opening closures

I haven't written about graduation yet, in fact, I haven't written much at all lately. I'm just not sure how to approach such a topic, it's too big for my delicate scalpels, usually reserved for surgeries on the tiniest and most useless of organs. They deal with the appendix, not the heart.

College is the school where I've spent more time than any other...coming to this realization during one of my rare, unrushed showers in the last few weeks, I feel ill-prepared for the incoming nostalgia.

I thought the processing would begin with a good cry on graduation day, but no such luck amid the straggling lines, hundreds of mispronounced names, and chilling mist. Something similar happened (or didn't happen) the night when I left China for America, I remember standing motionlessly in front of my cousin. Are you excited? She asked. I said nothing. Not really. I finally offered. And that was that.

We always think these landmarks will open some sort of magical, emotional gate. But we don't live in a Kodak commercial. We don't cry in the tearjerker moments movies have dog-eared for us, but we do for the loss of an old necklace we haven't worn in years, or a picture of a simple bench in a hometown we haven't stepped foot in for a decade, or an honor that passed us by that we didn't even realize we wanted.

The thing about these moments is that they're unexpected. It is not so much like an arrival at a forked road as it is like running smack into an impenetrable wall. Planned goodbyes, organized convocations, event X at time Y, who wastes a tear on them? Someone once said: “Don’t rush or force the ending… All you have to know is the next scene, or the next few scenes.” He meant it as a way of writing. But it is also of life. To write badly is to rush an ending. To write well is to know the next scene. And to write with any conviction of truth, is to first realize you know nothing of what's coming. And so it also is with the rare moments of clarity in life.

If there is one thing the start of closure needs, it is the element of surprise.

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