Ella D.
Yelp
Ten years ago this month, we packed my entire life up in a 1991 Buick LaSabre and drove from Alice, TX to Austin.
We pulled up to Dobie and struggled up the wind-tunnel stairs to the resident lobby with not much more than two suitcases full of high school clothes and some boxes.
Mom started to help me unpack. I stopped her, hugged her, and told her I was good to go. She cried. I didn't want to cry so I cut the goodbye short and shoved her out of the 300 sq. ft efficiency I'd be sharing with a roommate I'd never met. I didn't mean to break her heart. I was 18 and stupid and a small town girl in a city for the first time. I wanted to just leave my hometown behind, my family, everything I'd ever known and jump into my new life in college.
She didn't leave immediately, she lingered, and instead we drove down to Riverside and had lunch at the ever revolving restaurant that is now Tony Black's. (Formerly Peso & Bucks for two seconds, formerly vacant for the vast majority of my time in Austin.)
Afterwards, she brought me back to Dobie, and I'm not even sure I invited her back up before saying the final goodbye. I didn't mean to push her out.
I can't imagine how much she cried as she drove back down South. I've always regretted that. It breaks my heart thinking about it.
Over the next three years until graduation, The University of Texas was my home.
The Six Pack, the College of Liberal Arts, those halls and that lawn were my entire life. I can still remember the smell of Parlin Hall. I miss eating homemade ham sandwiches on white bread with honey mustard, smashed from being in my book bag half the day, sitting on the steps of the tower.
Football games in the student section are a mighty experience.
TEXAS!
FIGHT!
The stadium shakes with voices and school spirit and comaraderie. A sea of burnt orange all the way around, chanting in unison, feeling and believing in their greatness at every moment.
Then we won the Rose Bowl and Vince became immortal - I still wear my #10 Jersey. The stadium was enclosed and became even more epic.
My favorite professor was Professor Isenberg my senior year. He taught me to love Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh and reminded me why English was my major. He taught me to "write what you know, and it will be good." He was the type who would give you a bad grade on a great paper to push you to make it phenomenal, instead.
My favorite classes were on Brecht and Italian Women's Lit - we sat on the lawn of the six pack and read The Iguana in the sunlight with a professor I always fancied to be a kindly storybook witch. She was fantastic to listen to with her thick Italian accent and to watch her wise and sparkling eyes as she read.
I learned a lot at UT. But mostly I learned about myself. I learned to miss home, I learned to love my new home. I learned to not be such a brat.
I wish I had gone back to walk the stage at graduation instead of just letting my diploma come in the mail, thinking that the pride of graduating early was enough validation.
There's always been an empty feeling from the day I walked off campus, quietly and alone, for the last time. No one cheered, no one said congrats.
I just turned around, looked at the fountain for a while, put my horns up with my class ring in the air, and then left.
If you're lucky enough to attend UT, you'll fall in love. You can't help it.
I'm leaving Austin this month, exactly one decade later, to start a new chapter in life. But this school, this campus, that stadium and the Texas Longhorns will bring me back. I'm a proud Texas Exes Life member and will always bleed orange.
And so will my daughter.
Hook 'em!
