Under the geometric, dome window that gives light to this beautiful old building, I hear the timeless steps of heels on stairs, and glance around at the updates which try to disguise themselves in the art and architecture of Tabaret Hall. I'm on the top floor, it's still early for the university, and those who are up and running, coffee-filled and faces-washed, are in class. I glance at the fluorescent lights, inside old-looking sconces that may once have held candles, and the industrial looking doorways set to open or close at the push of a button, to make the building more fire safe. I try to imagine away the institution, and feel this building, and the ideas and thought and learning that has gone on here for decades.
Four years ago I was struck by the strength of the columns and steps leading into Tabaret. The moulding and the colours, the high ceilings, the real, old, loved and faded wooden hand rails on top of curled, iron spindles. If the rail didn't shake so much when I put my hand on it, I would have found a moment to slide down one.
Sinking into what may likely be my last year of University, I have a kind of anxious nostaligia about this place. Once in a while, I consider what life would have been like if I stuck my toes into the mud here, and got more involved. And as I start to realize, for the first time, the immense knowledge of my professors, and seem to be genuinely, deeply interested in the kind of dust-blowing, clue-hunting, tongue-deciphering discoveries of my teachers, I find myself enjoying learning again. Once in a while, the thought occurs to me that either I should have waited three years before coming to University, or that I should go on to furthers studies after, and perhaps I'll have the kind of university experience that I remember teachers and my parent's friends telling me about. For years "grown ups" have been telling me that if I'm not loving university, I'm not in the right program. But as my professors translate for me from Polish or Vietnamese to English, and I listen to their voices bouncing back and forth from language to language, explaining history in a way that is actually soul-gripping, I'm pretty sure I'm in the right place. Do I have a taste of "you dont know what you've got 'til it's gone?" Or maybe I've just caught the tantalizing whiff of new adventures and new challenges that come when I'm out of the bounds of school. I walk around this place like I'm wearing heels: feeling confident and powerful; experienced, but young and maybe like I'm trying a little. But inside the shoes are feet - still treading forward, but sometimes questioning both the steps taken and the direction I'm walking, and sometimes wobbling a little.
I guess that's normal when you play follow the leader. And I guess that's what I've been doing all this time. Feet in the shoes He's given me, hands in His.
Im growing up to like being a child.
