the Food Channel. You had your master chef at the front of the room, behind her spotless and stainless kitchen counter, with the requisite mirror overhead to make it easier to watch. Then you had her several assistant chefs scurrying around the room to help you, making sure your prep station was cleaned up for the next step; ingredients perfectly measured. All you had to do was watch and prepare, cook and consume. I could get used to that. Extraordinary.

Take a cruise sometime and see if it doesn’t get you groovin’ too. I also find it extraordinary that my brain still remembers the lyrics from a song written in 1967. Well, I remember the lyrics incorrectly (which is a great topic for another blog) but you get the idea.

wistful

The church we belong to has an interesting element in its design; something I have not seen since my childhood. It’s called a “cry room”. A cry room is a small, enclosed, soundproofed space adjacent to a more public space – like a church sanctuary – with a few chairs (or pews) behind a large pane of glass. Parents can take their unhappy infants into the cry room and still see and hear the church service without disturbing the congregation. Parents can enter from the sanctuary or they can enter from the church foyer; in fact, you hardly notice them.

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Our pastor enjoys telling new visitors the cry room is actually for adults as well – the ones who are upset with what he has to say in his sermons.

I was first introduced to cry rooms at a movie theater of my youth. It was a small seaside venue with only one or two screens. The cry room was situated at the back of the theater, soundproofed and elevated. They put a few theater-style seats behind the glass, with speakers so you could still hear the movie. As a teenager, my friends and I thought the cry room was the cool place to watch the movie from, as if we had our very own private theater. In hindsight, it would have been a great place for a first date.

Cry rooms are clearly a throwback to times gone by, like those big velvet curtains that would pull aside before the movie began. They bring back memories of the simpler, more refined eras that I sometimes yearn for. They make me wistful. I did a little research and learned that cry rooms were always included in early theater design. The nicer ones included electric bottle warmers, complimentary formula, and often a nurse on duty. Different times, no?

A hotel in Japan takes a different spin on the concept of a cry room. They’ve set aside several rooms specifically for women to de-stress from the apparently demanding lifestyle of the Japanese culture. Check into a cry room, select from one of several Hollywood tear-jerker DVD’s, and let the tears flow and the stress melt away. They supply you with a healthy stock of tissues and a warm eye mask, so you can emerge a few hours later with no evidence on your face. Would you pay $85 for that?

The recent trend in church design is to remove the cry room from the sanctuary. I think that’s a shame, as infants are showing up in the pews in greater numbers these days. Speaking of infants, a few months ago I watched a woman video the pastor’s sermon on her iPhone with no regard for the people sitting around her. She was in the pew directly in front of me. Try concentrating on the message as you look past an iPhone held up high. Forget the wailing babies; I’ve found an even better reason to bring back cry rooms.

meticulous

I have bed-making down to an art. Tens of thousands of practices over my lifetime have developed a habit and an approach that is as efficient and perfect as they come. I am precise and thorough, with the extreme attention to detail that can only be defined as meticulous. Inside of five minutes I can boast hospital corners, fluffed pillows, and perfectly aligned tucked-in sheets and blankets with not a crease in site. It’s quite the accomplishment.

Recently – and somewhat disturbingly – I found myself making the bed in our hotel when my wife and I would travel. Even though housekeeping comes along later in the day and their very job is to make the bed, the habit is so ingrained from childhood that I simply can’t leave the room without giving the bed some semblance of an orderly look.

All of this attention to bed-making has me questioning the entire practice, so let’s just put it out there. Why do we make beds in the first place? Who really sees your bed besides you and whomever you share it with? Why make it nice and neat if you’re just going to mess it up again later the same day? Or how about this: isn’t it more sanitary to leave the sheets exposed to the fresh air instead hiding them under blankets and comforters all day long?

Maybe these questions are really just excuses born from a childhood of not wanting to make my bed.

In the classic children’s novel “The Twenty-One Balloons”, author William Pene du Bois imagined a fantastic bed-making device. The sheets formed a continuous loop that disappeared into the floor on both sides of the bed. The portions of the sheet below the floor passed through rollers into a flat washing machine and a drying press before looping back up to the bed. A crank inserted into the footboard would rotate the sheets exactly one width of the bed. Therefore, not only is the bed made all the time but you always have clean sheets. Brilliant!

Sometimes my wife and I wake up in the morning, and the bed looks like it’s still made even though we haven’t gotten up yet. In fact, if I carefully turn back the sheets and blankets as I get out of bed, it only takes a single tug to restore order. It’s the simplest form of bed-making. Is that my answer; learning to sleep lying perfectly still all night long so the bed practically makes itself?

More likely I should take a lesson from the not-so-classic film “Along Came Polly”. In a scene that absolutely resonates with me, Ben Stiller’s character would make his bed every day meticulously, topping it off with a dozen or more perfectly-placed decorative pillows. In an even better scene, Jennifer Aniston’s character – a wonderfully free spirit – launches an all-out assault on the pillows, reducing them to a storm of ripped-up cloth and flying feathers. And there’s the lesson. Let the bed go unmade every now and then. Forget about the hospital corners or the sheet aligning with the blanket or the arrangement of the pillows. It doesn’t matter. Goodness knows you have more important things to do with your day.

certitude

Several posts ago I told the woe-is-me story of leaving my Kindle e-reader in an airplane seat pocket. Much to my chagrin I wrote, this was the second time in two years; exiting a plane without my prized portable technological wonder. In the post I made two predictions about the eventual destination of my e-reader. The first was into the hands of the Delta employee who cleans the plane. The second was into the hands of the next traveler who reached into my seat pocket (“Congratulations! You’ve just won an Amazon Kindle!”) So one or the other of these scenarios was the end of the line for my e-reader. I drew those conclusions as if they were fact. I wrote with certitude.

Here then, “the rest of the story”. On the eventual destination of my e-reader I was wrong – way wrong. In what I would label a small miracle, my Kindle ended up… in my own hands. The perseverance of DALLIRT (Delta Air Lines Lost Item Recovery Team) won the day. Perhaps my Kindle was found immediately or perhaps it traveled on to one or more exotic destinations. Either way, a human took pity on me and made things right. Imagine my disbelief (and chagrin) when I received an email from DALLFC (Delta Air Lines Lost & Found Central) that began “Dear David Wilson: We are happy to tell you that we have located an item that closely matches the description of your reported lost item”. Twelve dollars and seventy-seven cents of postage and three days later, my Kindle was dropped on my doorstep. No damage. No note. Everything intact.

I must own up to one other aspect of this story. A day or two after I filed the lost item report with Delta, I promptly logged onto Amazon and bought another Kindle. That’s right; before I gave Delta’s process a chance, I purchased a new e-reader. I even upgraded to a newer version (“Voyage” – oooo). That’s certitude in a nutshell. Zero faith in the alternative.

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I suppose the lost dollars to Amazon represents my penance (another good word for my blog) for not trusting a process designed to correct my mistakes. But to further cleanse my guilt, I sent DALCC (Delta Air Lines Customer Care) a glowing email, complimenting them on their lost item recovery process. And they wrote right back, beginning with the following line: “It’s so easy to leave something important behind while flying”. Gee, thanks for making me feel better. Except I did it twice.

My son will probably inherit my recovered Kindle. Yes I should probably keep it because things happen in threes but I’ll take my chances. I’ll trust the process. And I’ll certainly consider Delta Airlines the next time I fly.

irk

Watch out. I’m about to ruin your theater-going experience. If you want to enjoy your movies without the nagging of my detail-oriented world, do not read any further. You have been warned.

I am one of those who can’t help but notice the little things. When I enter a theater I am immediately aware of my surroundings. How big is the screen? How comfortable are the chairs? Is the sound too loud or just right? Did I get freshly-made popcorn or the slightly stale stuff from the bottom of the bin? Yet these are minor distractions when I consider my recent experiences at the movies. Drum roll please; I give you the twelve items that irk me most when I’m at the theater. No matter how intense the action scene or how enrapturing the love scene, one or more of these dozen offenses are sure to get up in my face and say “hello”:

1) The sounds of snacks. At the movies I demand the silence that Simon & Garfunkel made famous (get it?) but instead I’m surrounded by crunches, slurps, wrappers, pours, gulps, and chews. Is this a vote for early-onset hearing loss?

2) Cell phones. To the credit of my fellow movie-goers, I can’t recall the last time I heard a cell phone bleep during a movie. But they still buzz. And they light up. And I notice. My peripheral vision gets high marks at the eye doctor but makes me pay dearly at the movies.

3) Ushers with flashlights. Here’s a new one. Ushers pass through the theater once during the movie to check things out. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a good idea with some of the crazies out there. But I see them. I know why they’re there. And my movie gets a “time-out” until they leave.

4) People movement. This one is trending upward. Why are people going in and out of the theater during the movie? Did they not take care of business earlier? Are there lottery winnings distributed in the lobby that I’m not aware of? And what about missing those couple of minutes while you’re gone? Don’t you want your money’s worth? Sit still people!

5) Commercials. I include movie previews in the value of my ticket purchase. But not commercials. Nor previews that are really just commercials in disguise. Nor ads for television shows. Not what I came for.

6) Seat kicks. Which begs the question, are they intentional or is the person behind you overly-aggressive with their response to a given scene? No matter; you never see them coming and once you get one you’re on edge wondering when number two will hit.

7) The louder movie next door. Beware the lure of a soft romance or poignant drama. Hollywood has produced an action-packed blockbuster that just happens to be playing in the adjacent theater. There are no words to describe the moment when a bomb goes off in the middle of a love scene.

8) Ticket/concession costs. Okay maybe this is just me, but it takes time to get over the fact that I just paid more for my concessions than I did for my movie ticket. I know, I know – concessions equal profit margin. But I’m already well into my movie before I can make peace with that.

9) “People” sounds. In addition to the sounds of snacks, I give you loud breathing, distinctive laughs (otherwise known as cackles, whoops, snickers, and howls), coughs, sniffles, and those other sounds better left to the imagination than described here.

10) The wrong movie. I kid you not. At a theater a few months ago our romantic comedy opened with a towering image of Will Ferrell’s face. I knew instantly they’d queued up the wrong movie. Will Ferrell and romantic comedy do not belong in the same sentence. Or movie theater.

11) The person sitting next to you. Admit it, you arrive early and choose your seats hoping no one will sit next to you. And when they do, you wonder who gets the arm rest. Or the drink holder. And what’s that funny smell?

12) Talkers. Sorry ladies, but women who go to the movies together like to talk ABOUT the movie DURING the movie for EVERYONE to hear. They also seem drawn to the seats directly behind me. One time I actually confronted them about it and promptly learned the meaning of the phrase “dagger eyes”.

So there you have it. Life used to be so simple. My gauge of a good movie was getting to the closing credits without wondering where I put my car keys. But those days are gone. The movies are officially a gamble, but only with respect to which (or how many) of the above distractions will be included. I hope you’re enlightened. I’m irked. Enjoy the show.

exhilarating

Imagine a jog on a quiet trail that wanders through the forest. Nothing but gentle breezes and sunlight filtering through the trees. All you can hear are birds in the distance. Your own little slice of heaven. Except you’re not breathing very well. In fact, you’re gasping for air as you run, trying to establish any kind of rhythm and focus, and wondering where the enjoyment is in all of this. But at some point further down the path a page turns. Your breathing relaxes and you’re moving easier. You can focus and you’re feeling good. What just happened? You found your “second wind”! And the sensation is nothing short of exhilarating.

I found my second wind on a recent run. It’s difficult to pinpoint the moment it kicks in, but it’s similar to driving as you shift from a low gear to a higher one. Everything feels smoother and more efficient. In this instance I intended to run several miles but after the first couple of minutes I wanted to quit. I couldn’t get my breath and I wasn’t getting any satisfaction out of it. It’s like I wasn’t in the mood to be there at all. Yet I was familiar enough with the trail to know I was coming to an easier stretch – some downhills and flats, and a scenic tour of the pines. I figured the least I could do was to complete that portion before I started walking. Next thing I knew, I was even further down the trail and running with ease. My pace and breathing were controlled and comfortable. So I completed my run without ever stopping. There you have it: second wind.

When I run, I like to lose myself in thought because the creative juices seem to flow better. So it was somewhere out on the trail when I realized second wind applies to other aspects of life. A year or so ago I left a job I held for over fifteen years. Initially I was not comfortable losing the routine of the daily grind. The meetings and conference calls and people just vanished. There was an unsettling feeling of no longer running the rat race. There was the constant question of “what’s going on out there in the world?” as I kept myself busy at home. But eventually I found a comfort level with my new routine – several smaller commitments instead of a single all-consuming one. I became at ease with my new circumstances. Second wind.

This is not an advice column, but second wind may hint at a healthier outlook on life. Push through the “first wind” of a given situation, especially when the going is tough and uncomfortable. Give yourself the chance to get to the chapter where the pace and the rhythm and the conditions are favorable. Once you hit that second wind, life suddenly feels exhilarating.

eccentric

Our neighbor to the north is what is politely referred to as an eccentric. He is that guy you probably see in your own neighborhood now and then: an older gent who tends to stay to himself, with a bizarre sense of fashion, and the uniquely long, wispy, wild gray hair that completes the picture of a silver-screen creeper. I can’t help but stare every time I see him ambling about.

Our eccentric is home all the time but he’s not someone for the neighborhood watch. You would know this just by looking at his property. In addition to his adobe-style house – which looks like it was helicoptered in and dropped amidst the horse properties of the area – he has several outbuildings remaining from an old ranch that once commanded hundreds of acres. Collectively the buildings made for a quaint Colorado postcard when you looked out my window. Then creeper tore them all down, leaving only a large silo and an old wooden livestock loading ramp.

In the ten years we’ve lived here, we’ve only run into Mr. Crazy a handful of times. Most of those encounters reinforced the idea that he’s missing a few marbles. On one occasion, his cows escaped his property (run cows, run for your lives!) and he called my wife demanding she get on a horse and go after them. On another occasion I called the fire department on him, because he started a huge blaze inside the silo burning God-knows-what. (Weed? I don’t remember but maybe that’s because I got high). On yet another occasion – in a doctor’s office of all places – psycho showed up minutes after we did to see the same doctor. Stalker. I was quietly hoping the doctor would check him into a round room and give him a bag of marshmallows to play with. But alas, there he was back on his property the very next day.

Our latest encounter with loony – an experience that cements our neighbor’s status as out-to-lunch – involves our mailbox. It’s an innocent-looking picture, isn’t it? Boxes sitting quietly on a modest stand waiting patiently for their daily fill from USPS. In fact, the boxes are sitting on a brand new stand in a brand new location. They used to live on a stand further to the north – on screwball’s property.

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Here’s the quick story. In mid-December, just in time to boost my holiday cheer, I received a notice from dingbat. The notice told me the stand underneath the mailboxes belonged to him, and he was taking it down because he decided to move his own mailbox to the other end of his property. So for the rest of us – my other two neighbors and I – we needed to find a new stand and relocate our mailboxes. Get er’ done in two weeks or the mailboxes would be left sitting on the ground. Unless, madman was quick to add, we’d each kick in $50. Then he’d leave the stand in place. $50? Heck, I can get a year’s worth of a P.O. box for less than that.

Anyway, I conferred with my neighbors and just for kicks we decided to… do nothing. No response to our notices and no $50. The ol’ wait and see. Well, wacko didn’t disappoint. Each of us received another notice just before New Year’s telling us “time was running out!” Well Happy New Year, old man; we still didn’t do anything.

Okay, so here’s the one part of the story where bats-in-his-belfry gets a little pat on the back (not a real one, mind you). The final notice we received – shortly after January 1 – was an official document from the USPS Postmaster telling us we had one week to relocate our boxes. Needless to say, end of story and see photo above.

One final oddity about Mr. Crazy. He hand-writes his notices in illegible #2 pencil scrawled on yellow pad. Most people would create a Word document and print it, or write a single note and then copy it. Weirdo wrote every one of his notices by hand. Who does that? What really goes on in that house over there?

If you’re concerned my lack-of-marbles neighbor will read this, I’ve probably made his day since he seems to enjoy pestering those who live nearby. I can just picture him over their behind the curtains of his out-of-place adobe, reading my blog and doing a jig while he cackles and throws Cheetos at his computer. Yeah, yeah – have your fun pal – we’re still not moving. Just don’t ask me to borrow a cup of sugar.

penchant

This week I attended a conference at my alma mater; the University of Notre Dame. The days were busy with leadership sessions, guest speakers, and networking, but there was ample time to walk the campus and experience the sights of times gone by. It is a place where pride, sentiment, and fondness combine to where I am unquestionably drawn to it. In a word, I have a penchant for Notre Dame.

What is immediately apparent about Notre Dame these days is its physical expansion. The entire campus of my undergraduate experience – now thirty years ago – is surrounded by new buildings, longer quads, and grander athletic facilities. As a whole it is breathtakingly impressive, even for those who have visited many times before. But when I cross the proverbial threshold from the new to the old; from the present to the past, to arrive in the sub-campus of my day, there comes a sense of calm and familiarity that can only come from experiences that leave a permanent imprint.

My walking tour took me past my academic and social haunts. I passed several buildings where I experienced the triumphs and tragedies of the classroom. I passed several dorms – including my own – where the memories of friends and roommates and dates and parties came back to me as if yesterday. It was easy to get wrapped up in the blanket of yesteryear.

Students were everywhere during my walk. I was delighted to see some of the same habits and activities. Frisbee on the quad. Boyfriend/girlfriend walking hand-in-hand. Dozens of undergraduates desperate for the spring sunshine relaxing in shorts and t-shirts. In that moment I wanted to be one of them again.

I captured my walk with a lot of photos. Every turn – whether for beauty or nostalgia – had me pausing and clicking. It was as if I was trying to capture the essence of my past and trap it inside of my phone. Which I realized, in hindsight, was simply not possible.

Notre Dame has some very special places. There are two lakes in the middle of campus with quiet walking paths around them. There is the Grotto – perhaps the most special of those places – where one can light a candle and say a prayer in the shadow of Notre Dame’s cathedral: the Basilica of Sacred Heart. And there are dozens of corners where you disappear behind a building or down a walkway, and suddenly realize you are alone in the peace and quiet of the moment.

I walked past one of the lakes for several minutes trying to recapture the moments and voices of my years. I sat at the Grotto trying to summon the spirits of such a significant time in my life. Even at the bookstore – where Notre Dame’s name or logo is imprinted on everything imaginable, I wandered the aisles in search of… in search of… I’m not sure what. Did I really believe I could purchase my memories in a shirt? Or a book? Or a photo?

Thirty years can change a place forever. New buildings, new students, and the personality of a new generation dissolve the images of what once was. And so, as I completed my journey down memory lane, I realized that what I sought, I already had with me. My years at Notre Dame; my experience that was like no other, rests proudly and permanently in my memories. No photograph or keepsake or paragraph will ever do it justice.