Symmetry

(Sabbath Blog #29)

My wife Debra and I are both graduates of Mercer University; I received my B.A. in 1978 and she received hers in 1979. Our daughter Sara is a junior at our alma mater.

During her freshman year at Mercer, Debra lived in a dorm that was called, with no pizzazz but with great accuracy, Freshman Women’s Dorm. She and I started dating that year. We both attended summer school in 1977. All summer students, men and women, were housed in Freshman Women’s Dorm, with the women in one wing and the men in the other. When I got my room assignment, I was in the same room in which Debra had lived during her freshman year.

When we were students at Mercer, the Mary Erin Porter complex, always known as MEP, was the primary residence hall for sophomore, junior, and senior women. Debra lived there during her junior year. Now, MEP is the main dorm for freshman women. So, when Sara got her housing assignment for the fall of 2005, she learned that she was to live in MEP. On move-in day, I lugged the first box up to her room on the third floor. When I came back down, I told Debra, “You’re not going to believe what room Sara is in.” It was not the same room that Debra had lived in but it was the room that adjoined it.

Debra and I got married right after I graduated from Mercer; she still had a year left. We rented an apartment in an old house that Mercer owned on the edge of the campus. Our address was 1548 Johnson Avenue, Apt. 2. A few years ago, Mercer tore down that house and a lot of other buildings and built a new Greek Village. This year, Sara is living in one of the Greek Village houses. To get there, you turn down Johnson Avenue. If the house in which she’s living is not on the spot where our apartment was, it’s awfully close.

Sometimes, the pieces of your life actually do seem to fit together.