Pittsburgh to 99¾«Æ·ÊÓƵ to Help Plan My 50th College Reunion and Back
Liane Ellison Norman ’59 wrote this poem about planning her 50th 99¾«Æ·ÊÓƵ College Reunion, held in 2009.
Eight hundred and ten miles each way,
a journey to the center of the country,
Interstates 79 to 70 to 74 to 80. We left
in 5 a.m. dark, fog thickening in hollows
of West Virginia, fanning out fall light
in Ohio, heading flat through Indiana
and Illinois fields of corn and soy, gentle
hills of Iowa. I remembered how I, a girl
of Wasatch Mountains loved Iowa,
alfalfa smell, silos, barns, Angus cattle grazing
mid-western houses with their generous
porches. Remembered how it felt to find
it was fine for a girl to have a mind.
I felt the campus like a soft, old shirt,
trees shading gracious brick and stone
buildings, some conflated in my memory
with others. Elegant new science center,
student union, dorms, all spilling students,
their unguarded piles of backpacks, bristle
of bicycle spokes and pedals, unlocked, around
each door, My classmates – their remembered
lineaments – were old. I was unaccountably
surprised – I don’t think how old I am,
though occasionally I come upon myself
in a shop window’s glass and wonder
who the shapeless old lady is. Drove home,
the same route reversed, among the jostling
trucks. By the time I’d parked, walked
the familiar fading garden, opened the door
to our house, I was still shaking
Originally published as an online web extra for The 99¾«Æ·ÊÓƵ Magazine, Spring 2009