I am on a wildflower walk. The yellow ones in our green glass vase, the one we got from a garage sale at the beginning of the semester, are wilting, spear-petals drooping towards the table-top.
I am walking down the sidewalk that leads to the football stadium, that leads to the solar array, around which there is a new gravel path I've been liking to visit on the mornings that I don't run.
There is a gingko tree I pass by on the way. When I first came to Oberlin I had a pair of ginkgo tree earrings; now, in my final semester, I only have one left. The first time I visited Ginko---a store which is now an empty glass case being built up into something new from the inside out---it felt like serendipity. The owner, an old woman who I no longer see around, but used to see often, complimented them and it was as if a world built just for me was opening up.
At the corner across from the athletic center there's a plot of sunflowers. It is grey today and, like the flowers on our kitchen table, they too bend their heads as if unsure of where to look. Someday I'd like to bring one of them home, but for now, it feels too much like a crime, breaking them off at the beginning of autumn when these flowers seem to be in their prime.
My route takes me between two athletic buildings and past the baseball fields. Over top a blacktop path and back into the grass. I cut a corner across the soccer field and dew soaks into my socks. I can see the solar panels from here, my destination half-hidden by the stand of trees grown up towards the clouds.
I think they've mowed since I was here last, there are no longer wildflowers in the---now brown---stretch of field in front of the solar array. Last year at this time, there was a man-made hill where the grass now is, a constructed mountain built out of the dirt excavated for a construction project nearby. When I returned at the beginning of the semester, I found the hill gone, construction ongoing.
The wildflowers that were here last week seem to have disappeared as well. There are still some yellow flowers some places if I look closely. There is a smattering of them crowded around the base of this scraggly little tree to my right. The tree stands all alone amidst this tuft of flowers and I don't feel comfortable taking her few companions, not now, not on this early Tuesday morning.
Instead, I take a small bunch from beside a black plastic pipe---also evidence of the construction projects that have occupied these fields since I first arrived in Oberlin. Thank you, flowers.
On one of the first times I came to this field, I was in the company of a friend also collecting wildflowers. After each selection, she'd thank the flower by its proper name. I do not know the proper name of these yellow flowers and I hope my gratitude will show through despite.
A grasshopper jumps from the tall grass, lands on my leg, bounces away. Hello, grasshopper.
Making my way home, I cut across the soccer field again, taking a different path than I had before. I can see the track of me, five minutes prior, the after-image of my ghostly footprints in the dew.
I pass by the sunflower patch again. Again, I consider taking one. The sun is out now, but their heads remain bowed. Now that I'm closer, I can see that they don't look well and I wonder if it would still be cruel to take one, if they are actually at the end rather than beginning of their lives. I decide against it. Let them live another day!
I am approaching our little blue house now---one rocking chair on the porch, my pink bike leaned up against the stair railing, my housemate's black bike leaned up against the other side. We've been here almost a month now, the porch is still wanting furniture, but we finally have a blanket laid across our Oberlin-issued couch. Slowly, we've been filling the house up with things---art rentals hanging on the walls, plants on table-tops, books stacked in piles or lying open-faced on the coffee-table.
The second week of school, the second Tuesday in September, the Art Library exhibited a curated display of their art books that are normally hidden from public view. For this first event, the art librarian had curated the selection based on the theme "Home." It's been something I think about as I walk around campus, a place I've been absent from for close to a year, greeting new/old people in new/old places. I'm exploring familiar places, learning how they've changed in remembering how they were before.
Before I go inside, I take a seat in our rocking chair, waiting a moment in this in-between space, before the day officially begins. I've laid the bunch of flowers along the porch rail as I sit; they too take pause as they wait patiently for their vase.
