Dear Maryam

Last weekend, I sat at the University Orchestra's last concert of the year. I watched two of my best friends play their trumpet and cello and realized that this wasn't just their last concert. Some part of it belonged to those of us who had come to cheer them on from as far back as October of freshman year. Their concerts hadn't sounded out only Bach or Prokofiev; they had also rung with the catcalls and whistles that always followed a good performance.

As I listened to Mahler's Ninth Symphony swinging from delirious joys to aching lows, I heard echoes of the past four years run through my head, in my own shallow way. There it all was, in a one-hour, 45-minute symphony: the hard work, the fun, the games, the messy first relationships and the awful breakups, the new relationships, the bad grades and the good ones, the thesis topics and the carrel visits... It could go on forever and sound as cliched as it does right now.

I wondered what Julia and Brian would do when they put their instruments down. Then I wondered what Brendan and I, sitting in the audience, would do with ourselves. I knew that the four of us would be in four different states a year from now, but somehow in this hour, I couldn't bring myself to admit that we would probably be doing whatever the hell we'd signed up to do post-graduation.

Nevertheless, in the seconds after the applause ended and the last of the Stuart B. Mindlin Concerts of 2007-08 was over, Brendan and I knew exactly what to do. We ran all the way down to the stage. We smiled, we congratulated, and we took pictures.

We looked ridiculous as we celebrated four years of steady-heady-up-and-down-out-and-about friendship.

 

 

- Maryam Khan