(the following was supposed to be posted last week, but i never got a chance. here it is.)

This past weekend found Erica and I on a somewhat spontaneous midwest tour. Over the course of three and a half days we visited 16 people in 6 different locations, driving 1,389 miles in approximately 22 hours, equating to an average of 63 miles per hour (a calculation that includes stops for gas, food, and the like), which earned us only one speeding ticket that put a damper on the evening but was really quite humorous in hindsight for a variety of reasons I will not discuss now.

So yes, after my in-service on Friday we took off for Akron, Ohio. There we visited Nate and Kileigh and their beautiful little baby boy Samuel. On Saturday we drove to Indianapolis for some time with Yoder and his very nice girlfriend Angela. After church on Sunday, we met Erica’s aunt and uncle and cousins in Castleton for lunch. Then, we traveled to Muncie, got a speeding ticket, and hung out at Village Green Records with Jared. After that, Chalupa and Liz fed us chalupa, and then we visited Jamin and his haircut at his hip coffee and custard shop. Yes, it was pretty much as simultaneously wonderful and exhausting as it sounds.

I spent the majority of Sunday deciding whether or not I should visit my old floor, the Penthouse. I found out Pelz wasn’t there and Grunden had graduated, so I began to wonder if there was anyone else who would care to see me up there. I wasn’t sure if it would be more rude to not visit at all, or to run through the floor and say, “Hi guys, I can’t stay, but I was passing through and wanted to say hello! Welp, see ya later!”

I decided not to visit, and so we pretty much avoided Taylor’s campus completely. It is odd how much you miss a place, how much you long for it, and upon the first opportunity to encounter it again, it becomes unexciting and unappealing and uncomfortable. I know many of you can relate. (Yet, as a student, I couldn’t quite understand why graduates wouldn’t come back to visit us!)

So, on Sunday morning we left the Super 8 and as we began our journey eastward, I pulled onto Reade Avenue and drove around the loop, simply to remind myself of what it all looked like, how it felt, and to make sure it was still functioning without me. I think I was somewhat disappointed to find that it was functioning just fine.

It was about 8:50, so while things were still somewhat quiet, there was a considerable amount of people walking from their morning classes to the DC, or from the DC to their morning classes. Page France, which Jamin had given to me the night before, was playing loudly on our car stereo, loudly enough to make it feel like we were watching the whole scene on film, disconnected from the world outside of the car, simply passing through invisibly. And this CD (which I highly recommend) somehow balances pure honest joy with a yearning melancolic sadness in perfect equilibrium, which only added to the emotion of the moment. Erica and I were silent, observing the scene with no dialogue, and I was left alone with my thoughts. I drove past people I knew, people I probably should’ve stopped to talk to, but when I noticed they didn’t know I was there and they were getting along fine without me, I wasn’t sure why it would be worth interrupting their daily routine.

I passed through the scene with the clear realization that life goes on. This place that was my home and my life for four years is now a home and life for 2,000 other kids and not me. I am not missed there. Taylor mattered to me, but I didn’t matter much to Taylor. Sure, Nate Shorb might be lingering in the yearbooks or in the folklore or in the blog archives or in the admissions propaganda, but all of that will fade soon enough as well. I felt very small. It was a sense of sad closure, I guess, and the reality of adulthood struck me harshly once again.

And so, we turned right out of the loop and onto 26 with Page France continuing to play. Without speaking, I put my hand on Erica’s thigh and tears filled my eyes. We started the 10+ hour drive and I wondered if I would still miss Taylor now that I saw it again, and I wondered when I would make the trip to campus next, perhaps not until I take my children on college visits (the same trip I made with my father almost exactly five years ago), when all of my professors and friends are then long gone but Taylor will still be running and all of these realizations will be all the more drastic.

I know all of this was very melodramatic and overboard, but I think it's a pretty accurate representation of what I felt.