Returning to college after a 35-year hiatus and finding myself among so many fresh young faces, I feel like that old song, "I'm a lonely little petunia in an onion patch, and it takes my breath away." Except I'm more like an onion in a petunia patch, and it is the long walk to class which leaves me somewhat breathless. It isn't easy, you know, carrying around the weight of all these years, and walking tall can be a real challenge when time and gravity insist on whittling away at my height. (Would you believe I used to be six feet tall?)

Of course, the biggest challenge is trying to fit in. Surrounded by lustrous hair in rich hues of blond, red, brown, and black, unlined faces, and bodies that slide effortlessly into these absurd desks (didn't they used to build them bigger?), I can only hope that my gray hair and crow's feet are not too obvious in the unmerciful glare of the fluorescent lighting. (I wonder how the other students would feel about switching to candlelight.)

It's always like this when I start a new class. The furtive glances in my direction from my fellow travelers register first surprise and then embarrassment, as if they've just caught their own mother in a compromising situation. I wonder if they can smell my fear or see my heart trying to pound its way out of its ribbed cage, and I wonder for the umpteenth time what they are thinking and what in blazes I am doing here.

Wouldn't this seat be better filled by someone who has more tomorrows than yesterdays? Sure, maybe I do know first hand what it's like to experience the anguish of an unwinnable war, the birth of feminism, and the death of segregation. I've done the Mom-thing, traveled from manual typewriters to computers, endured the fear of nuclear war, and felt America's humiliation when Sputnik circled the globe and our own sub-orbital craft toppled in flames from the launch pad. Yet, most of the people in my class probably have enough trouble just keeping up with today to make time to hear one more account of "ancient history."

More importantly, I don't have a clue about the things the young people around me consider important. In fact, I'm not sure if I'll even be able to communicate with them. I say, "Cool it." They say, "Chill out." I have no idea what the difference is between a "dweeb" and a "nerd" or even whether these terms are still used. They live in a technicolor world dominated by special effects, while I was weaned on black-and-white Saturday movie matinees and had never even heard of television until I was five years old. They go on dates. I've been married for 30 years and have two grown children. They drive too fast, stay out until the wee hours of the morning, and judge the quality of music by shock value and volume. I prefer a Town Car to a sports car, fall into bed as early as I can, and consider "elevator music" a thing of beauty. What, then, could possibly induce me to try walking a path parallel to theirs, however briefly?

Perhaps I am impelled by a dream that was interrupted--but never fully relinquished-- more than 35 years ago. How different the F.S.U. campus was then. Indeed, how different were we from the students who fill its halls today. Gone is the 30,000-seat stadium where students needed only their ID card to gain admission to a game, and gone--thanks to that 1964 football team--are the days of the Florida Gators' dominance in sports. Gone are the single-sex dormitories, whose strict rules and ever-watchful housemothers sought to protect us from our raging hormones. Gone, too, is the Tallahassee of yesteryear where, as we used to joke, "they rolled up the sidewalks at 6:00 at night," the Silver Slipper Restaurant encouraged patrons to B.Y.O.B., and Ted Bundy was just a future nightmare. Yet, so many of these changes can be traced back to that tumultuous year in which I, 18 years old and on my maiden voyage away from home, first encountered these ivy-clad arches and winding pathways.

It was a simpler, seemingly more hopeful world, where drugs were something the doctor prescribed for illness, the "Fonzies" in our schools were treated as pariahs, and our soldiers had never tasted the bitterness of defeat. America was, well, America--virile lifeguard to the world, home to vigorous industries pouring forth jobs and wealth to the energetic, burgeoning post-war populace, a land where the promise of the future stretched as far as our imaginations.

Yet, it was also a nation astir with our youthful idealism, and the images broadcast to us in black and white by Tallahassee's single television station were being played out in living color on this obscure campus in this sleepy Southern Belle of a town. Civil rights activists carried their message to the residents of Frenchtown and the students of Florida A&M University. Across town at the all-white Florida State campus, folk singers held concerts to relay the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., and one cloudless, humid night, hundreds of students on both sides of the issue gathered across the street from the Sweet Shop and its neighbor, The Mecca, to watch the parade of Confederate flag-draped cars bearing "traditionalist" students, who cat-called and honked at the handful of local black activists who demonstrated for access to those popular hangouts.

Several short weeks later, The Mecca, having opened its doors to African-Americans and the inevitable future, was boycotted and bankrupt, and the bustling campus was as still as the blood-covered body of John F. Kennedy as news of his death swept through the university, bringing classes to a halt and every living person to the nearest television set. The convulsions of the nation reached into our very souls, indelibly staining our perception of life and ourselves. America's youth, wrenched by the discovery that so few could destroy so much, were out of the business of idealism within moments of those three shots heard 'round the world.

As for me--the girl who had grown up dreaming of university life and changing the world through her writing--college ended abruptly just three months after it began when my own parents declared bankruptcy.

Some dreams linger long after reality dawns, however, and like thousands of other returning students, I find my quest more compelling than my apprehension. As I look self-consciously around the classroom, I think of my grandfather who shuffled into his first freshman class at the age of 78, his thinning white hair combed as carefully as that of a boy on his first day of kindergarten and his deeply lined face aglow in anticipation of the new horizons opening before him. Surely, he must have felt far more out of place than me, yet his thirst for knowledge could not be denied by anything so superficial as a generation gap.

"Honey," he explained to me in that bass voice which revealed nothing of age or infirmity, "I've worked hard all my life and seen all of my children through school. I've watched my father and, later, my own sons go off to war, experienced the death of your grandmother, choked on the grit-filled air of the 'Dust Bowl' of the '30's, struggled alongside my neighbors during the Depression, grieved at F.D.R.'s death, and rejoiced at the end of two World Wars." As he spoke, his gentle blue eyes focused on something far away, just beyond my view. "About the only thing I haven't experienced is learning for learning's sake. Experience is a great teacher, but knowledge that comes from education is somehow different, purer, more complete unto itself, because it answers the questions that experience can only raise. Even though my own children think my going to college is ridiculous, I've waited for this all my life, and nothing short of death will stop me now." (He was posthumously awarded an honorary B.A. in History at what would have been the beginning of his senior year.)

Of course, few of us have so pure a motive for returning to academia as did Grandpa. Many, like my younger sister, seek a new, more satisfying career and higher income. Others are here in response to the "empty nest" syndrome. As one woman explained jokingly, "My kids are grown and gone, and I needed to do something to fill the void. I figured it was either have an affair or go back to college, and frankly, college seemed a lot less complicated." Personally, I have many reasons. Like Grandpa, I yearn to know the whats and wheres and hows and whys of this thing we call life, and like my sister, I look forward to a new, more fulfilling career. Then again, like many women, I found myself facing a moment of decision upon the departure of my children from home. Although their leaving did, indeed, signify an ending, it also offered an unexpected opportunity to begin anew, an opportunity I can't help approaching with the same relish I felt when I first set foot on this campus so many years ago.

Enthusiastic or not, however, I am acutely aware of the chasm between my classmates and me. Their lives, like their faces, are blank pages upon which the lines are yet to be written, while my own face is traced with a lifetime of effort and progress, worry, laughter, love, and tears. Their hair glows warm and vibrant in the unforgiving light, while my own once-brown hair is littered with silver trophies of battles joined and overcome. They will be making their own memories, experiencing things I can't even imagine, and writing their own unforgettable histories long after I and my contemporaries have forever departed these aging classrooms. Who, then, could fault these young pioneers if they are uncomfortable sharing this moment with me?

Yet, we are each pioneers in our own right. Grandpa, whose generation was lucky to go to high school, paved the way for me and my generation not only by returning to college at an older age, but also by helping to create a society that invested in the colleges we now attend. My parents' generation, for whom college was a luxury, built an America so prosperous that high school was a "given" and higher education was within reach for most whose talents led them in that direction. Meanwhile, I and my own generation have built a world where a college education is almost as common as a high school diploma and in which the sight of older students is not nearly so shocking as it was a few decades ago. If the prognosticators are right, the youngsters surrounding me will not only follow in our footsteps, returning to college later in life, but will be forced to do so many times to simply maintain their livelihoods in a rapidly changing, technological age.

Thus, as I again glance tentatively at the sea of new faces around me, I know that, despite our differences, we share a legacy of yesterdays and are united by a common quest in which we can enrich one another. So quiet down, fear, and heart be at peace. These wonderful "petunias" will surely bring fresh beauty and vigor to my journey, just as this "onion" may be able to add a little more flavor to theirs.

*This article has the distinction of being the 1st place winner in the Golden Key Literary Achievement Awards, 2001.