Going Back
I went to the University of Rochester for five years. I walked those paths, studied in those buildings, built friendships that have lasted decades. I thought I knew the place.
I didn’t know about the rare books collection.
It sounds impossible in retrospect…that I could have spent five years on that campus and never discovered that the university holds one of the most remarkable collections of rare books and manuscripts I have ever encountered in person. But there it was, waiting, apparently the entire time.
I found it last year, at my previous reunion weekend. I stood in that room and understood immediately why it exists and why it matters.
The room that stopped me
There is something that happens when you are in the presence of something very old and very preserved. A particular quality of attention that arrives without being summoned. You slow down. You look more carefully. You become aware of the distance between the moment you are standing in and the moment the thing in front of you was made.
I touched things from the 15th century. I flipped through Queen Victoria’s sketchbook. I stood in front of a display of historic women authors and felt something I don’t entirely have language for…a recognition, maybe? A sense of belonging to something longer than my own story.
When I decided where my donation dollars would go, the rare books collection was the answer before I finished asking the question. This year I went back not just as an alumna, but as someone who has helped make an impact there. Mention the rare books collection to anyone on campus and the gratitude is immediate and genuine. There is an awareness, a recognition, that the people who choose to support it understand something about what it holds and why it matters.
I am grateful to be one of them now.
What got built in a weekend
The other thing I didn’t expect from this weekend was the book fair.
It started as an idea; a quiet conversation about what it might look like to create space for alumni authors at Meliora Weekend. It ended as something real. A bookshelf displaying 21 books from alumni authors, each with a QR code for purchase. Four of us present and signing. No official calendar listing. No formal infrastructure.
Every one of us sold books.
That is the thing about showing up even when the conditions aren’t perfect. You find out what’s actually possible.
The alumni author event this year was a beginning. Next year I intend to turn it into something more…a full alumni author book fair, panels for students and aspiring authors, a portion of proceeds funneling back to the university. An event with infrastructure, and the time and attention it clearly warrants after our little experiment.
Next year isn’t a reunion year for me, which means I can show up for it rather than through it. I can build it the way it wants to be built.
There is something I find deeply satisfying about returning to a place that shaped you and leaving something behind that wasn’t there before. The rare books collection will preserve things long after I’m gone. The author book fair, if it becomes what I think it can, will give other authors a room they didn’t know existed.
