tumbledry

5 Years

Mykala’s getting her MA in Human Development and another MA in Counseling and Psychological Services, so she’s reached the point where she’ll do something called a practicum. It’s not unlike an internship, except you earn credits for doing the work and getting the experience. We’ve talked a lot, and Mykala is interested in, well, not pathologizing people. Clinical psychology, the DSM diagnoses, etc. have their place, but she wants to take a well-adjusted person and help them stretch to reach their potential. So, Mykala interviewed for her practicum at the St. Thomas Career Development on Friday. The interview went so well that they called back later that day to offer her the position!

I took a walk at St. Thomas while waiting for Mykala’s interview. In the five years since my last visit, they’ve had the biggest building boom in over two decades. There’s a beautiful new student center. There is also an athletic complex, about the size of a city block, whose luxury and scope are unparalleled by any college athletic center in the five-state area. The sandstone dressed walls, rising two stories straight up from the sidewalk, make the campus seem like a dream to me: worn, familiar spots juxtaposed with the completely unfamiliar.

I found a sunny spot on a bench outside the three-story glass curtain wall of the just-completed student center. I looked around at the college students. “They’ve no idea how nice this is… but, I guess I had no idea how nice it was when I was here.”

I sat at the site of the old O’Shaughnessy Athletic Building, built before World War II. It had a basketball court on the top floor, lit with natural light — it would get roasting in the summer. Ancient fixtures in the locker room were original to the building — the girls locker room was crammed in later, when St. Thomas became co-ed. I went to the weight room there every other day of college, and I got used to a few things about the building. First, when I started working out there, it was just this concrete floor and amazingly decrepit ceiling. The music was provided by an old boom box. Rusty weights, equipment from the 1970s. Sometime during my first year, some very generous donor contributed, and the weight room got a new floor, ceiling, mostly new equipment. Yet, any 60+ year old building has certain oddities: for example, there was radiator heat and no air conditioning. I remember the heat blasting so high in the winter that we’d have to open these old single-pane swing-out windows. I felt like I was in a castle: brick on my side, stone on the outside, unhinging this old iron latch and swinging the leaded glass out into the weather. You’d feel little bits of snow land on your face while you worked out. When the weather was transitioning from late winter to spring, the radiators never seemed to turn off — so, we’d have all the windows open on an 80° spring day, and the radiators would be cranking out heat. You’d just sweat and sweat and sweat. The hours of the building were not good at all — on the weekend, random doors would be locked, so you’d have to figure out how to get in there to work out.

Thing is: I liked it then. I really did! This may sound like an “uphill both ways” story — but that building had charm. And, remembering back — that sure was a fun experience. Except when random doors were locked. That was… not fun. So, any gym now seems luxurious by comparison. Plus, what history in that building! It had these ancient, heavy metal classroom doors, dusty wooden trophy cases overflowing with since-forgotten awards, dead-end hallways, disconnected clocks, weird closets, high-ceilinged lecture halls. To get to the upper level and use the leg machines, you’d climb this spiral staircase in a concrete turret, passing a mostly abandoned storage area on the way up. At the beginning of each semester, you’d occasionally run into someone saying, “I’ve never even been in this building… and I have a lecture in it? Where’s my classroom?”

Since then, of course, it’s all been razed and replaced by a sleek new building with the latest in everything. It’s all well-marked, well-lit; I’m sure nobody is ever lost. Flat panel televisions for signage! Those would’ve looked very wrong in the old building. Where there used to be a random student at a flimsy table sitting on a salvaged chair swiping cards if they didn’t simply recognize you, there’s now a fancy check-in desk with uniformed folks reminding you of membership dues and card requirements. Where there used to be a musty old locker room, there’s climate-controlled luxury. Individual showers. Carpeting. There’s no mystery, no sense of history in a brand-new building. In a tasteful nod to what went before it, the new athletic building has the two main doors from that old building I worked out in for four years. These are massive, oak doors, lacquered to a high shine, made up of carved panels. They have custom-wrought metalwork forming massive, over-engineered, almost medieval handles. Nobody, and I mean nobody makes doors like this anymore. They wouldn’t look out of place on a cathedral. It was a complete shock to see them mounted on a wall, no longer swinging or leading to anything. My fingertips graced the metal. “I… used these doors. And now, they’re just stuck to a wall.” Just stuck to a wall.

My mind returned to the place I was sitting. There used to be a four-story tree growing here. Freshman year, I was reeling during my first few months, adjusting to living in a dorm and having complete control of my own schedule. Freedom was hard! One Saturday, I laid down outside the old athletic building, under this tree, and took a nap in the late afternoon sun. All that’s gone now, except in my mind. I can’t go back in a building that isn’t there. You can’t nap under a tree that’s gone, either. All I have is the unreliability of the human memory… and some pictures I took of the outside of that building.

Is this what it’s like to get older?

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