I only hope that I can keep up the momentum in law school. I doubt it, though. Perusing Tulane’s recent honorees leads me to believe that there must be one really difficult class, because all of the honorees – some of whom were at the top of their class – had GPAs in the 3.8 range. But I shall try my hardest and hope for the best.
People lately have been telling me “Congratulations,” and it still catches me by surprise. I was congratulated when I got married, and when I graduated last May, which makes sense to me. Going to law school doesn’t exactly strike me as the kind of thing one would be congratulated for – am I being commended for going into enormous debt? extolled for uprooting my family? praised for committing three more years of my life to more formal education? I suppose it is the achievement of getting accepted into a prestigious old law school that is being congratulated, but somehow it doesn’t feel like much of an achievement right now. No, right now it feels like a terrifying blind leap, taken on the chance and hope that this course will make a happier life for myself and my family in the long run.
Tulane offers me the following advice:
Relax this summer, and be ready to work hard when school starts.And while that’s comforting to hear, the stress of the pending move makes it difficult. I know that it will all work out, but the uncertainty – the not yet knowing precisely how it all will unfold – is what eats away at me. As conscientious as I’d like to be – trying sometimes in vain to diligently make preparations and plans for The Move – in the end I realize that there’s only so much control I can exert on the way this chapter of my life shall end.
So I’ve lately resorted to reading The Witching Hour as a means to distract myself. And it seems to be working. That dense, lengthy Anne Rice novel which first caused me to fall in love with New Orleans does wonders to calm my nerves. And while offering the comfort of a previously read book, the story seems so much more vivid this time around, now that I have experienced the charm of the Crescent City first-hand, and it is no longer simply a made-up story-stage in my mind.
But this in-between time is bittersweet. Although my mind is mostly in New Orleans lately, my heart aches at certain Jackson sights. Like the flag pole in my cul-de-sac that's been crooked since the 4/4 tornado of 2008:
Something about these waning spring days strikes me as exceptionally splendid. Each magnolia blossom and cool crisp breeze brings a wave of nostalgia for something I haven’t even left yet, but which I know I will miss dearly. And though I know that this town will not fall off the face of the earth when I depart, I also know how it is to move away and return to a place you used to know intimately. Each change – a new building here, a widened street there – seems forced and artificial when you’re not around to witness a city’s organic growth. So it goes that I know visiting will never be the same, even as my time here goes shorter with each sunset. And even while I mourn my absence from this place that’s come to be my home over the last decade, I eagerly await building a new life, as a law student at Tulane University. It is so very exciting, after all.
