Forgotten Moments

Memories can become blurry, over time, like underdeveloped photographs, or incomplete, like sunlight through blinds. Our lives move ever forward, like the inflexible patterns of stars. Once fevered and immediate events recede, with frightening, doppler effect, as remembered yesterdays, become forgotten yesterdays. New Haven was abuzz. The hotels were booked and moving trucks had taken every free parking space for miles. Last Sunday was freshmen move-in day and 1,554 freshmen moved into their Yale residences. It’s one of our favorite days of the year. The hubbub of freshmen moving, lunching, shopping and later, seeing off their departing parents, created a delicious emotional chaos that we watched unfold, like a Greek chorus. The movie ‘Love Actually’ begins and ends with montages of people greeting friends, family and loved ones at Heathrow airport - it’s emotional and heartwarming. Move-in days are a lot like that - with their gordian knots of beginnings and endings. My parents were nervous and emotional on my freshman move-in day - as was I - but we all tried, desperately, not to show it. Welcome to New Haven freshmen, everything’s beautiful, but you’ll get too busy to enjoy it much. We upperclassmen move in tomorrow.