The Girls' Dorm

On the back of the toilet, my mom kept a red wicker basket with a handle. Her name, "Julie Anne," was glued to the side. There were also pom poms around the rim. Inside was her eye lash curler and makeup and some hair pins and her brush - that sort of thing. She told me that she made the basket when she was in college and she used the basket to carry her things down the hall of her dormatory when she showered or brushed her teeth or whatever.

When I went to basketball camp and debate camp, we stayed in college dorms and used the community showers down the hall. I remembered the red wicker basket at that time, though it was long gone by that time.

Mary and I are sharing a dorm room at the University of Tennessee while we are at Global Finals. We are walking to events and eating in the cafeteria and walking down the hall to the shared bathroom. Like the Classic Bad Roommate, she is messy and invites friends over to hang out in our room without asking and asks me to do stuff like throw away her trash. Like the Classic Good Roommate, I accompany her to parties and make sure she is safe and gets home at a reasonable hour. I remind her to lock the door and bring her stuff with her to the bathroom.

Mary and her friend Cecelia were discussing where they would live when they came to the University of Tennessee as students. They picked out their apartment by the campus and giggled.

It's really not that far away and it's really not that inconceivable. Hannah graduates in a week and she will prepare for college dorms at Creighton. She will make herself the equivalent of the red wicker basket and use the bathroom at the end of the hall. It is just begining for me - this children leaving the home thing - and with each of them it will be different.

As an adult I recognize how important the dormitories are - a transition from child/parent to child. It allows you to adjust to living with others and share space and yet does not require major house cleaning or cooking. Mary was shocked by the sparseness - the package of saran wrapped sheets and cinderblock walls. I found it comforting - like the camps of my childhood.

We are part of a community these days that we are here. People talk to each other everywhere. Last night we went to a party down by the aquatics center where people were swimming, playing soccer, dancing to a DJ and trading pins. We wandered around until after 10, got on a crowded bus and headed back to our dorm.

On the bus on the way back we got some advice on how to pack our structure for next year, a pin trade offer, and an invitation by a woman wearing a panda hat to come to her dorm for a party. We thanked the group for the structure advice, we passed on the pin trade (though Megan later wished she had known that the guy had a green dragon with red eyes pin), and we declined the party invitation since it was after 10pm.

We came back to the dorm to walk down the hall with our plastic sacks of toiletries to take a shower.

And everytime I do that, I think about Julie Anne's red basket.