Well I Tried to Make It Sunday

It was a gray and dreary day and with Punch away, we slept late, I made breakfast and French-press coffee and then was too late for the last Mass at noon.

I found out about an 8:30 p.m. Mass with music tonite at Montclair State, right up the block, the school Figgy attends. I would have taken Punch but that would have been too late for her. The campus was sprawling and it was dark and I couldn't find my way. I stopped and asked for help from:

• Two young women arriving at their dorm, baggage in tow.
• A student in unisex parka who didn't answer my excuse me's from my car window. Probably smart, safety wise. Or she/he couldn't hear me from inside the fur-trimmed hood.
• The parking deck guy, who gave me a map he marked.
• A young woman walking along and talking on her cell while I was driving.
• Two young men walking toward the parking lot when I was looking for the student center.
• Yet another young woman when I was walking. The path from Lot 19 to the student center was long. Be careful, it's icy, she said. I liked that. And indeed, we were crossing a slick patch. I figured I must have reminded her of her mother. She reminded me of myself at 20.
• A woman working in a fast food place on campus.

I saw my college self in all of them, students walking back to their dorms and not knowing what to make of a 50-something woman in a camel sweater and Burberry scarf looking for a building on the Sunday night before finals.

I finally got to Mass about 9 and it ended about 9:30. I liked the song "Emmanuel." 

But it was melancholy to be on campus, in light of my college friend's memorial service tomorrow morning in NYC. That too will be a walk down my old university path. I will see some college friends there.

Good night.

TCOY

1. Bath w Dr. Teal's Epsom salts w lavender.
2. Read a little of A River Runs Through It. Like it.