the Oxford weekends

April to me is practically summer, having spent most of mine in Florida. But even last spring in the Mississippi Delta and the spring before that in Tennessee, I was wearing short sleeves by now and sweating on a more regular basis. And the beginning of this month promised as much, except a fluke cold front rolled in, and weeks later, still hasn’t left.

I got home from a weekend down in Oxford and realized, as I let myself in, that it was colder inside my trailer than outside. And outside it’s only in the sixties. So I proceeded to open all my windows and let the two airs exchange places. And I’ve planted myself outside, sunning myself on the front steps, to wait it out. I’m surrounded with my computer, reading, knitting, journal, and cell phone to keep me here all afternoon if need be.

I want to say how much I’ve enjoyed the Oxford weekends this spring. I actually don’t have class as a second-year, but I go down and share Grace’s room at the Days Inn and do my own thing while the first-years are in class and meet up with them for lunch and afterwards to throw the frisbee and eat dinner and hang out if they’re still around. I wasn’t half this social during the fall when everyone was in Oxford, nor did I ever expect to spend so much time with the first-years, and what I worried would be a rather lonely semester turned out to be the semester where I was never home on weekends. This morning as I was leaving the Days Inn, I unexpectedly bumped into Huong. As we parted, she had said, “See you in two weeks!” (Portfolio Day), and I suddenly remembered that she was my roommate in Oxford, not Grace. And in two weeks, when I come down, I would not see the usual faces of Ward and Dave and Grace, but second-years who are my friends, but who I haven’t kept up with. I’m looking forward to it, but I miss the others already.

Late Friday night, as I was driving down to Oxford, it wasn’t raining enough to make me concentrate too hard on the road, but the night sky did have my attention. I had worried I would get sleepy when the batteries on my CD player died and I had no more music, but the rumblings up there and the lightning, kept me company. Sometimes a bolt of lightning would streak - horizontally - across the sky in front of me. Sometimes, the whole sky lit up with as much clarity as 3 p.m. daylight -- but just for a fraction of a second. And the thunder was continuous, sometimes louder, sometimes softer. More than just observing something beautiful, I felt more alive than I have for quite some time, like the electricity that was tearing through the sky was also quivering through me. Maybe I just hadn’t heard thunder and lightning in a while.

Two days later, as I was driving back up to Potts Camp, it was a classically beautiful day. I thought how like a child’s painting the scene in front of me was: The road and shoulder were orange (the red clay of these parts); the forest on their side, green, and the sky, blue with white clouds. Children know what they are doing when they paint this way.