Last time I wandered Vanderbilt campus at dusk, to spend a pleasant hour on a pretty day before the curtain rose on another Middle School musical production, I had it pretty much to myself. Not last night. It was Move-in Day, everywhere you turned Dads were lumbering under the weight of dorm-sized appliances and the other necessities of collegiate life, and officious Moms were directing them. Lots of kids too, many indistinguishable in years from their younger counterparts across the street. There was a mix of apprehension and anticipation in those faces, and exhaustion. I looked to them with anticipation of my own: that’s us in a few short years. As Millie sings, baby will soon be coming home no more. (Well, ’til Fall Break anyway.)
And as for the show, set in the ’20s but more evocative for me of the Mad Men ’60s (with young women aspiring not to careers but to husbands, “modern” meaning heartless and materialistic) : it grew on me over three days, and I might as well surrender to the viral music that won’t leave my brain ’til I replace it. It was fun. Younger Daughter, you were a great “stenog.” And then we got to celebrate Grammy’s birthday with her at the Cheesecake Factory on an almost perfectly autumnal evening. She couldn’t remember the last time she was serenaded at a restuarant.
Fall’s still very agreeably in the air this morning. George Santayana was right: “To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.” Or summer. We all really should get back to school.
Up@dawn 
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