Bus-ta-move.

I guess I’m being groomed for my increasingly inevitable return to life among the alter-kochers in Great Neck: the bus-ta-move tour has officially begun. Today’s highlights: scotch in the hotel with Kris’ parents. But let me work backwards…

I’m not sure what to say about graduation on Saturday. Last week was the first week of solid summer weather we had, and graduation day was the hottest day yet. The sun was beaming down on us, even though I had popped up at 4 am, bright grayish-white daylight in my window, thinking, My God, it’s graduation day, and it’s going to rain. We had had a pretty early night on Friday—Thursday was the senior party, followed by cheesy OX clubbing (so, a late night)—and all that rowing and schlepping led us to the Eagle and Child and then home at around 11. I was a little antsy all day, thinking about practical stuff like packing, but we climbed to the top of St. Mary’s Church and almost died because the stairs are very narrow and people were coming down as we were trying to get up. It was panic-inducing, but also especially frustrating, because we had almost avoided the giant busload of tourists but got caught in their midst. We then hit the Ashmolean (finally) for a little bit and checked out some great paintings.

Graduation itself was beautiful, funny, solemn… The sun was shining, everyone had that extra friendliness that comes from a combination of nerves and nostalgia. The speeches were just the right balance of sentimental and smart, and all the formality of the ceremony took the edge off any emotions I might have been feeling. I was able to parlay everything raw and human into tradition, which is why I guess we have traditions. Then we got the privilege of walking on the forbidden grass, taking our Pimm’s in the Rector’s Garden (the secret garden), and having a candlelit High Table with all our families. Miriam played with the wind-up caterpillar we gave her at the high table, which was brilliant, and then it was another night (our last) of darts and beer in Deep Hall. The right way to end, I suppose.

Of course, we were the last folks out of Lincoln, and we spent Sunday puttering around London—looking aimlessly for a Jack the Ripper tour and then finally getting dinner in Notting Hill. On Monday morning, Corinne became the last of our friends with whom we had to part: Tim and Nick in Deep Hall, Chrissy on the Turl, Tim and Charles in Paddington Station, and finally Corinne, when we were mostly asleep in a Regent’s Park hotel at 6:20 am.

Now Kris and I are on the tour. I am so used to being stimulated in different ways that the adjustment is a little tricky, but we are seeing interesting things (the Tower of London, Big Ben and Parliament, Trafalagar Square, Buckingham Palace, the outside of Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle, St. Paul’s Cathedral) and learning interesting things (Anne Boleyn had a sixth finger on her left hand, the bell in Big Ben is cracked, Admiral Lord Nelson’s body was preserved in brandy, Buckingham Palace only has twice the acreage of Kris’ farm, Westminster Abbey took 500 years to complete, Henry VI founded Eton, where annual tuition is £34,000, William Blake is buried in St. Paul’s). Our big stops of the past day and a half were punctuated by the following highlights: seeing John of Gaunt’s armor in the Tower of London, finding the crests of Henry Bolingbroke, Henry V, Richard II, and, of course, Henry Percy, in one of the state rooms at Windsor Castle, and hearing Big Ben chime 21.00 on our evening cruise. We’ve also found our share of adventure—Brick Lane, but no Jack the Ripper tour; the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which has been operating for 500 years and where Big Ben and the Liberty Bell were forged; and a great Burmese dinner just a few minutes from our hotel.

It’s not the way I love to travel, but I’m making it work.