College of the Holy Cross - Purple Patcher Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

Page 29 text:

N' nam. ff'- fl l l l 5 l I l l 3, l l It tl f W sympathetic and outraged epistles faithfully and then waits, usually in vain, for some sort of response, who wants so much to understand and be a part of all that her boy is doing-mom walks down and up the dozens of stairs and perhaps catches a glimpse of an unusually clean and hastily rearranged room. The weekend of rushing frantically from one room to another, from one handshake to another, pivots around a Saturday afternoon football game. Down on the field is the spectacle of every Saturday, but the dialog from the stands makes this game different: Now, see ,... when this guy gets the ball, mom ,... uh, no ,... over there, heis going to throw to that guy there with the .... Where? There, mom! . . . oh, never mind, we missed it .... Well, anyway, I think theyill probably run a cross-buck off the .... H A What? Never mind, mom, I'll explain later. , Saturday night is time for his first teachers to meet his present teachers, with trumpets blaring in the background, parents expectant, sons strangely hesitant. As Parents' Weekend ends with a weary but satisfied sigh, one feeling predominates: it is the knowledge that in spite of our failures to describe Holy Cross and to explain the drama that is, for everyone, college life, somehow the presence of our parents here, even for a few hours, links them forever to the incommunicable essence of collegiate life. Holy Cross is, to a greater or lesser extent, a home to each who comes here. This uniting of a family with a second home is the reason there is a Parents' Weekend.-Steven Bashwiner

Page 28 text:

I3 hough the event is the same every year, and it falls on alternately Windy and cold and then sunny and bright days, Parents' Weekend at Holy Cross is always a uni- que and warm experience. Friday afternoon cars drive slowly up a Linden Lane speckled with leavesg the faces inside look at the buildings for the first time in amazement or for the last time with a mixture of nostalgia and sadness. C'Kane tower casts its shadow on a very different dis- position than is usual. The young man who waits under that shadow is, at this Friday moment, very much a son. Yet, he is still in his own environment under this shadow. The meeting of son and parents is usually in their world, this encounter takes place in his world. The young man is filled with the warmth of reunion and the self-consciousness that his world is about to be revealed and, probably, judged. Out of the clash of these two emotions comes a strangely moving experience-just having them here. The dad who has become in the last few weeks an unseen but not unheard from creditor is somehow for now and thus forever a part of all the tradition and excitement and subtle imprisonment that everyone of us feels and is never able to express. The mom who worries when she sees us thin and bearded at the beginning of vacations, who mails alternately

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