Panorama

After graduating from high school, I delayed going to college for a year.  I spent the year at a boarding school in Lugano, Switzerland as a Post-Graduate studying art, photography, literature, etc.  My roommate Emily was also a PG, trying to put off the next step in growing up by traveling the world and continuing to learn in the classroom, like I was.


The first night there, the school held a "dance" on a boat on the lake.  For the returning students, this was a fantastic event to see all of the friends they had been away from for the summer.  For the handful of new students, particularly PG's, this was a strange and boring event, where we sat around in our little black dresses (the girls, at least), getting to know the few people we had met from our dorm in the last two days, but not really meeting many new people.  Interestingly, though, the people I had met at that point were my closest friends for the rest of the year.  


Emily and I were sitting and talking, realizing that we had a lot in common, and realizing that this year was going to be a lot of fun (despite my intense feelings of regret and anxiety over the situation).  We were sitting on the back of the boat, outside of the room, so we could see the buildings around us, as well as the sea and the stars.  There was a pause in the conversation, what had just been said I can't remember, but we both looked up at the sky at the same time, and both gasped at the beauty that struck us.  We saw the big dipper - a very familiar symbol to both of us - but it was upside down from how we usually see it, and it was filling the entire sky.  I think the reason it seemed to awe-some at that moment is because it is what we needed to see just then.  It was something that was so familiar, and something that we both had a deep love for - the stars.  But we were both seeing it from a new and strange place, obscuring the object from how we were used to seeing it.  We were about to experience culture, people, places, in an obscured sight, but it was going to be beautiful, and new.  We were going to experience the adventure together.


The day before we left, we decided to go on a walk together up the mountain, like we had done many times, we were going to enjoy the panorama one more time.  It was the end of the school year, so it was late spring/ early summer, and most of the dandy lions (Emily's favorite 'flower') had already blown away and died.  But as we were walking back down, we found two perfectly intact dandy lions in their white puffy stage, not yellow flower stage.  We each picked one, and on the count of three made a wish and blew the pollen into the wind.  


It was if the dandy lions were there just for us, to say goodbye to our year and make a final wish, just as the big dipper was there our first night to make us realize what we were about to embark on.   I never asked Emily what she wished for, and I can't tell you what I wished for, or else it won't come true.