{"id":566,"date":"2010-07-14T13:39:02","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T18:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/?p=566"},"modified":"2010-07-14T20:18:16","modified_gmt":"2010-07-15T01:18:16","slug":"stepping-in-the-same-river-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/stepping-in-the-same-river-twice\/","title":{"rendered":"Stepping in the Same River Twice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Does everyone learn that quotation in high school? \u00a0Or college, maybe, as I did from Waterland<\/em>, about stepping in the same river twice?\u00a0 It was Heraclitus, and I’m sure his observations were more metaphysical than the context in which i learned them, but it’s basically another way of saying, You can’t go home again.\u00a0 Any time you step in a river, it’s a different river than the last time you stepped there.<\/p>\n

I’ve had a couple of fun recent river steppings with another on the horizon.\u00a0 This past weekend, my partner and I went up to the B&B where we got married last year.\u00a0 It was so<\/em> wonderful–the smell of the breakfast nook!\u00a0 The main building lit with fairy lights!\u00a0 the falls, which we finally got to hike to–but there was also a sense of what had passed.\u00a0 Walking from our little cottage up to the barn where we got married, my insides twisted a little that I couldn’t see the rest of our guests, hiking up their dresses in the mud, on the way up to the ceremony.\u00a0 My whole life, I will wish that I could recapture the Saturday morning I walked into the breakfast nook and knew and loved every single person in there.\u00a0 I even missed the unbelievable sloven that A. and I had accrued from a few days of staying in the lodge–half-drafted cards and wilting flowers, cake with melted frosting, tissue paper and wrappings…that, too, was one of my favorite images from our wedding.<\/p>\n

Now I’m about to step into a different kind of river: a reunion.\u00a0 Vermont College, the best grad school in all the land, has a mini-residency for its graduates, which I think is very smart–keeps us involved and feeds our minds.\u00a0 Lest you think it’s all a big fest of NECI cookies (sorry, joke for insiders), the mini-rez features master classes by Jacqueline Woodson and talks on fantasy by superstars no less than Gregory Maguire and Holly Black!\u00a0 I am not very knowledgeable in the world of fantasy writing, though I do like to read in that genre, and I can’t wait to see what I learn by going outside of my usual realm of knowledge.<\/p>\n

But I’m also nervous.\u00a0 If I live my live occasionally nostalgic for that Saturday morning last summer, I also live it in deep regret that I did not preserve for posterity a scrap of paper I found at my little sister’s bedside before she went off to summer camp for the first time.\u00a0 In her uneven third-grade handwriting, \u00a0it said, “What will it be like?\u00a0 Will it be fun?”<\/p>\n

I can’t even tell you how many times those words have come to mind as I contemplated any of the big occasions life has set before me, and, I must admit,\u00a0the extremely minor ones as well.\u00a0 I’m pretty sure the weekend will be fun, but what will it be like, to have my position as an actual student displaced, with others running the roost?\u00a0 Will the faculty remember me?\u00a0 Care?\u00a0 (Okay, I have pretty much no doubt that they’ll remember me, since it’s a small program, but still.)\u00a0 What will it be like to talk with my former classmates about the real-world events in our lives, instead of the business of grad school that takes over your life when you are there?\u00a0 I am grateful for the chance to step in the river again; not everyone can find time and money to go to the mini-rez, and not every program is thoughtful enough to provide alums with a river path.\u00a0 But still: What will it be like?\u00a0 Will it be fun?<\/p>\n

I bought some Chacos this year for my honeymoon–excellent water shoes, better than Tevas, so comfortable.\u00a0 With luck, I will have my metaphorical Chacos on, too.<\/p>\n

Riverbound!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does everyone learn that quotation in high school? \u00a0Or college, maybe, as I did from Waterland, about stepping in the same river twice?\u00a0 It was Heraclitus, and I’m sure his observations were more metaphysical than the context in which i learned them, but it’s basically another way of saying, You can’t go home again.\u00a0 Any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-me"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":574,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}