Deja Vu -- my first time

We are in Ruston today and visited LA Tech to see if my daughter's brick had been lain.  She graduated last year and is now in law school.  Here is my brick from 1991.  Hope is fourth generation Moreland to attend LA Tech so there are many relatives who have bricks here as well.

In 1986, I moved into Miller Dorm at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, LA.  In the Spring, I moved into the brand new Aswell Dorm and then later into Harper Dorm.  My years of living in dorm rooms were very similar to living at home:  I had two sisters with whom I often shared a room.  My college roommates were wonderful women who taught me the importance of being encouraging.

In the Fall of 2016, my daughter moved into Harper Hall.  For me, walking into the dorm, was an eye-opening experience.  We walked in on Move-In Day, and I not only knew exactly where things were, but the smell.... was .... exactly .... the same.  It was as if I had never left.  I walked across the lobby and straight to the small hallway where the elevators were located.  We rode up to the third floor and found Hope's room.  It had the same floor plan as my seventh-floor room.  As we unloaded her boxes, we helped set up her room.  When the drawers to the built-in dresser were sticking, I knew the old trick of using a bar of Ivory soap to rub along the rails to help the drawers slide easily.  When searching for the living area and the washroom, I walked in and memories flooded back.  There were faded walls and evidence of where mirrors used to be, sinks, even bulletin boards.  The furniture was the same pieces that had been there when I had lived there.  In fact, Harper Hall has been slated to be torn down.  It is my wish to own at least one of the night stands we had in our rooms.

A month into my daughter's first quarter at Tech, I came to visit.  I stayed in the dorm with her.  As I lay in the twin bed that was positioned in the same place in Hope's room as the one I had in my old room, I closed my eyes and was transported back thirty years.  In the darkness of the night, the most unique feeling enveloped me.  Sounds of showers in shared bathrooms turning on, the metal echo of doors opening and closing, the massive air conditioning unit outside blowing, cars and conversations outside, all took me back.  I was 20 years old again and could hear my roommate breathing across the room.  Deja vu...

Growing up, my mother moved us many times, sometimes every couple of months, sometimes every couple of days.  To "go home" once I was older was visiting my mom in the apartment or home where she currently lived.  That changed frequently, too, until the day she had her stroke, and I was in control of where she lived.  I had never experienced deja vu -- ever.  When I experienced it that night in Hope's room in Harper Hall, I was overwhelmed with a sense of home, of coming back, to something I knew well.  Memories flooded my mind.  Even the next year, when Hope moved into Aswell Dorm, it was hauntingly familiar.  I never slept in her room that year, but it always felt like I was returning to something that was inherently mine and now, my daughter's.