It was Friday. One of those rare July/August mornings in Southern California. I woke up chilly and found morning fog hanging on the horizon. A cool gray layer with yellow rays just beginning to poke through. The air smelled damp with the hint of crispness that signals fall is not far away.
As I dropped my husband off at work and drove my two kids to the Y for day camp, I watched the sun slowly break through the fog, and as I did it reminded me of the beginning of school. The cool damp fall mornings, the smell of falling leaves and the grape harvest, and the vivid reds, golds, and yellows that paint the Napa Valley during the early autumn. As this memory faded from memory, it was replaced by a quiet melancholy. Homesickness. I was homesick for "the Hill."
Everyone who reads this who has attended Pacific Union College will have their own memories that bring up this mixture of nostalgia and desire. Afterglow at the Window Tree, Christmas carols outside the women's dorm courtesy of MOG (Men of Granger) and the Christmas Tree lighting. Hanging out in the cafeteria, or the dorm lounge with friends. All night study groups in the Andre lounge during midterms and finals. DAS productions, shouts of excitement when you hear that friends were accepted into medical school, engagement showers and going away parties, usually celebrated with the traditional dunking in the Paulin Hall fountain.
On mornings like this, I sometimes wish that I could go back and experience it all over again, taking with me the lessons I learned the first time I was there so I could build on them, change them up, make different choices. But most of all, just go and
experience it once more. Once again drink in the sounds, the smells, and the colors that appear when the morning sun creates dappled shadows on the walk between Irwin Hall and McReynolds Hall. Slide down the rail on the last set of steps behind Graf Hall. Jump into piles of leaves or link arms with a group of friends and do a crazy dance-walk on the way to the cafeteria before breakfast or after class. "Escape the Hill" to visit the shops in St. Helena or catch a movie with friends before coming back just in time for dinner; grabbing a quick bite at Taco Bell before rushing back up the hill just in time to get ready for vespers. Playing a game of pick-up football on the field across from Paulin Hall and the College Church. Laughing with friends on the way down to dinner; singing together; praying together.
You know, just another Friday on the Hill.
