The drive back from Ann Arbor today activated one of my stronger recent sensory memories. At ten o'clock or so in the morning on sunny days during the warmer months, light hits the trees and streets of southeastern Michigan suburbia in such a way as to make it uniquely beautiful. A landscape that typically looks dull and unlovely in afternoon sun is transformed into a gentler, quieter, more mysterious place.
I first (or, at least, most strongly) experienced this as I took a roundabout drive home after completing my last IB test in May 2006. With a cool spring breeze in my face, the prettier-than-normal landscape, and the light traffic of a post-rush hour weekday morning, I was really sublimely happy. I had successfully completed what was by most accounts a harrowing high school experience, and I had a long summer and the exciting prospect of college ahead of me. The feeling that day really stuck with me, and echoes back whenever I encounter those particular conditions.
This morning's drive was also pleasant and peaceful, but there was a distinctly more melancholy edge to it. It wasn't May this time. The foliage is already starting to fade and brown. The air is cool because Fall is on its way. And my immediate future is no longer quite so glowing and carefree.
One of the reasons I was looking forward to college so much that May four years ago was that I was excited about the prospect of becoming a legitimate adult. I don't think I'm really there yet, but I'm certainly much closer. Unfortunately, it seems to me that adulthood is, in a lot of ways, about losing that innocent enthusiasm for the future. More and more, my fantasies about how things will play out are tempered by a pessimistic, pragmatic voice in the back of my head that relishes in crushing flights of fancy.
These days, the way that ten o'clock sunlight falls through the leaves mostly reminds me of things I've lost.
