indian summer

I live in a college town, which, like all college towns, runs on a strict seasonal schedule. Because it's early September, the students are back in force, crowding the coffee shops and bookstores, blocking the sidewalks, talking loudly about course schedules and roommates.

One of them, a girl I've known vaguely for the last few years, walks by and sees me sitting on the side porch, my laptop in my lap. I wave and she crosses the street and stands at the top of the porch steps, squinting against the still-warm sun. She looks a little like a Italian madonna, straight hair parted in the middle, framing a face that's all curves. A silver Star of David hangs from her necklace and her voice has the cadence of someone who's always sung in a chorus. She's a senior now, and we talk about the year to come, about her classes and her plans. Someone stole one of her boxes from storage. She's decided not to write a thesis. Her little sister is taking the SATs.

She says that she'll be looking for a job in California, where her boyfriend's applying to graduate school. "We want to get a place together," she says and, from the way she pauses, I infer that someone, most likely her mother, doesn't fully approve of the idea. But she's not my daughter and I tell her about the summer that I lived with my boyfriend in a ground floor apartment in West LA.

"I feel so old," she says. She's going to be 21 in a month and a half. "It's funny. I don't feel like a senior. I look around the dining hall and I realize that all the people I don't recognize must be younger than me." I'm not sure what to tell her. Sometimes youth isn't wasted on the young. She can see exactly what's slipping through her fingers.