Beginnings Sneak In

I’ve stumbled onto a truth that never makes the six o’clock news but runs your life just the same: beginnings rarely introduce themselves. They sneak. You don’t get a trumpet or a banner. You get a smell you can’t place, a sound that didn’t used to be there, and then you’re in a new chapter you don’t remember starting. Where I’m from, we measure time by potlucks and hardware-store sales, by the first jacket forgotten on a church pew and the last mosquito that won’t quite quit. I used to think adults had a secret switchboard for this stuff. Turns out we’re all just reading the wind and pretending we meant to.

A season starts in your nose long before it lands on a calendar. There’s the scent of pencil shavings and warm dryer lint and that faint tang of cafeteria trays. A cough from three doors down gets answered by two more, and suddenly the hallway is its own small brass section. Back home, you could tell the month by which casserole ran out first and which aunt wore the apron with the chickens on it. The fellowship hall would cloud up faster than the laundromat windows when the vent popped off, and the hymn board would list the old favorites, like the town was tuning itself.

College has always felt like a county fair that learned to climb stairs. New faces everywhere, a frenzy of names and stories. Somebody’s mattress leans against a wall like modern art. There’s that one sponge by the sink that’s seen more than you and keeps going anyway, grim but loyal. People hug on day two because it seems like the right bet. In that pileup of handshakes and pizzas and midnight debates about nothing and everything, the invisible world does what it’s built to do. It mingles. It practices. It tries doors. Scott will tell any out-of-stater that our Badger isn’t just the animal; early miners dug into hillsides like burrowers, and the name stuck the way mud does in April.

None of this is strange, which is why it slides past the gate: gather strangers from everywhere, stack them shoulder to shoulder, add irregular meals and four hours of sleep, and the tiny hitchhikers do their rounds. Your defense crew can be sturdy and still get overwhelmed for a spell, like our high-school line the year we scrimmaged St. Olaf’s junior varsity and learned humility one grassy yard at a time. Independence without sleep turns into plain clumsiness. Most of the time you pay in tissues, tea, and a quiet week.

I learned that at eighteen, visiting my cousin Lars in Minneapolis. He took me to a basement show where the ceiling sweated and the floor had opinions. I shook hands with everyone, yelled my life story into a speaker, and drank whatever was handed to me with the confidence of someone who thought consequences were for other people. Felt ten feet tall until Tuesday, when my voice dropped two octaves and my sinuses staged a sit-in. My aunt slid over a bowl of soup and said, “Honey, your body will mail the bill whether you open it or not.”

There’s a meaner cousin to campus crud: meningitis, an infection of the lining around the brain and spine. It can begin like the usual nuisance and then turn fast, stiff neck, light makes your eyes ache, a severe headache that won’t bargain, confusion, sometimes a rash that doesn’t fade when pressed. Those signs mean it’s urgent. Vaccines help cut the risk: MenACWY protects against A, C, W, and Y, and MenB covers B. Dorms and teams share a lot besides stories; shots keep the worst kind of surprise off the guest list.

Mingling is still the point. Life runs best when it runs neighborly. First encounter can knock you flat; the second time, your body remembers the route and sets out snacks. It’s like the semester is a snowplow you don’t see coming until the berm at the end of your driveway is waist high, annoying until you realize that’s how the road gets clear. Rest isn’t weakness. It’s bookkeeping. Pay today, owe less tomorrow.

Here’s the farm piece that still helps: my grandpa could tell a cold snap was coming because the cows went quiet and the barn door stuck a half inch higher than usual. He stacked wood, checked the heat lamp, and only then poured coffee. No panic. Just noticing. Same move here. Keep the good parts, new names, borrowed mugs, singing too loud on a Tuesday, and trim the bill where you can: wash your hands, share less spit than gossip, eat something green, sleep. Which is a decent plan.

Later, when you hear that first hallway chorus of sniffles, you’ll nod like an old-timer in the third pew. Not because you got wise, exactly, but because you’ve been through it once already. Most wisdom is last year’s mistake, paid and filed where you can reach it.