The Wellesley of My Dreams

I had the dream again. I’ve been having it for years, about once a week. It goes something like this:

I’m about to start my senior year at Wellesley. I’m always incredulous about it, like I woke up on the starting line of an Olympic sprint as the official is raising the pistol. Wait! How did three years go by so quickly? Why didn’t I appreciate them sufficiently? Why did I waste my time? I’ve been shut up in a lab in the Science Center, when what I really wanted was to be writing stories in Clapp while I looked out over the lake. I’ve been forcing my brain to work in ways it didn’t want to work for so long, I’ve forgotten what happiness feels like.

But in the dream, I have another chance.

I have only a year left. But I can make the most of it, right? I have to make the most of it. I choke up, leak tears. Where to begin? What to treasure first? I’ve only just started, but it’s nearly too late. Severance Green shines in the summer sun; the trees at its edge will soon turn to autumn red. Then we’ll have snow. I can’t even contemplate spring. Every day will be precious. I see friends in the distance—they’ll have stories to tell. Who to talk to first? Or should I make new friends? But no, I have to start making plans: This year, I’ll tea for Shakes. This year, I’ll load my schedule with oil painting and Italian farce. This year, I’ll finally find the hidden garden on campus, and the velvet reading room, and that tip of limestone that extends into an impossibly bright turquoise ocean.

None of these places exist, of course. But they’re real in my dream-campus.

What does it all mean?

At first glance, it seems obvious. When I started at Wellesley in real life, I wanted to be an astronaut. My reasoning was that, if I have only one life to live, I’d better aim as high as I can, right? So I majored in biochemistry while suppressing the urge to be an artist (because, as I once told a fellow first-year in a McAfee elevator, “it would be too easy”). I did everything “right” in service of my ambition, and went to MIT to continue my studies.

But in my second year in grad school, I hit a wall. I just didn’t want it enough. In fact, that’s an understatement—I didn’t want it at all. I’d been taking breaks from the lab to see art films, go to improv classes, and write humor pieces for the school newspaper. If I was honest with myself, that’s what I actually wanted to do. I was a loudmouthed, semi-feral bohemian who just wanted to make art and curl up in a lair of pillows, thank you very much. I’d make a terrible astronaut.

Now, I’m 44 years old. I make a living as a writer and artist.

I’m doing what I wanted to do. So you’d think the dream would stop, right?

It hasn’t. It’s only intensified. Every time, my internal monologue starts afresh: OK, OK, I know I’ve only dreamed this before, but this time it’s real. I only have a year left! What to do? Where to begin? I have to plan. ...

... and the litany starts over again. The green, the garden, the library, the turquoise ocean, and the new friends I have to make before it’s too late.

To be honest, I think I’ll always have this dream, as long as I love being alive. And I do love being alive. “My senior year” symbolizes the remainder of my life. “The campus” is the world. Maybe I’ll have the dream until the day I die, when at last I find that tip of limestone, and finally dip my toe in that impossible ocean.