First Day at College

My mother never went to college. She went to nursing school. In the 1920's.

The day I was to register at college, I had just got over the chicken pox. Yes, chicken pox. I had chicken pox at 17. Don't ask! It was horrible.

College was a ferry ride and a whole world away. Mom came with me, and sat in the draughty hall while I stumbled from table to table, registering for the assorted classes. At the end of that process, we were both exhausted. She left to catch the last ferry back to The Island. I suppose she was thinking that the college would direct me to a dormitory by some sort of automatic process. Nursing schools in the 1920's resembled convents more than anything else, and what other frame of reference did she have?

There was I, stranded in the Big City, with nowhere to stay and only one prospect. The daughter of my parents friends lived in The Big City, with her husband and children. I called her. Her children had the measles. No luck there. I felt abandoned.

Of course, all the rentals advertised through Student Services were taken, and I was forced to resort to the bulletin board. Of all the calls I made, as the sun sank slowly into the ocean, one led to a vacancy.

I was so grateful that I didn't even care that I would be living with a totally dysfunctional family, in a room without a lock on the door, in a house with a pervert lurking in the basement. Any problem can be faced after a good night's sleep with a roof over one's head!