Heigh, Ho, the Wind and the Rain

I walked into a building this afternoon, out of the rain and wind; and all of a sudden I remembered something from college.

 

A few weeks ago, I saw the Prospect Theater Company’s The Underclassman, a very enjoyable musical by Peter Mills & Cara Reichel, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s time at Princeton, and the events that inspired Tender Is the Night.

I enjoyed it very much; and one of the things that struck me most was the way it captured the sense of college years as being a brief interval of paradise.  There’s a very effective scene at the Jersey Shore, around 1915 or 1916, playing on the thought that beyond the peaceful shore, great nations were at war.  (“Shore” and “war” were the rhyme, but I don’t recall the exact line.)

I don’t think of my college years as a paradise, set off from the rest of my life (although I am aware how privileged I was to go to college).  Maybe because I haven’t always been a full-time sage, and have for most of my life worked in academia, I don’t have the sense of college as a brief, lost interval.

 

But as I came in out of the rain and wind, I instantly thought of a day long ago when Bill and Pete and I came into a college building, out of a similar storm, and did simultaneous double-takes. We came in through a little-used back entrance; and there on the lower landing was Sally, with a blanket, and a picnic lunch spread out.

We shouldn’t have been surprised at anything Sally would do.  But an indoor picnic in the winter …

We were invited to join her; and since we had our lunches with us, there was enough for everyone.  Sally provided pastries which her grandmother, and her grandmother’s friend, had made.   We dutifully composed a thank-you note, beginning “Dear Sally’s Grandmother and Sally’s Grandmother’s Friend”.

 

I don’t remember what class we had been coming from; nor what class we went to next.  But all of a sudden today, I remembered the little bit of paradise, the indoor picnic on a stormy day, long, long ago.

And I’m thinking of what someone wrote, long, long ago:

The warmth of indoors, after winter rain

and silence after walking a windy mile;
soft light on her sleeve, and on her hair
and on her smile.

Thank you, Sally’s Grandmother; and Sally’s Grandmother’s Friend.

And thank you, Sally.