If, way back long ago, I’d have given up I would miss out on these days of reflection.  I would not have been able to know, deep in the knowing, I got through it; in tact and whole- maybe even more so than I ever imagined.  Not that there weren’t any scars mind you.

Way back when, maybe even the first week of college, certainly the first semester when I was loving autumn but not my life in autumn.  When I was feeling lost in a sea of perfect girls, from perfect worlds, who had been on the perfect track to perfection.  I felt like the lost sock in a dryer of freshly laundered madras.  Anyway, somehow I landed in the threshold of an office outfitted with a beautiful big desk, making the woman sitting behind it appear even more petite than she was-an office cluttered with the droppings of somehow who very clearly loved adventure, learning and life.  I was standing in the midst of someone who would change my life forever and all I  could do was cry.

I am looking for Dr. Shearburn.  Dr. Dudley Shearburn.  ( a stodgy, pipe smoking old man, professorial looking in the same suit he wears everyday- a brown bag lunch even? with a thermos of black coffee-grading papers? )

Yes?  Dear?  The sound of southern, real southern,female, warm blanket southern from behind a stack of books.  Lots and lots of books.  There were books everywhere.  And art.  Lots of art of all kinds.

I was told, ( not now, you can’t cry now) to see Dr. Shearburn.  My advisor.  I am looking for Dr. Shearburn. ( I am quite certain if I am not pointed in the direction of where I am supposed to go, this poor women, with the warm blanket southern voice, is going to see me breakdown and sob.)

She stood up and walked from behind the desk-outfitted in colors and big jewelry.  Artsy jewelry.  She was alive.  Lively.  A little impish.  She sized me up in a second.

Uh huh.  What have we here?

Silence.

Sugah, I am Dr. Shearburn.  You are supposed to see me.  Warm blanket southern with as warm of a smile.

And that was that.

Let’s walk.

And for the next two hours we did.  Up and around a beautiful campus decked out in a stellar Piedmont North Carolina Fall.  Through the historic graveyards, past the bakery and up and down hills.  It was a walk ,to coin a phrase, to remember.  And I always have.

I cried.  Expressed my fear of being in a place where it appeared everyone else had it all figured out-and I was no where near the questions, never mind the answers. I hated my classes, hated feeling trapped and hated the fact we had to sing, yes, sing about virgin trees.  Yes.  Virgin trees.  Which were about the only things on campus NOT screwing around. Not that it bothered me.  Just seemed a little hypocritical, that’s all.

It seemed so easy for everyone else.  Prepared from years in a prep school or boarding school.  My learning curve was way off,well the curve.

Dr. Shearburn listened and walked.  Walked and listened. She would giggle.  She would nod from time to time, offer an insight here and there.  She held my hand, grabbed my shoulder, and called me sugah.  A lot.

It’s not fair I said.  It’s just  not fair.

She stopped walking-turned and looked at me, straight on with a smile and said:

Life is not fair.  Whoever told you life is fair?  Remove that word from your vocabulary.  Right here and now.  You get to choose. You get to reinvent.  You get to chart the course.  You get to get a life….and make it whatever you want.  But, life is not fair and it never will be.  So get over it and move on.

And that was that.

The next week, I changed some classes around, got a job off campus, and began the art of creating my life. It is advice that has never failed me.  Not once.  These are the words I share( quite often) with my daughter when she lets it be known that, indeed, life is not fair.

No, it is not. I tell her.  It never will be. But you get to create your own life-your own words for your own world.  You get to choose.

Dr. Shearburn stayed with me the entire four years of college life-and years later, she is with me as I reach milestones.  In life and in art.