Snow globes

I like to think of Duke as a snow globe I can fit in my hand.

I can see the flakes toss and turn over the chapel.

If I squint my eyes and look real close, I can see myself.

Without this distance, I’m in the snow globe. I’m moving between buildings like I’m on a conveyor belt. Along the belt, I bump into people. We wave. Passing “how are you’s” are met with familiar silence. Snow slaps me in the face.

When I’m inside this snow globe, I yell at the cold and frown at the silence that follows these short-lived “hello’s” and I forget that I live in a castle.

I forget that the reason I came here was because there was a grandness to these buildings that I wanted to rub off on me.

When you’re in this place for too long, you only pick up on the things that rub you the wrong way. You forget the grandness.

When you’re in the snow globe, you stand with your palms pressed against its glass edges, mocked by all that exists beyond its confines. This glass bubble is your world, but it’s a world that you’ve suddenly outgrown. It fits you like your New Balances. One size too small.

And although you’re ready for more room, this distance makes it easier to discern what this snug, size-seven world has taught you.

It’s taught you that the grandness you felt was not actually from its buildings, but from the people you’ve met in them.

It’s the people that, along the conveyor belt, have dared to inhabit those silences and share what they carry in their step. It’s the people that remind you to love this castle like you love your New Balances.

There’s a grandness to things that fit one size too small.

Pictures are from Duke University Archive’s Elizabeth Hatcher Conner Collection. All photos were taken by Elizabeth Hatcher in the late 1930s during her time at Duke. Her negatives are available online.