Tidewater

            by Sara Wilson

 

My mom and I drove down to Williamsburg from Philadelphia in a rental car covered in cigarette burns and reeking of smoke.  Our map for the William and Mary campus was out of date and we couldn’t find the street in question to save our lives.  I spent a lot of the time saying,

“Mommy turn here, I see a road, no, there’s no sign,” becoming increasingly agitated as time wore on.  After some backtracking we found the road and saw a group of people dragging luggage out of a van. 

“Can you tell us where to find Giles Hall?” my mom asked the redheaded girl leading the group. 

“Yeah, you’re right by it.  It’s just up this hill but you can just park here and take your luggage up.” 

My mom pulled into the little tree covered alcove.  A sign read “authorized vehicles only.” 

“Um, maybe we shouldn’t park here,” my mom said. 

“I don’t think anyone’s checking right now.” I was dying to get out of the car and into my room and I could feel the fatigue and shaking that are telltale signs of low blood sugar.  I needed lunch before I became totally dysfunctional.  As I was checking in a girl in a blue dress with dark, slightly reddish hair was checking in next to me. 

“Your roommate is… actually you two are roommates,” said the girl at the check in table.  The girl and I looked at each other and laughed. 

“I’m Felicity,” she smiled. 

“Sara,” I said. 

“Is there somewhere we can get lunch around here?” my mom asked the Resident Assistants.

A girl with a sandwich said to us in a strong southern accent “Mm.  The Cheese Shop.  I’ve been craving this for like a month.”  She pulled out a map and drew a route for us.  “I recommend the house dressing,” added the girl next to her.  

“Checking in with your roommate?  That seems like a good omen,” my mom said as we waited for our sandwiches.  I agreed. 

Giles hall was a cinderblock building painted red to blend with the bricks of the colonial buildings.  There was an open kitchen in the center with a table and chairs on one side and a common area with couches and chairs around a TV on the other.  My room was small with a bed against each wall on either side of the air conditioning unit.   Felicity and I also each had a desk, wardrobe, and a dresser crammed onto any available wall space in order to leave the center of the room open. 

A giant stack of bound paper sat on my desk.  It was my reader.  There was no mistaking that.  Its green cover had a sticker in the upper right hand corner which read “Sara Wilson” and the title took up the entire page.  Beneath the W&M coat of arms was the bolded word READINGS.  The reader was about two inches thick with print that required a magnifying glass to read.  I tried to take comfort in the fact that the pages were one-sided before realizing that each single page of the reader was two Xeroxed pages of a splayed book.

Around four o’clock the RAs had us sit in the common room and say our names, something about our names, and where we were from.  We played “Egg, Dinosaur, Supreme Being” which demanded that we assume egg shapes, crawl around on the ground and play Rock Paper Scissors.  The winner was elevated to a dinosaur and then played against another dinosaur.  The loser became an egg and the winner became a supreme being.  The Supreme Being then played another Supreme Being and the winner was then out while the loser became a dinosaur.  Despite its ridiculous premise, the game broke the ice and had me laughing in no time as my skirt hopelessly bound my legs in a squat. 

From there we went to a dinner of microwave pizza and various unrecognizable dishes.  On the way to dinner I was telling another girl that there was someone else from Berkeley in the program.  The boy in front of me turned around, surprised, and said,

“I’m from Berkeley.” 

“Wow,” I said.  “I’m Sara.”

“I’m Nolan.”  Nolan was in the section of the programe that studied the period from the Revolution to the Civil War, while I was in the section that studied the Colonial period. 

After leaving dinner a girl whose flight had been canceled found us as we were led to a lecture hall where we were given an overview of the program by the Drs. Whittenburg, the couple who had designed the program, and were introduced to our instructors.  The instructor of my seminar group was Catharine, a young woman with blond, razor-cut hair and a crooked smile.  As we left the hall, Bridget, a girl who was in my seminar group, was talking to the late girl, Rebecca, about eighteenth century dress.  This was a subject which I could relate to.  Bridget and I explained the boning, stays, and conical silhouettes of the eighteenth century to Rebecca.  I’ve found my place, I thought.  Costumes, colonial history, what could be better? 

As I was climbing into bed that night I noticed that whenever I moved, my mattress made loud crinkling sounds rather like those of a particularly stiff gym mat or pool tarp.  If I changed positions while I was reading, the same loud crinkle would issue from the mattress below me.  I spent a lot of time not moving for fear that I would wake Felicity before we both got used to it and crinkled away.  Silent sleep was a thing of the past.  The air conditioning unit was right next to our heads and I, expecting to be warm at night, had brought only a thin blanket to put over my sheets.  I had also not come with particularly warm pajamas, again, expecting to be warm in the southern Virginia heat, not freezing with my wet hair next to an air conditioner. 

 

The next morning my brand new alarm clock started beeping about half a second after Felicity’s.  We both sat up and looked blearily at our clocks.  I shuffled over to my wardrobe and got dressed.  Our groggy mob was herded down the asphalt path through the woods to the back of the University Center.  The fresh morning air was not yet hot and the sun illuminated the leaves of the canopy giving the forest a soft green glow.  I was amazed by all the green, the swamp, and the silver skeletons of trees rising from the swamp.  There was simply nothing like it in California.  

  After a breakfast of nondescript pancakes we went out to the front of the UC to meet our instructors for the campus tour.  Catharine showed us all of the main old academic buildings as well as the newer ones and took us to get our student photo IDs. 

When it was time for our meetings with our instructors, various members of my group and I wandered around the back of the majestic Wren Building looking for the stairs that led down to our classroom.  I marveled at the fact that I could simply turn the handle and step through the giant doors into a building with so much history, grandeur, and elegance, to say nothing of the fact that it was the oldest academic building in the United States.  After a few minutes opening doors and peering in rooms a student pointed us in the right direction.  We were on the wrong side, so we all walked back through the arcade and into the other oversized door.  I was the first to reach the door.  I opened it and saw green paneling and a light fixture that imitated a candle sconce. 

“I don’t think they like us very much,” I said to the group behind me as I peered down the dark, narrow stairway.  We descended the stairs single file and stepped timidly into a long room with two rows of tables down the length and a flagstone floor.  There was a wall-sized fireplace with boxes of paperwork and a plastic cooler inside of it.  Despite the dark entryway the room was bright with windows all along the walls allowing sunlight to stream in. 

Later in the afternoon we were shown how to post our journal entries and pictures on the school’s website.  The journal entries were supposed to be informal essays and reflections on the readings, the sites visited, and the discussions in the seminar group.  This sounded easy enough. 

The next morning after breakfast we went to the back of the UC where we were picked up by our instructors in fifteen-seat vans.  Our van was the only silver one, which was convenient, as the other two looked exactly the same. 

At some point the conversation in the car turned to ethnicity and skin pigment. 

“I really don’t tan,” I said.  “I’m a northern European mutt.” 

“My skin has two tones,” said Angela, a short redhead.  “Vampire and lobster.”

We all laughed. 

Our first fieldtrip was to Werawacomoco, the capital of the Powhatan chiefdom.  We eagerly took pictures of the site although it looked like a green field.  Dave Brown, an archeologist, explained how the village was set up how archeologists read landscape.   

Long van rides became a staple which we started to look forward to.  Van rides were our main social time with the group.  In the seminar itself we discussed the readings and the sites, and analyzed the conspicuous consumption of the “Super Gentry” of Virginia and the status of women in different levels of society, which was wonderful.  But van rides were a time to relax, gossip, and compare regional accents.  Angela and I demonstrated the worst of California speech patterns to Matt, who was ready to strangle us about ten seconds into the demonstration. 

“Angela?  How have you been?”

“I’ve been hella good?”

“Me too?” and so on. 

 

By the middle of the second week I was hopelessly behind on my journals.  Felicity sat up all night every night writing ten page essays while I went to bed around midnight whether my journal was finished or not.  By the second to last day I was a whole week behind.  I attempted an all-nighter, drinking Felicity’s Pepsi and Mountain Dew.  As I attempted to make insightful observations about the role of tobacco in Virginia’s history I felt the weight of sleep and hopelessness dragging down my eyelids and slowing my brain.  I completed two journal entries that night and went to bed at five in the morning, utterly discouraged.  As I climbed into bed I looked over at Felicity, who was still up.  I couldn’t understand how somebody could be so functional on so little sleep.

When it became clear that I was making virtually no progress I went to bed.  The next day in the late afternoon I called my mom from a bench outside the UC. 

“I stayed up all night till five in the morning and I only finished one essay and I can’t finish them all and I’m afraid I’ll fail” I burst into tears. 

“Sara tonight I want you to go to bed early, okay?”

“But I have to finish…” I sobbed. 

“You went there to have fun and learn about history.  So far you’ve done that, wouldn’t you agree?” 

“Yes,” I sniffled.

“Do your best to finish your journals if you can, but if you can’t, then don’t worry about your grade.  You aren’t in this for the grade.”

“I guess I don’t have to release is to colleges if it’s bad…” I mumbled. 

“Most of all I want you to go to bed early.  You won’t be able to pull another all-nighter.  You’ll die.  You just won’t be sleep.”

I dried my eyes and walked back to the dorms. 

“I’m going to bed early tonight,” I said to Felicity that evening.

“How many journals do you have left?” she asked.

“Five,” I said matter-of-factly, a slight California lilt creeping into my speech.  Seeing her skeptical expression, “I just can’t function on three and a half hours of sleep the way you can.  Seriously.  It’s amazing.” 

The deadline for the journal entries was five o’clock, and I started at ten which gave me seven hours to write five journal entries.  I borrowed my friend Rebecca’s reader which she had highlighted well and got to work.  By noon I was averaging an entry an hour, which was pretty good, but I still didn’t have my images attached and I knew that I wouldn’t make it to five o’clock without food.  At that moment, however, my friend Laura walked in the room and said,

“Hey, we’re going on a goodbye trip to Wawa for lunch.  Wanna come?”

“I can’t.  I have way too much work.  Could you bring me a sandwich?  Here, I’ll give you my order.” I asked frantically writing it down on a piece of paper and thrusting it at Laura. 

“Yeah,” she said, taken aback. 

“I’ll pay you back when you bring it.  Oh, and could you help me with George Washington?”

“Um, sure,” she said as she left.  I had become addicted to sandwiches from Wawa, the world’s greatest convenience mart chain. 

When Laura brought me my Wawa sandwich we went into the common area and sat at the table to discuss Washington.  I sat there and inhaled the sandwich while Laura talked about Washington.  Once my outline was done, Laura went back to her dorm to work on her own journal.  Though not satisfied with the result, I completed Washington and moved on. 

I was on the home stretch with my essay on the role of women, typing furiously, words pouring from my fingertips, when I realized that I hadn’t attached any photos.  I tried attaching my photos, but they were too big.  I began googling images but nearly everything I found was from the William and Mary website and I didn’t feel right using those.  I managed to find a few contemporary paintings that were relevant and posted them.  I pooled images from the internet taking care to cite them all, but after posting a few I saw an error message.  I tried again.  The same error message appeared.  I tried twice again with different attachments before admitting defeat at the hands of technology. 

“I’m done!” I shrieked to no one in particular as I ran outside to call my mom. 

“Mommy I finished and it isn’t even five yet I’m done,” I babbled. 

“Wonderful.  I knew you could do it,” was her rational response. 

I ran back into my room, kicked off my shoes, and plopped straight onto my bed trying to relax, taking deep breaths of cold air. 

“I’m finished,” I said to Felicity who was further editing her opuses. 

“You’re done?” she asked incredulously. 

“Well, it’s not the greatest writing I’ve ever done, but hey, how much can I improve in the next fifteen minutes?” 

After a recovery period of about ten minutes I was filled with energy.  For closing ceremonies I put on my favorite dress, put on makeup and walked down to the swamp and sat on the concrete filter.  It was sitting there looking out at the water lines on the plant that I realized that I would be leaving.  Three weeks had seemed like such a long time, but they had gone by so quickly.  I would never see most of my friends again unless I went to Texas or Illinois.  I could return to Williamsburg, maybe even William and Mary, but never with these people and this program. 

As these thoughts were running through my head a group of Civil War people walked by.  Nolan turned around slid down the hill to the filter. 

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked. 

“I’m just being sad.”  I smiled ruefully at him.  “You know.  I’m realizing I’ll miss this.” 

“Hey, when you miss NIAHD we can get together,” he said giving me a hug. 

“Yeah, but it probably won’t happen and we won’t see each other…” I began to babble. 

“It’s the same city Sara,” he said flatly.  “I know I may not be the first person you want to see, but–”

“Nolan, I didn’t mean that.  That’s not true.  I like you.  I just suck with logistics.”  We walked back together, me telling him to go to Gaskells, and him trying to convince me to use Facebook. 

Closing ceremonies was a long string of inside jokes.  Each instructor got up talked about his or her group and called us up for our completion certificates.  As she was handing me my certificate, Catharine whispered to me,

“Good job.”  As I made my way back to my seat tiny tears stung my eyes.  I looked at Rebecca, Laura, and Bridget who sat around me and across the room at Angela and a wave of sadness washed over me.  No.  I told myelf.  I’m not going to enjoy my last few hours with my friends.  I didn’t allow myself to be sad until I was back in California.