Baby grows up…

…and is finally a college graduate!!!

It’s been six days since graduation. In another fourteen hours, I’ll take the AmTrak to New York; in about two weeks, I’ll start work. One chapter ends and another begins.

Today marks yet another birthday I spend in a hotel room (see From 20-year-old Me, With Love and The Big 21).

Thankful for little moments and the people: my mother, whose presence makes me see familiar streets with new eyes and any city feel like home; for the years-long Tatte tradition with Marwah, this time in an all-new Tatte at Downtown Crossing, but with the same old blueberry cheesecake cup featured in every dorm-room celebration; for hours of feel-good karaoke and songs that have defined all my late nights and emo angst; for Yiting, who ate cake with me as we sat cross-legged on the bed shoulder to shoulder, like the last remnants of a bygone era; for the hugs and goodbyes in the lobby, by the curb, under the sun, disappearing into the velvet night.

So here’s to farewells! In each farewell lies an arrival, a journey together, and a departure—the cycle of life. And here’s to growing up, to love and song and friendship, to foibles and falls, and to hard-earned wide-eyed wisdom. The night is long. Rage against it, I used to think. But soon it will be sunrise again. Now I go gently into what is unknown.