ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610070003
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Guest Column
SOURCE: JANE GOETTE
I have watched you grow up in our town, seen you in its schools and on its streets, at the library and waving out the window of an old red caboose.
I've noticed your changing voices, hairstyles and tastes in music, movies and books. In the early years, I saw you at Gillie's getting ice cream, and later, at Mill Mountain and Bollo's clustered around steaming cups of coffee.
At the end of long-ago summers, I saw you at Steppin' Out clutching the hand of a parent, excited and a little frightened by the crowds. During the middle years, you were still going to Steppin' Out, and while many of you were still with parents, you were trying so hard to look as if you weren't. There were braces, emerging breasts, changing voices and eyes both eager and anxious in their search for peers in the crowd.
The T-shirt sizes and designs have changed - fish and turtles, alligators, dolphins and armadillos. Your tastes in colors have changed as well, trading pinks and purples for dark green and black. And while you now sport rock groups and political slogans on your T-shirts, nostalgia or some unspoken loyalty to this town, this childhood you're outgrowing, compels you to buy yet another Steppin' Out T-shirt.
In the summer of '95, you got what an old friend of my parents' would have called, "The Big Kick." You lost a beloved classmate, a girl so full of life you could never have imagined her dead. You wept for days, had nightmares, clung to one another and honored your friend with the grace and style she deserved. Throughout the year, mired in the agony and angst of college applications, essays, deadlines and decisions, forms to fill and fights with your parents, you were steadfast in your loyalty to one another and to the memory of Marjana.
Teachers and younger students will remember you as a kind class. You were never too cool to form friendships with younger students, nor too insecure to hobnob with older ones. You leave your high school a memorable legacy. You poured your hearts into everything you did - running, debating, staying after school to create a memorial to Marjana, starting your own chapter of Amnesty International and a Women's Studies Club. You wrote poetry, played music, competed in forensics and athletic events and spoke up in your classes.
All spring and summer, you partied your brains out, and as summer drew to a close, there was always one more goodbye. Whatever the glue that holds you together, it is stronger than most.
It has not been easy for you this fall, that last glimpse of a dear friend. And as some of you drove out of Blacksburg to your college in an overloaded car, I imagine there was a catch in your throat as familiar landmarks slipped behind and the car headed toward the open highway, carrying you toward a new life. Perhaps you realized how much you really love this town you've spent so much time longing to escape.
You are settled into your dorm rooms now. Whether in Blacksburg or scattered across the country, you've left home and high school far behind. Early reports from your parents are that you're lonely and homesick. Of course you are! What you've had with each other is not easily replaced. You'll have to wade through the inevitable period of small talk and superficiality before meaningful new friendships can be formed, but they will come.
While there is a comfort in surrounding ourselves with people who've known us all our lives, there's also liberation in being with people who must discover us. Sometimes our families and old friends are too blinded by what they already know of us to see that other self in us, struggling to emerge.
Your identity as a class is a gutsy one. You are brave and smart and caring. Continue to challenge yourselves, to stretch, to push yourselves a little beyond your comfort level. We all make mistakes, fail, and suffer a little or a lot along the way toward becoming the people we dream of being. You have enormous potential, a world that needs all that you have to offer and a town you can always call home.
The last stanza of Mary Oliver's poem, "Wild Geese," has a message for you, now and forever:
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Wherever you are today, in college or jobs, near or far, remember that we are your family, too - your teachers, friends' parents, coaches, clergy, counselors, police, merchants and librarians - the people of your hometown.
Jane Goette lives in Blacksburg.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 linesby CNB