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Two weeks ago, I had the chance to go back to three very important places.
I've written about these places before in a song called "Declaration".
It's a song I've been working on for over a year now and it's been pretty difficult
to make it what I want it to be. My mission was
to capture the spirit of those
places in a song,
to claim them as my homes, the places that made me who I am.
I'm still trying to figure them out. My trip two weeks ago brought me from the offices
of City Year New Hampshire
to Wilmington, Delaware to Elmira College. At each of my homes, I was there to say goodbye
to some piece of it. I was in the office of City Year New Hampshire on a Tuesday
night to celebrate Alex Allen,
one of the co-executive directors of City Year New Hampshire.
She's leaving the site after twelve years of working to build an incredible
world that I was lucky enough to be a part of for two years.
I see my time there as
the end of my youth
uh... in some ways. Sure, I'd gone to college before but
City Year helped me transition into what I'll be doing for the rest of my life.
City Year helped me become a leader; it made me care about human beings in a
different way, in a deeper way.
I learned how to be a better person in large part because of the work that Alex
Allen did to create
such an incredible world. Alex was the first to show me what a true leader could
be: someone who has love and patience for everyone
she leads. She also taught me that we
must look past the immediate moment; what we do today is necessary only because it
will allow us to do something in the future. The following weekend, James and I
journeyed to Elmira College for a final event:
the Commencement of the class of 2012 -
which is actually the last class I shared the
campus of Elmira College with. Elmira was
the first place that was completely mine. I didn't have to share it with anybody; not
my friends or family.
It's where I first made camp
where I was able to build a world for myself. It became a place of friendship
and growth - a home.
The twenty-four hours that James and I spent on campus for mine to celebrate the
end of the relationship that I have with that place.
From now on, I'll only be on that campus as a guest, as
someone whose family is no longer there.
But before we arrived in Elmira, we stopped in Wilmington, Delaware for a brief time.
Good friend of the Rileys, Ed Mulvihill, was hosting a beef and beer fundraiser
in the cafeteria of our grade school. James and Ii attended St. Helena's School - five
blocks up from our house - for most of our youth, up through eighth grade,
and a few years after James left, the school merged with another Catholic
school a few blocks farther down the road. But last year the school closed for
good. There's a certain oddness to drinking Yuengling in the same room where you used
to drink from cartons of chocolate milk, but it's also fulfilling in a way. It's a
coming full circle, the return of the
ones who went away to make peace with the past. That's why I returned to my high
school to read a piece I had wrote as a high school
senior.
Our high school's literary magazine was called The Elizabethan and my copies
are full of the poetry of people I used to know. Each year a senior would be able to
write a piece
for the back pages and in 2005, I was asked to contribute to piece. Since
this is the time of graduation, of change
of saying goodbye and honoring the past,
I'd like to read it now for you.
At the beginning of senior year, I hated just about everything. There wasn't a single thing
in my life that wasn't changing or ending. This was most obvious on the wall.
I'm talking about the wall on the other side of Cedar Street.
Since freshman year it's been the place where my friends and I have waited for our rides.
I guess its heyday was last year, but I only think that because that was the first
year I was able to wait there after school.
For my first two years of high school, Gordy would take me home and he always wanted
to leave as soon as possible. I really miss that guy,
even though he lives across the street from me.
But he has his life and I have mine; no longer are they intertwined.
But that's okay; people grow apart, go off to college in other states, leave the wall.
Anyway, this year I was the only senior there after school
except for Tony and Mike and the occasional appearance by my other friends.
It's mostly freshman and sophomores waiting there now.
After a while, I had to accept that the wall isn't ours anymore.
Things never really stay the way they used to be. That's for the best, I think,
because if nothing ever changed, we would stay the same forever.
But things do change and we have to grow and adjust to whatever life throws at us.
That's the most important thing I've learned this year.
So now I'd like to tell the underclassmen:
the wall is yours now.
Take care of it, enjoy it, and when the time comes, give it to the next
group. You're going to have to grow up too.
North of Wilmington is where I’m from. Atlantic Ocean and coastal sand,
It’s kinda chipped - it ain’t that pretty. But it told me I could be somebody, so I did.
I left home for New York state. Chuck Taylors and purple gowns,
unlicensed radio sounds. Painted grass, boarded windows.
Jameson, words of Thoreau. Mountain Day, Pam and Jim,
17 East and Instruments. There’s a sign when you enter my city.
It’s kinda chipped - it ain’t that pretty. But it told me I could be somebody, so I did.
Two years to serve in New Hampshire. Stone Church, Hampton Beach,
red jackets and leafless trees. The mayor’s friends and eighth graders,
Portsmouth coast to Manchester. Fundraising and Seabrook kids,
bitter cold and idealists. There’s a sign when you enter my city.
It’s kinda chipped - it ain’t that pretty. But it told me I could be somebody, so I did.
Sitting at a desk in Massachusetts, I can’t predict what’s coming next.
But I do know that I will be someone, someone,
somebody.