By Lucy Fleming
Many years ago, before my first day of kindergarten, I sat on this swing. And now, as a high school senior two weeks from graduation, I am sitting here on this swing, swinging. Sometimes I watch the cars go by, but right now, there are none. A quiet evening. The lawn stretches out in front of me, a soft green sea of tousled shoots. I swing back and forth, back and forth. My toes barely brush the grass.
There must be a word for what I am doing. I am contemplating; I am swinging. I am watching the faintest breeze tousle those green stems that stretch out in front of me. I am meditating. I am waiting, but for what, I do not know. I am a pendulum, slowly oscillating in this warm evening air.
Sitting on my swing, I pendulate.
Once you push a pendulum out of its equilibrium, it will go forever. At least, hypothetically; it will swing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and never stop. The sweep of its swing will begin to wane, slowly, slowly, until it moves only a fraction of the distance but the time of each swing will be the same. Each swing, back and forth, takes the exact same amount of time, each rise and fall the same minute fraction of eternity that it has been all along.
The first lab we did in freshman biology was on pendulums. (Penduli? Pendulae? No one seems to know.) We used strings and timers and giggled with our lab partners, who were strangers. We did the same lab again sophomore year, once junior year, and then, finally, right when I thought we’d finish senior year physics without it, the familiar lab sheet landed gracefully on my desk. Time to test the period of a pendulum again. For the last time. Plastic timers and metal weights and measured strings at the ready, so that we can finish this lab for the fourth time, and find the period of this pendulum, and, after we swing it so many times, and time it every time, we find the same thing we knew all along.
The air around me has the sweet edge that speaks of summer. My swing has slowed, but still I pendulate, holding on to the soft silent motion of back and forth.
How many times has high school seemed like only a pendulum, walking and hurrying back and forth from class to class? Feeling the inevitable pull of gravity bringing you to the next assignment, to the next weekend, even to the next day? And so we swing, back and forth, perhaps slowing down, covering less distance, but always living out the seconds, taking the same time, even when we are watching the clock. And now, our swings are almost at a standstill. Our oscillations have become almost vibrations, as we watch the lawn that stretches out in front of us, the soft cool greenness that would give beneath our feet if we could only touch the grass that tickles our toes, if we could only run across it barefoot.
High school. The routine of classes, of assignments, homework, concerts, practices the four minutes of passing time the smell of that one corridor the small splash of accomplishment that comes with opening your locker on the first try the notes you wrote to the person next to you in history class, but never had the courage to push to his side of the desk. Graphing calculators. Backpacks. The textbook that was just the tiniest too big to carry comfortably, but carry it you did. Waiting for the water in the water fountain to reach the perfect temperature. The first time you stayed up until 4. Lunch boxes. New lunch boxes. Deciding you were too old for a lunch box. Realizing you had nowhere else to put your lunch. Getting a 100 on a chemistry midterm; getting your first D+. Daydreaming. Prom. Memorizing the kings of England, the circle of fifths, the unit circle, the circle on your desk where someone many years ago carved the initials of two people who have long since said goodbye. Watching the blue hats fly into the air on a hot day in June, knowing that next year, it’ll be you.
Someday, perhaps, we will know why we swing. Why we are content to sit here, moving back and forth, back and forth, in the evening light, looking back, looking forward, looking up at the sky that blushes with the watercolor shades of an ending. Why we cannot think of the plural for the word pendulum. Why we look at that gangly, worried freshman in her lab group and want to tell her what the period of the pendulum depends on, want to tell her how to make her lab partners work together, how to prepare for next year, how to make friends, how to be happy but we sit back, and swing, and let her find out for herself. Why we pendulate; why we muse, one last time, trying to think of which subject we should muse on, and realize, finally, that we’ve known all along.
And we smile, as this swing slowly comes to a gentle stop, and our feet descend to the cool spring grass, and we smile, and let our fingers come looser and looser, and we let go of the ropes.
Lucy Fleming is a senior at Princeton High School.

