The Silken Tent
      My Letter to the World
      October 2000
      October 15, 2000
      Sunday

      Yesterday was Homecoming at the college where I did my undergraduate work (pictured at left). Actually, it was where I finished my degree. I attended Millersville University (then called Millersville State College) near Lancaster, Pennsylvania only for my junior and senior years, after spending my first two years at Harrisburg Area Community College, where I was part of only the second graduating class. Neither choice was mine, but the result of my mother's stranglehold on my life and my activities. (Why yes, I am still angry. But I'm working on it.)

      Yesterday was also a home field hockey game, so we took Lynn and her friend Julie down for a look at some college competition. Afterward I took them on a walking tour of the sacred sites of my youth -- despite the accidental nature of my association with Millersville, those were among the happiest days of my life. I showed them the conventional dormitory where I lived junior year and the apartment house where I stayed senior year. (That building, which was not college owned, suffered a fire in the mid-seventies and was subsequently sold to the county. It is now subsidized housing for the elderly. The irony is not lost upon me.)

      We walked around the lake and then went down Frederick Street to the science building, where, for some reason, most of the English classes were held. I showed them the swimming pool where I took the only required course that all Millersvillians had to endure, and the auditorium and rehearsal halls where Fred Richards played Maggy's Waltz for me. We went by the old library and Newman House where the Catholic Student Association met and stopped in front of The Sugar Bowl, a non-college pizza and sandwich convenience store that is perhaps the one eternal thing on a campus that has undergone remarkable (although historically sensitive and beautiful) transformation in the thirty-one years since I left.

      Lynn wants to go to Millersville. She is interested in a career as a genetic counselor. Millersville's science program is emerging as one of the premier in the region, and not only among the state system schools, which are shedding their traditional image as teacher training centers. The science building, which used to be a greenhouse and ten classrooms, has been added to and added to until it is now one of the largest structures on the campus. The school offers half a dozen different programs in science, allied health professions preparation, and pre-medical studies.

      Lynn is not quite through the first quarter of ninth grade. I think it's a bit early to be making these decisions. Besides, I want her to keep her options open. I want her to have the choices I didn't have -- find the best school with the best program and get admitted, even if it's a pricey private university in southern California. I don't want her going less than an hour away and coming home every weekend. (My mother expected me to do this. I had to lie to her about a department clerkship and musical group activities in order to have a real life on campus.)

      Lynn's answer is that she has ALWAYS wanted to go to Millersville. Her mommy, who is the smartest person AND the best mommy in the whole world went there, and so it's good enough for her. It's hard to argue with that.

      The campus was gorgeous yesterday. I visit fairly often -- the library has good resources for Pennsylvania German research -- always carrying my suitcase of memories. I fell in love there, lost my faith (or, rather, came to understand that I had no faith to lose), and learned to drive a stick shift car. I had one of the greatest teachers of my life there, and one of the worst. I learned about the development of the novel, the structure of the villanelle, why Mary Queen of Scots lost her head, and how to thread a movie projector. And, as in the case of the apartment I had a few years after I left, I wish now that I'd paid more attention to how beautiful the place was. I wish I'd walked more in the light and breathed more of the air, went to basketball games instead of  library cataloging workshops, and written more poetry and fewer research papers.

      That first love and I are back in each other's lives, as the best friends we were always meant to be, I've found faith anew (or maybe for the first time), and I can still drive a stick shift car, although I no longer have to. I would not have chosen the educational path I took, but if changing it by even one small detail would mean I couldn't have what I have today, I would do it all again.


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       The contents of this page are © 2000 by
      Margaret DeAngelis.

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