Luminations of a New Wife

There's still something very exciting about drinking with your friend's parents - especially those parents that you grew up with. The first time returning home from college during thanksgiving break freshman year, you re-emerge with newfound knowledge extracted from hanging out with the upperclassmen. Among so much else, you know how to pour yourself a glass of wine.  While the boundaries of your adolescence evaporate, it's suddenly very okay to have a glass of wine with your parents. Nine years after that first freshman break, on Friday night I remembered just how much fun it is to still have a drink with my close friend's parents at her birthday party, while at the same time forgetting how hard it is to nurse champagne hangovers. Which stayed with me. All day. Into the night.

This is the same friend who I just found out got engaged the day after that party and I literally am sitting here with butterflies in my stomach (not from the hangover, from the jubilance) so excited remembering those first few moments of walking around on sunshine. Your face hurts from smiling so much and your phone doesn't stop ringing and you can't help but think of when the big day will be.  You turn out lists and numbers and dates in your head, trying everything you can to keep yourself grounded but knowing that it's a lost cause. I'm so terribly excited for my friend - I saw their relationship bloom infront of my eyes and now they'll be husband and wife! We went to Kindergarten together and shared everything from first teeth to first friends to first apartments out of college. Now we share another important first - one of my first friends to also be a Mrs.  Let the planning begin!!!

I've done this train ride so many times before.  As all the familiar towns of Poughkeepsie, Rensellear, and Hudson flashed by, I leaned my head against the train window taking in the midday sun as it flashed against the Hudson river. This time, I was no longer going to Schenectady returning to Union after a fun girls weekend in the city, but was traveling to Albany with my supervisor for a work conference on after-school programming.

How different Albany looks almost ten years after originally getting here. Though I made a tough push for Butcher Block on dinner Sunday night, when my supervisor and I finally got there, the waitress rudely slammed the door in our face saying that they were closed. Um, Hello?! Is this not the same place that my friends and I would pile into the car, hog over their salad bar and sneak drinks from the bartender? Surely they remember me...? No, not so much.  We ended up at the mexican eatery next door, which brought back first buzzes on sour marghartias and memories of freshman break-ups and make-ups and all-around awkward conversations.

During a break in the conference the next day we escaped to the Colonie Center mall, which I must say under flourescent lights and constant construction, is not much of an escape at all. What the hell would we do here in college? I tried to remember but it was easy too forget as sale signs for stores like "Claires" and "Spencer's Gifts" flashed before us. "Free Ear Piercing" no longer had the same effect on me now as it did when we were freshman, and Lauren and I literally got our whole ears done from lobe to cartiledge. The obligatory mall fountain behind us sprinkled and splashed it's water, reminding me of late night pledge events. Dressed in black, blue paint over us, didn't we come here as part of a scavenger hunt? Or was that when we helped out the boy's haze in their frosh? Or perhaps it never even happened and was just a late night reverie which got muddled into buzzes and all-around highs.

That night, after our presentation, a few of us decided to go to dinner. Someone suggested a place in Stuyvesant Plaza, and I was all the merrier to go. As we searched for parking and passed by all the cute sidewalk cafes and stores, we went by Circles which was THE place to shop because it was the ONLY place to shop. Surely we went here countless times, selecting the best dresses for our formals. I wanted to peek in, to see if the lady remembered me, to see if I remembered her.  She'd tie our hair up in the mirror as we looked back at ourselves trying on these fancy dresses, and always called the house after formals to see how they had went. But there was no going in now - my supervisor, already pretty amazed that I was able to go to college without working on the side, without going part-time, without living at home, would certaintly not understand my need to see if they still carried our favorite line of dresses!

Leaving yesterday on the way to the train station we passed the exit for Union College and I felt little flips in my stomach. The Union kids graduated this weekend and though I wouldn't know a sole on campus, I felt pulled to at least stop by the ceremony, have a drink with a professor, take my shoes off and walk around the Nott. Things do look different in the real world, when demands and work pressures call on you, but there are so many things that no matter what...still stay the same.