My Happiest Place

My friend Mary over at A Room of Mama's Own has challenged us to write about our "happy places." This has caused me several days of hemming and hawing, not because I do not have a Happy Place, but because I have so many. It has been a good lesson in being grateful, because sometimes I forget how lucky I am. What with the spit up and the brawling, whiny children and the grumpy husband and all.

So what I actually had to figure out was what is my Happiest Place, either figurative or literal? And one place, very literal but with some figurative associations, stands out: my college campus. But I can pinpoint an even more specific Happiest Place if I try hard to wade through the myriad ridiculous happy moments I have from that campus.

My junior year in high school, I took the requisite Spring Break College Trip Accompanied by a Parental Unit. In my case, my father took me. We went to several colleges on the East Coast, ending up at his alma mater (which would later become *my* alma mater). It was spring, thus the, ahem, spring break, and the cherry blossoms were in bloom, and I had never seen such things before. We landed in the area of the school, an Ivy League university, around dusk, and as we drove up the highway that borders the school, my father casually pointed out the spires of the university peeking over the tops of the trees with the sun setting in the distance. "We're here," he said.

He turned us up the main road in town, lined with stately trees and grassy fields, and he explained, "Whenever you got to Main Road, you always knew you were home." And I knew it too; I was home.

We spent that evening walking the campus, and as the skies grew darker, lights illuminated up the dorm rooms around us. Walking the quads, I could see into these little spaces of life and activity -- felt college banners and Monet art posters hung up on the walls, students laughing and walking around in their pajamas. My father told me stories of the buildings from his time at school -- his stories. My dad is not someone who talks a whole lot. There is a lot of heaviness, both in his heart and in his words. Hearing his stories as we walked that campus, seeing the students all living in the little glimpses that the dorm windows gave us, I was so overwhelmed by how that campus, those buildings, could tie me to both my father and history, the histories of all the students who had lived in those rooms, like my dad, and who lived in them now. And even more than history, walking there gave me a sense of the present and the potential of the future. My future.

And so, when I think of that place, and when I think of that place in time, it still gives me the warm fuzzies. It still inspires me. And it now makes me believe in fate. I met most of my best friends in the world there and I met my husband there, and I was able to walk in my father's footsteps and make them my own. I get to tell my own stories now. Those buildings are my buildings. And when I have the chance to go back to that place and visit, I still like to walk the quads at night when the lights spill out onto the grass and the leaded windows allow glimpses into the lives of the students. I just like to touch the walls and feel the old ground under my feet and see the moon shine over the gothic spires. My friends make fun of my unabashed love for the place, but I feel safer and more at home there than anywhere else. I can't imagine better qualities for a happy place.