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From the moment I opened my rector’s door, the topic of
man-woman relationships became a front-burner topic. I listened
to students declare what Notre Dame “absolutely had to do”
to make this a place where male-female relationships could flourish.
Though some of the suggestions had merit, many were a cover-up
for fear of taking the risk of talking to the fellow or girl sitting
beside them in class or at the dining hall.
On serious reflection, students agreed it takes a healthy dose
of courage to step out of yourself and let another person come
to know you — to accept or reject you. I remember lots of
delightful evening talks and walks around the lake with someone
discovering that age-old truth and beginning to understand that
it’s those who accept you who change you the most.
Of course there were romances and there were romances. A Farley
freshman or sophomore would fall so much “in love”
with a young man, and he with her, that she’d soon imagine
herself walking down the aisle, “probably a year after graduation.”
Then after a semester or so, a phone call or note brought devastating
news: Suddenly this man of her fine-tuned fantasy needed “space
in his life.” There were always precious pieces of life
to pick up then. We would put our heads together and look closely
at the fact that intense relationships do not stand still and
wait for “a year after graduation” to come around;
they go forward or backward at a pretty healthy pace, and a person
has to be ready for all that gets involved. Though I often counseled
students that “people get you ready for other people,”
some found it hard to learn from the experience of limping relationships,
and harder still to turn away from them, smarter and stronger.
Sometimes there was terribly hard news to hear that touched on
divorce or illness or death. Always it was the real stuff of life
that daily came from “home” somewhere across the world.
One day a call from home brought news to a popular Farley student
that her father, a man in his 40s, had died of a heart attack.
The shocked young woman packed quickly and flew home to her family,
leaving behind a stunned, numb and devastated residence hall community.
A second call came late in the evening. It was from the grieving
resident to her roommates. That very morning, she told them, she
had received two letters from her dad which he had written, as
he always did, while he was on a business trip. She had read them,
welcomed his words, then threw the letters away. She begged her
friends to try to retrieve them.
Somehow they did, with some wearing boots, others carrying flashlights
and digging their way through all the day’s trash in the
giant garbage bin behind Farley Hall, not giving up until the
letters were recovered. I distinctly remember the R.A. on duty
that evening remarking, “I think everyone in this hall called
their dads today.”
On any day I could find myself in the midst of a healthy family
crisis. I recall a freshman who had struggled valiantly for six
or eight weeks to stay on campus even though she claimed she didn’t
want to be here. Whenever we met she reinforced her simple message:
“I want to go home.” One night I knew she meant it;
she was ready to tell her father she had most definitely decided
to leave his alma mater.
Now, in a bit of hysteria, she phoned her folks and got her message
across. Her dad told her he was proud that she had given it a
good try, but he agreed it was time for her to come home. There
was an affectionate exchange of words between them and a thank-you
to me before we hung up our phones. Her heavy sobs tapered off
into normal breathing as we began to make final plans for her
to pack and move home.
Five days passed. I met her going to class “to see friends
before I leave.” But she never did stop going to class.
On that night of cathartic tears, it turned out, she had put aside
her father’s decision that she be here and replaced it with
her own.
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