Carberry Day

Happy Carberry Day! It is Friday the 13th!
When I was in college, I lived in a house named after fictional Professor Josiah S. Carberry. He was "scheduled" to lecture every Friday the 13th, and he would, being fictional and all, invariably fail to appear. At our cooperative house that bore his name, where 20 people lived under one gorgeous Victorian mansion roof, we would always have a party in his honor. Despite the 25+ years that have passed since I lived there, I always harken back to those days on a Friday the 13th.

This was my room for four years--it was not in this kind of shape in my time (the house still belongs to Brown University, but it has had a significant face lift since I lived there), but the gorgeous light and high ceilings represented the most elegant room that I had lived in up until that time. I am just now moving back into a house that has this kind of charm.
I leaned so much from my experience in this house. I learned to cook. I learned how to serve food for 20 with ease--a skill that has been of immeasurable help and a source of profound enjoyment in my years since graduating. I also learned that I might have been a little hard to live with prior to my cooperative experience. It had really never occurred to me that my way might not be the only way to do things. I do still have that, but it has softened over time. I can occasionally laugh about it. I loved the hustle and bustle of so many people co-habituating (not to mention all of the cats and dogs--and I had one of each), which served me well raising four children. It was the part of college life that was outside the classroom education, and I took magnificent advantage of it.