Finals

It is my mother's birthday. I have flowers and champagne. I will combine her present with the one I am getting her for Christmas. Don't worry, I am not a cheapskate. I am getting her a new iMac. I got her old one about four years ago. She will like the new one a lot. Anyway, I must get ready to take her to brunch. Here's a photo of her when she was in the hoot show.

Just kidding.

It is time to continue the narrative. I must get through college at least.

* * * * *

It was finals week. All I had to do was get through this that hung between me and Christmas break like so many blank miseries that I would surely endure. Everything was difficult, but it had to be done. All I thought was to get through it.

Each day that week, the town grew emptier and more lonesome. I knew people who did not have finals, or maybe only one or two. I had five and they stretched throughout the week. Why had I majored in zoology, I wondered? Every major was easier than this one. Fucking Jacques Cousteau. And fuck Vladi, too.

And now I could feel the shortness of the days, the blue afternoons and the long dusk that followed, then the settling cold darkness. You could hear it if you tried, could hear the dimness and the dark.

But each day, a thing was done, then another, so that toward the end of the week, I was beginning to enjoy the town and the quiet and lonesomeness. I would go home soon. But now there was this, the almost empty place with the cold wind blowing across the big plain, rattling trees and lifting leaves with a whispering hollowness.

And then it was done. Finals taken, courses completed. Before I left, I walked one time across the campus. No one was around now, just me, some ground crews, a few janitors, and here or there some other stray who, as I , hesitated before leaving, making certain that everything was taken care of, that everything was done.