Tears and Flowers on Labor Day Weekend

A reflection on the individual, the community, and the nation.

I think people would be happier if they realized the walk is always going to be uphill.

The flags outside the campus center hung at half staff on first-year move-in day.

It was Friday of Labor Day weekend, a still morning on the hilltop campus above the Minnesota River Valley. I couldn’t decide if the lifeless flags looked tired or ashamed.

There’d been another mass shooting earlier in the week, this one at a Catholic elementary school in Minneapolis. An eight-year-old and 10-year-old are dead, 18 people wounded, and a community where faith and learning walk hand in hand now devastated, never to be the same. On the morning of their service to mark the beginning of the school year, Annunciation’s church and school was transformed not by the weight of ideas shared or debated or voted on but by the actions of one person with tools that allow for the sudden, exponential expansion of suffering. The same predictable arguments and talking points would follow.

When news of the shooting broke, I was on campus in Saint Peter at the first faculty meeting of the year. The mood in the air was one of cautious optimism for the days ahead. Higher education is going through a tough stretch, no doubt. Some of it’s sector-wide and self-inflicted, a lot of it’s being pushed by straw man arguments. But my little institution has a lot of things going right, and we were preparing to welcome our biggest incoming class since the pandemic.

A few hours later, a senior administrator started crying in my office. He had close connections to the Annunciation community and was especially shaken by the fact that the shooting had taken place during a worship service for kids. I’m better at managing people’s problems than their emotions, but I tried my best.

On move-in day, I got to my office around 6:45 a.m. and dumped a packet of Emergen-C into a bottle of Diet Mountain Dew. I was checking email for the third time that morning when the Provost stuck her head in the door.

“All good?”

I nodded.

“I think we’re ready,” she said. “Here we go.”

The best of us, she disappeared down the hall.

Move-in day on a college campus is always bittersweet. Opportunity, excitement, anxiety, sadness, and hope all play a role depending on the person, or sometimes, depending on the minute. Our student orientation leaders and staff brought energy and tissues, trying to turn the tide of feelings to positive or at least to guide new students and parents to the gentler edges of the emotional current.

After spending the morning assembling futons and hauling miniature refrigerators into residence halls, new students and their loved ones were invited to a convocation service in the college’s chapel.

Earlier, I’d conferred with the chaplains about the optimal placement of the base for the college’s ceremonial mace, then double-checked the service binders at the pulpit and lectern. When no one else was around, I made a quiet wish, or prayer I guess, hoping for a good year. I don’t know who or what I was praying to, maybe just the universe. Like a former smoker chewing on a pen, sometimes the ritual is enough.

New college students started to trickle in with their parents. One of the Campus Safety guys stood in the back. Another made his way through the growing crowd. I helped straighten a few doctoral hoods as the President and senior team lined up to process up the aisle in their academic regalia. Families continued to stream in. A Saint Peter police squad pulled up outside the chapel and parked with two wheels on the sidewalk. When the officer came in, I shook his hand and thanked him for being there.

We started five minutes late because it took so long to get everyone packed into the chapel. It was a good problem to have, but I made a note to see if we could get the carillon bells rung early next year. At the back of the chapel, I checked in with one of the chaplains, then gave a thumbs up to the vice president seated in the front row. He signaled the organist in the balcony, who wrapped up the verse and switched from gathering music to the processional.

So far, so good.

I find it hard to sit still for a service, so I usually stand in the back and keep an eye on things. The speakers sounded good in the balcony and main seating area but weren’t as loud in the wings. I wondered if we could make some adjustments before next week.

As an English major I’d read a bunch of American literature, but I never got into The Catcher in the Rye the way some people do. Holden Caulfield is kind of insufferable, a whiny guy who doesn’t play by the rules and is surprised when people don’t know what to do with him. And besides, everybody knows a bunch of people are phonies, I remember thinking, he should just deal with it like the rest of us and move on. I much preferred To Kill a Mockingbird and its weightier lessons. Clearly, I missed the point.

Of course, missing the point or not taking action when it comes to problematic but often unsympathetic characters plays some role in our nationwide shooting problem. It’s easier to say another prayer or twist the speculative intentions of a misfiring brain into a conspiracy than it is to confront what’s clearly an issue with the most obvious solutions—common-sense gun laws and more funding for community mental health resources.

It’s complicated, they say, it’s about freedom. Plus, we have more important things to spend our money on.

It’d probably help a lot if we’d turn down the “world is on fire and someone’s to blame” rhetoric. That solution wouldn’t cost a dime.

Today, I can understand Holden’s dream for which the book is named, where he pictures himself in a field of rye at the edge of a cliff, racing back and forth to catch careless children before they fall over the edge.

Substitute work shit and moving for Holden’s kids, and you’ve got my version.

Then again, I think a lot of people feel that way about something or other these days.

I bet you do.

At the end of the convocation service, the teary-eyed new students and their families traded farewells. Of their many hopes, I imagine the parents wish most of all that their children will be safe.

Did I expect a problem in the quiet college’s hilltop chapel on move-in day?

No.

But I didn’t want people to worry. I know what it feels like to worry.

I wish that we lived a world where I—we—didn’t have to.

By Labor Day, the flowers outside Annunciation will have already wilted and left stains on the Minneapolis sidewalk. Soon, someone will sweep them away. There’s no school on the holiday, so hopefully we go one more day without another shooting. We’ll all keep an eye on the headlines.

Monday is also Hayley’s birthday. She’ll celebrate in Nova Scotia with one of her best friends from Saint Peter who flew in to surprise her.

I plan to be in my office on campus shortly after 6 a.m.

How did I get here?

For Christ’s sake, how did all of us get here?

I don’t know if I’m ashamed or just tired of it all.

---