A Woman’s Education

Life gives us so many memories. The beautiful, the ugly, and everything in between. When prompted to write about my favorite day, several things sprang to mind, mostly relating to time spent with loved ones, like the time I took my youngest sister grocery shopping and we walked arm in arm down the aisles singing, and I introduced her to mangoes. Or the time my two children rode their new Easter bikes, hand in hand, down our little country road and I thought my heart might split down the middle from the pressure of the love explosion happening in my heart.

Forced to choose just one favorite day from a lifetime, one day of personal transformation and triumph, I would choose my first day at Smith College. Could a first day at school really trump my children’s births or any number of days spent filled with the nourishment of love? No, not necessarily, but the truth is, my first day at this college was a long time coming and it fulfilled a yearning that had burned in me ever since I could remember. On that first day at Smith College, I wasn’t a traditional student. In other words I wasn’t in my late teens/early twenties when my feet first hit the pavement at Smith. I was 32 and a single mom.

Where and when I came from, kids just didn’t go to college, much less a college out of state, and certainly not a private college. In my graduating class, there were only three of us that went on to college at all, and we had all been advised to go to the same small state college a mere 45 minutes away from our high school. Even though I had dreams of other, grander, academic institutions, my experience and my environment made going to any of those colleges seem as attainable as packing a duffel bag and hitchhiking cross-country to Hollywood to place my bets on becoming a famous actress. I didn’t know any better, and no one was helping to enlighten me. So off I went to this small college that my other two classmates and I had been funneled into.

The college didn’t suit me at all. I found neither challenge, nor inspiration there. I dropped out after the first semester, and made a promise to myself that I would return to college when I found the right one and the money to to fund it. I was under a lot of mistaken impressions back then, one of the foremost being about how to finance college.

It took me one marriage, two kids, one divorce, and thirteen years to get back. So the day I stood on the Smith College campus for the first time as an enrolled student I could barely stand it, much less believe it. That first day, I gazed at the campus and my professors the way a young girl dreamily gawks at her favorite rockstar. I was in love.

I was also alive with thought, with energy, and ambition. There I was, at last, getting the education I had dreamed of since I was a young girl. While other girls had played House and Barbies, I had climbed trees, tried to read fat books, and prayed that I would grow up to be a genius. I didn’t dream of diamond rings or my future wedding and what particular style of dress I would wear like most other girls I knew. I dreamed instead of becoming an eccentric, fat-brained genius. Yes. I was odd.

I walked around the campus that first day with my eyes and ears wide open. I wanted to drink it all in through my senses and make the moment last forever. I craned my neck to stare up at the trees on the campus designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. I beamed smiles at passing students who, from the looks I received back, must have thought I looked slightly deranged. I didn’t care. I was at Smith! I owned a piece of this place! I belonged here! I was home. I wanted to scream and stomp and hurl myself toward the sky with happiness. If anyone had told me that day that the feeling wouldn’t last, that it was impermanent and I was just being a sentimental fool, would have been met with a crazed look of joy and a swift kiss on the cheek. Nothing, nothing, could have knocked me down that day.

In fact, if you had asked me how I felt, I would have lent you a pair of headphones that jacked straight into the internal dialogue of my heart and this is what you would have heard:

“Oh my God, I am here, here at Smith freaking College! My feet are walking up this path, to that building to go MY class! Look at the trees. Look at this beautiful campus. I’m in love with that brick, and that one, and that one too! I am Master and Commander of My universe, and in that universe I go to Smith College! Look at all the people. Look at all the women! I can’t believe it, a fantastic, brilliant college full of fantastic, brilliant women. And I’m one of them! I’m one of THEM! Happy, happy, happy!! I am home at long last!”

So on my first (real) day of college, I wasn’t so much a fat-brained genius as I was a giddy fool. And that feeling never did diminish. I still get twinkles of pride and joy when I drive by the Smith campus during my morning commute.