Borderlands

Borderlands

Sunlight streams down on verdant hillsides after two days of cold rain. Respite. All of Mount Vernon flocks outside to lay claim to little patches of sunlight before the sky turns again. My dog looks at me with more than just pleading, actual urgency, in his big brown eyes. “Big park or campus?” I ask. I know the answer will be both. We are getting out of the house. It is decided. Herding dogs know how to care for the broken-hearted, the wandering, and the lonely. That’s all me. I need shepherding.

Saturday evening campus is dead save for small patches of students on the lawn. I’m dressed like the sky in star patterned leggings under a free-flowing cloudy blue and white patterned dress and oversize earthy grandma sweater. My hair is windswept, as always. I don’t know if this is intentional, or if writing about Ceremony for the past three nights caused me to dress like Te’sh Montano.  A woman moving boxes into Bowman Hall stops on the steps, smiles, says, “you are always adorable.” I stand a little straighter. I had--until now pictured myself as always invisible.

My dog makes introductions to the group sprawled on the grass playing a heated round of Settlers of Catan. The gamers pause and greet my eager dog. M’s there. M was the one person I knew when I moved to Iowa. He dresses differently now, favoring jerseys that show off the physique a summer of manual labor built. He’s lost all traces of his community college otherness and fallen in seamlessly with his residential peers. I hate him for it. My otherness is my skin, to take it off would expose the soft tissues and organs beneath and leave more more than naked, more than vulnerable.

“How it going?” he asks.

“K says as long as my education is going well, that’s what is important. Not how much I hate Iowa.” I say.

I could try. I could try to put my homesickness away in the top drawer of my dresser, leave the sound of Great Lakes trapped in a shell next to my rocks from Ramona beach and my Portage District Library card. I won’t make the effort. I needed syllabuses from lit classes from two of my professors along with letters. They wrote them and the very next day after my meeting with the department head I had an email from one of them asking how it went. I said if my academics weren't going well I would be on the first train home. It’s not that I miss being the biggest fish in the small pond--if anything my pond has shrunk--it’s that I miss swimming in a school with my own kind of fish. Old fish. Second chance fish. Worldly fish.

When the dog decides were done exploring campus we head to the big park at the end of the road. The falling sunlight halos the hilltops. I see why Grant Wood painted so many hills. I let the dog run free in the park and follow behind with the leash wrapped around my arm. He runs and I contemplate expanding my world. One of the student groups on campus is going to Chicago during block break. I could lose myself in the hallowed halls of my favorite art museum. If I choose to stay and pick up hours at work, I can be at the opening of the new local bookstore where writers will most definitely gather. Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin is speaking Thursday night.  Another student group has a upcoming “write-in.” I could slowly start to expand my presence on campus.

Today we walk farther than we have before up the trails to the gates of an enclosure. The grass inside is mowed except for the very center where it’s been left wild in a large square. A drinking fountain that pours into a drained basin at the bottom and a red picnic table sit off to the side. We found the dog park. Although the novelty of being off lease is lost on my dog, he walks slowly around taking in the sights and smells.

He is between two worlds. Surely, he is more responsible than some of the other dogs who come here to play; his dog run of choice is the woods. He is a good shepherd who never runs too far ahead without making sure I am in sight. The wild woods are great, but maybe sometimes so is the enclosed world of the dog park.

On the way home we walk through town and see our neighbor J and his weekend-daughter, I, heading home after pizza. Our house has traditionally served the college but this year the population is diverse. We sit on the borderlands of college and adulthood. The other night some football players scattered like cockroaches off the front porch when I hit my bedroom light. I didn’t understand why. This morning a woman’s voice asked about the tricycle on the front porch and the football player said something about “the lady who lives below us.” While he had the wrong apartment, I caught his sentiment: adults rent the bottom floor, this will not be the party house it’s been in the past. I could hear the contempt. I don’t have the heart to tell him this is a new age for the college. More students like me are coming, students from two worlds.