My son turned 18 recently and will soon graduate from Palo Alto High School, the other Spanish mission-inspired campus adjacent to El Camino Real. This milestone, and the soon-to-arrive ceremony that will symbolize his passage to adulthood, have put me in a reflective mood. That’s partly why the essay written by Alison Davis in this issue resonated so powerfully with me.
Davis walks around the Farm encountering one memory after another of her late father, also an alumnus. Her story is an elegy to him and an evocation of the connections we make to physical spaces.
I can relate. Everywhere I go these days, I’m reminded of my son.
Here I am walking the arcade in the Quad, remembering a kindergartner using the tiles for a game of hopscotch.
Here I am at Braun Music Center, where one summer he learned Taiko drumming on a 10-gallon bucket covered with tape. The “drum” is still in his closet.
Here I am at Sunken Diamond, where one glorious spring he chased fly balls on the same sumptuous grass as Cardinal players and learned pitching mechanics from former big leaguer Jeff Austin, ’99, one of his club team coaches.
Here I am at Memorial Church on a recent Christmas Eve, standing in line for the candlelight service, telling him the origin story of the mosaics that ornament the facade, shipped from Italy in the 1800s.
Here we are at Tresidder buying a smoothie; at the Claw with our feet in the water; at Stanford Stadium cheering for Andrew Luck; at the alumni center attending a Halloween party; at my office doing homework (or, more likely, not doing it).
This place that has been my place for 16 years has also been his place, for almost his entire life. He grew up here. The first time I brought him to campus I was working at the Law School; he was a preschooler intrigued by the black squirrels outside my window. He has no memory of it, but I can dial up that scene and dozens of others over the years, a mental picture album from toddler to teenager.
Predictably, he is much more sanguine about his connection to the Farm. He loves Stanford, but you won’t find him getting weepy with gratitude that he’s lived a short bike ride from one of prettiest campuses on Earth; it’s all he’s known. Later, I imagine, he will remember with fondness and appreciation a childhood that included extraordinary opportunities, on a blessed patch of ground.
But I’m grateful for it. As Alison Davis can attest, Stanford gets in your bloodstream. It has nurtured generations of young people, launched them to larger things and embraced them when times were tough. My son won’t have a degree from here or attend a fancy reunion, but his Farm life produced something just as meaningful—roots in the soil.
Kevin Cool is the executive editor of Stanford.
