I walk slowly through the front gates and up the road that encircles the campus. For fourteen years I knew no other world than that encompassed by this not quite circular strip of pavement; it was the horizon of my entire universe, the known and knowable world.
As I look around and back through the past, I realize that at one time or another during those fourteen years I explored every corner, every nook and cranny of this campus. Though now empty and quiet, in my mind it is filled with the faces, voices and smells of the past. The playground still rings with savage shouts of triumph from a time when a slide was a dark mountain to be scaled, and a sandbox could contain an army of orcs. The fields, with their heady smell of fresh-cut grass, or slick with rain, seem filled with countless soccer balls from recess pick-up games, to summer soccer with Gil, to a state championship hanging in the balance of a shoot-out.
Walking past ‘the bubble’ gym, now the dome, my stomach unconsciously tightens as I remember the long process of weighing-in and waiting to step on the matt for a week-end wrestling tournament or weeknight meet. A light breeze over the gravel parking lot, gives me the same puff of freedom and invincibility that came with having a car, but also the bitter-sweet chill of taking refuge from middle school dances overcast by the salty tears of unfulfilled desire and heartbreak.
With each familiar step I tread, the nostalgic reverie drowns me deeper and deeper. Walking amidst these shadowy memories, I feel somehow lost, caught between student and alumni and comfortable with neither one.
I have seen the sun rise on the Charles Wright campus, and I have seen it set. I have passed weekdays and weekends here. I have stood at the top of its ranks and received its highest honors, and I have knelt and dug in its soil. Over fourteen years I have seen brothers, teachers, headmasters, friends and classes fill and empty the halls of Charles Wright Academy, and now I realize that I have come and gone as well. And as I scratch at my name engraved upon its steps, the steps our class helped to rebuild, I can only hope that one day I may return to Charles Wright all that it has given me.
As I look around and back through the past, I realize that at one time or another during those fourteen years I explored every corner, every nook and cranny of this campus. Though now empty and quiet, in my mind it is filled with the faces, voices and smells of the past. The playground still rings with savage shouts of triumph from a time when a slide was a dark mountain to be scaled, and a sandbox could contain an army of orcs. The fields, with their heady smell of fresh-cut grass, or slick with rain, seem filled with countless soccer balls from recess pick-up games, to summer soccer with Gil, to a state championship hanging in the balance of a shoot-out.
Walking past ‘the bubble’ gym, now the dome, my stomach unconsciously tightens as I remember the long process of weighing-in and waiting to step on the matt for a week-end wrestling tournament or weeknight meet. A light breeze over the gravel parking lot, gives me the same puff of freedom and invincibility that came with having a car, but also the bitter-sweet chill of taking refuge from middle school dances overcast by the salty tears of unfulfilled desire and heartbreak.
With each familiar step I tread, the nostalgic reverie drowns me deeper and deeper. Walking amidst these shadowy memories, I feel somehow lost, caught between student and alumni and comfortable with neither one.
I have seen the sun rise on the Charles Wright campus, and I have seen it set. I have passed weekdays and weekends here. I have stood at the top of its ranks and received its highest honors, and I have knelt and dug in its soil. Over fourteen years I have seen brothers, teachers, headmasters, friends and classes fill and empty the halls of Charles Wright Academy, and now I realize that I have come and gone as well. And as I scratch at my name engraved upon its steps, the steps our class helped to rebuild, I can only hope that one day I may return to Charles Wright all that it has given me.
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