"Butterflies over Reunion"
by Erin Peterson '98

The butterflies were the same. When I saw the Grinnell exit off of I-80, I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that this weekend, I had no tests, no papers, and no presentations.

Still, I fretted. There were many classmates I couldn't wait to see, but there were others I hadn't thought about since we'd tossed our caps on graduation day. What if we had nothing to say?

I didn't need to worry. We didn't have trouble starting conversations; we had trouble ending them. Sure, we groused a little bit about the open spaces that had been turned into parking lots, and the buildings we loved that were different. Or gone.

But many things-the most important things-were the same. Groups crowded around residence hall doorways, trying to get in one last word edgewise before turning in for the night. We stood up in a sea of dining hall trays at mealtime to get another dessert, asking: "Does anyone want anything?" And as a few of us walked to Dairy Barn on an afternoon so hot that the air above the asphalt shimmered, we wondered how we could have let so much time go by. We vowed to make our reconnection last longer than a weekend.

Many things have changed in the years since we graduated, but every time I go back to Grinnell, I remember what made me want to spend four years of my life there. The butterflies may come back every time I return to campus. But it also feels like coming home.