These days, I have been thinking a lot about college.

You see, I am knee deep in the writing of my next novel which is about three women who met in college. Though I am writing about the school I attended – Yale – I am not writing about my experience. But I do find myself thinking about my bright college years, and reminiscing.

Who was I in college?

I remember my first day of college. Arriving on Old Campus, meeting my three roommates: the funky granddaughter daughter of a famous baseball player who also hailed from Manhattan, a softball pitcher recruit from Arizona, a Connecticut local and track star who would spend four years throwing the shot put for us Bulldogs. I remember walking around the pockets of green with a best friend from high school – not a roommate, but coincidentally placed in Pierson College with me – and looking up at the sky and thinking, This is it. College. We are here!

I remember the first two weeks well. Taking the French placement exam among a sea of fellow freshmen, sitting on folding chairs as the dean welcomed us to Yale. The next time you are all gathered like this will be for graduation, he said. I remember going to the same Mexican joint, an amazing hole in the wall my older sister had introduced me to, night after night, delighting in the sangria even though I was just seventeen. I remember how we went to great lengths to convince the portly bar owner (Sponz, I think) that we were medical students at the school. He didn’t care about our story; the fact that we were young and bubbly and blond seemed to suffice.

I remember studying late at the library, my mind lost in a stack of notes, my hand dipping into a vast bag of gummy raspberries. I remember the charge I got in that particularly good philosophy seminar when we were debating ontology and phenomenology and talking breathlessly about Spinoza and Leibniz and the theory of other possible worlds; how my heart thumped magically in my chest as I threw up my hand to say something. I remember standing in sludge in fraternity basements and laughing with friends and flirting with boys and literally feeling youth and freedom with every breath.

I remember eating cup after cup of Tomato Florentine soup from Au Bon Pain when I was hungover; it seemed to be the answer. I remember dancing with a group of sorority sisters, all of us happy and dressed in black, on the Women’s Table on Cross Campus. I remember getting ready for a night out in my room, blasting my big sister’s mixed tape (Think: Nothing Compares to You, Jessie’s Girl), passing around a bottle of cheap champagne. I remember meeting with my Philosophy adviser, a small and brilliant man, who was passionate about Plato and loved to tell stories about yogurt.

I remember being selfish, confident, excited, nervous, happy, proud, uncertain, young, mature, free, protected, lucky, pressured. I remember feeling gorgeous and feeling fat. I remember falling in love and feeling doubt. I remember not knowing a thing, and knowing absolutely everything. I remember reading, and writing, and drinking coffee. I remember calling home. I remember going home, picking up a Subway sandwich at the train station, hopping on Metro North, heading home, the world blurring by.

I remember graduation day. I was tired and puffy. I wore a black dress with little flowers under my gown. It was sunny that day as we came together in clusters and walked. I remember the Pierson dean announcing my honors: Aidan Donnelley. Magna Cum Laude. The gasps were audible. I’m pretty sure everyone thought I was a not-so-smart blond.

I remember so much. It’s been years, more than ten, but I can still see it – the campus green, my hand flying across a ruled piece of paper taking tiny, meticulous notes, a girl who loved to work hard and play hard and live life, smiling big, struggling too, but smiling, at the beginning of it all.

The College Me. Quite the character. One I love and laugh at and celebrate and forgive. And remember.

They say you can’t go back, but the really amazing thing is that you can. You can sit in a Starbucks at 6:34am on a Friday morning in February with your cup of coffee and computer and your mind and you can go back. To the land before commitment and career and kids, to the campus of not yet knowing, to the fun and the frolic and the ferocious learning. To the four years that slipped by so fast because you were not yet a creature desperate to pause things, to arrest time, to hold on.

This has been fun for me. This little exercise in going back. And now I must do a different kind going back. Back to the home front and the three tiny things in pajamas who have it all ahead of them. That is pretty incredible too.

Who were you in college? Any fun memories? Have you changed a lot since your stint as an undergrad? Do you think it is presumptuous for me to assume most of you attended college? Are most people you know, and socialize with, college grads? I know several of you are still in college, so share your stories since you are experiencing them now and we would all like to live vicariously!

After spending two days leading up to my fifteenth high school reunion blogging about my anticipation and anxiety connected thereto, I figured I owe you a bit of a recap. So. Here it is.

It was a really lovely evening. We Class of ’96-ers gathered in the Dalton basement in the room where I once upon logged a lot of time playing my trumpet during orchestra practice. It was a bit odd and more than a bit meaningful to spend time in that room once again after all these years. The turnout was not immense, but solid. I saw many people from my past. And, remarkably, I managed to speak to most of them. What amazed me – really amazed me – was how warm everyone was (or seemed). I anticipated a good deal of artifice and pretense and it just wasn’t there. I envisioned traces of cattiness leftover from our teenage days, but no. There was just wine and smiles and conversation.

Yes, conversation. As some of you know, I went into the night hoping for authenticity and realness. I feared that the night would be stuffed with flimsy small talk. And there was some of that, sure, but mostly there were good, sturdy interactions, neither superficial nor serious. They were somewhere in between, these chats. And this realization itself was worth its weight in gold – or Dalton blue as the case may be. The realization that there is a land between superficial and serious, between perfunctory and profound, a land where real things are said even if they aren’t entirely revealing. A good land.

In this in-between land we danced. Trading bits of our bios. Remembering our Dalton days. Who we were before we went to college and then entered the world, this world, which houses us all today. We talked about predictable stuff – cute babies and frustrating jobs and the passage of time. We laughed – nervously and genuinely and much. We didn’t quite say it, but I think we all thought it, or at least I did: This school had something to do with this, with this medley of good and interesting people gathered here.

Because, really, it can’t be a coincidence. We are all different creatures, sure, but we were all nurtured for so many years in the very same place. In this place, we learned how to think and to write and to talk. In these classrooms, we began to be who we are today.

Who are we today?

That is not an easy question. Of course it isn’t. But the best questions, it seems, are the tough ones, the ones without ready borders. And I cannot answer this one. What I can say is that on Friday, I got a glimpse of many people whom I once knew – some well, some barely. And that glimpse was wonderful and inspiring and, yes, lovely.

Yes, that word again. Because in this instance it is the right one.

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How have your reunion experiences been? Do you think the schools you attended have had something important to do with who it is you’ve become?

As I mentioned yesterday, I will be attending my fifteenth high school reunion tonight. The proximity of this event has me thinking about something:

Who was I fifteen years ago?

I was rounder, and more selfish. Obsessed with A’s and other accolades. Fond of late nights and the banter they brought. A shred entitled. More than a shred spoiled. I was innocent, naive, as yet untouched by the oft-brutal fist of Life. No one close to me had died. No one had hurt me. My heart had not yet been broken. Existential bruises were not yet there shimmering on my white skin. I had not yet lived. Not much at least. But, man oh man, was I eager to.

Fifteen years ago, I was months shy of attending Yale. I imagined myself there, swaddled in ivy. I pictured a profound transformation – of self, of soul, of psyche. I envisioned new faces, interesting and pretty, faces with eyes for seeing and studying, lips for whispering wisdom and kissing. I anticipated a patchwork of stories – of true words knit between bright beginnings and happy endings. Because the endings, I imagined, would always be happy.

Fifteen years ago, I wore a blue and green striped dress for graduation. Looking back, that dress was tacky and terrible, but at the time I loved it – the boldness of those robust horizontal lines, the happy hues. Isn’t this what happens though? We look back with wonder, with judgment, with curiosity, and think: Was that really me?

And it was. It was me. Me then. And now I can’t help but think:

Who will I be in fifteen years?

Will I still be here on this blog weaving words about life and love? Will I still be here in this exquisite and maddening metropolis? Will I still be here in this glorious green pasture of raising girls? And will I look back – at who I am now on this June day of 2011 and have a hard time believing this is me?

*

On Twitter yesterday, I wrote: Who were you fifteen years ago? Me: a naive, optimistic, foolishly confident HS senior.

And I got the following responses (that I adore):

@jkhoey: naive, optimistic, foolishly ambitious recently-divorced attorney in Toronto.

@lemead: A beer-bloated college graduate with big dreams, long hair, my first business card, and an apartment in Beacon Hill.

@cnoepagan: Me too, exactly. RT @ADonnRowley: Who were you fifteen years ago? Me: a naive, optimistic, foolishly confident HS senior.

@HeatheroftheEO: 15 yrs ago I had a Dr Pepper on my 21st birthday. I hadn’t thought about that in YEARS.

@EloiseBates: A nervous 14yo starting my first job, never dreaming of the confidence & knowledge I would gain in the next 8 years there.

@mrspop007: 15 years ago, I was doing very little, hanging out for the summer until my first teaching job began. In other words, I was a very lazy person.

@kebmurphy: ambitious idealistic social butterfly in teeny brownstone on W 75th about to start Columbia J School to become famous writer

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Who were you fifteen years ago? Come on, this should be fun! Are you the person now that you would have predicted fifteen years ago? Who do you think you’ll be fifteen years from now?

Tomorrow night we will gather at the wonderful school that in so many ways made us who we are. We will fumble through hellos awkward and artificial and authentic. We will fidget in corners and look around, glimpsing faces both familiar and foreign. We will clutch sweating glasses and bemused spouses, reminiscing and remembering. Remembering who we were fifteen years ago when we were less wrinkled and worried and worldly.

Fifteen years ago. When we donned caps and gowns and bright teenage smiles. When college, that exquisite wonderland, loomed large on the landscape of our collective cosmos. Much has happened in all these years. Parents have been lost. Commitments have been made and marred. Babies have been born. We will talk about these things, I imagine. Or maybe we won’t. Maybe we will just dance around the big things and take refuge in small talk. I hope not though. I hope that amid the inevitable air kisses and the swirl of superficiality, there will be some real sentences bartered, some real heart displayed, some true memories unearthed. We will see.

Fifteen years. What a long, short time it’s been.

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Any advice for me as I head to my fifteen year high school reunion? Do you think it makes sense that I am at once anxious and invigorated to see so many people from my past? Do you enjoy attending reunions? Do you ever hope that real conversations will manifest in situations that are particularly prime for idle chat?

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

William Shakespeare

Several years ago, I ran into an old friend on the street. This friend and I had gone to school together between the ages of five and twenty-two. We had lost touch and I hadn’t seen him in a while. But we stood there for a few minutes in a spotlight of sidewalk sunshine. And I’m not sure how this came up, but he told me the following story. A story I don’t recall. A story that, to this day, makes me wince and smile.

“When we were in Kindgergarten,” he said. “You asked where I was going to college.”

“No!” I said.

“Oh yes. Yes, you did,” he insisted. “And when I said I didn’t know, you said Well, I’m going to Yale.”

Oh goodness. How obnoxious, right? Yes, maybe. Or maybe not. Every year as a little girl, I went to Yale for a football game. Either Yale-Harvard or Yale-Princeton. Dad had played football for Yale and it was a fun way for him to reunite with his buddies and teammates and we all loved going, taking in the fall air, walking the bulldog around the bowl, cheering on the team in blue and white. Promptly, I fell in love with the place.

And then. One by one, we Donnelley girls went to that campus. For our own time there. All of us loved it.

This weekend, Husband and I took the girls to their first game. This year, it was Princeton. I had fun dressing the girls. Here, Toddler hikes up her jersey and shows a sliver of midriff. A tiny taste of what’s to come. (Yikers.)

Here, Baby stands by a tree and says, Look at me! No belly bared yet. Thank goodness.

The girls meet Handsome Dan, the Yale bulldog. They smile big and keep a safe distance.

In the stands, we sit with my Mom and Sister T and several of Dad’s college friends. The girls wave their pom-poms furiously.

We all cheer on these guys.

Yale takes an early, but modest lead. After this shot, we last exactly 7 minutes and 32 seconds longer. Hey, half a game is better than no game, right?

Truth be told, the girls spend most of the first half playing on the ground. With their new stuffed bulldogs.

Before we head out, I snap a shot of the sky. It’s an impossible and optimistic blue. I try to get that flag, too. That lone Y. Before we head out, I think of all these years that have passed. Of a young Dad in that very uniform in that very stadium playing his heart out. Of myself as a little girl, in these stands, on Dad’s lap watching. Of my tailgating years where I was more focused on the bloody marys than that scoreboard.

It was a good day. A day full of love and legacy and life. My girls had fun. We did too.

I do hope they don’t trot off to Kindergarten and announce that they are Yale-bound. I still can’t believe I said that. And yet I can. Because it is a magical place. For a tiny creature. For a grown woman.

I look at these pictures now. These little ones dressed in Yale blue and my mind shimmies to the future. Of course it does. And those words, those two words, appear: What if. What if these girls grow up to go to Yale? How cool would that be? It would be cool. It would.

Are these words evidence of pressure? Maybe. I hope not. Are these words evidence of privilege? Sure. Are these words evidence of pride? You bet. Are these words just as obnoxious as my Kindergarten confession? Arguably.

But these words are honest. And honesty is perhaps the richest legacy of all, no?

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Have you taken your kids back to your alma mater? Do you ever indulge in a round of the What Ifs? Would you be pleased if your little ones went to your school(s)? Were you pondering college in Kindergarten? How do you feel about the word ‘legacy’? Does it have positive or negative connotations for you?