The Lawn

I came to the campus for registration and saw couples sitting on the grass.

Some were holding hands. Some were lying close to each other. A few were kissing.

I remember being surprised.

Nothing dramatic was happening. Nobody else seemed to be watching them, and that was exactly what made the scene unusual to me. I had come from a place where people did not show affection so openly in public, at least not in the world I knew.

The campus did not explain itself. It simply existed.

I walked past the lawn carrying papers and trying to understand where I was supposed to go next. The students around me moved as if they already knew the rules of the place. I did not.

That day, university became larger than classes and buildings.

Until then, many things I had grown up with felt universal because I had never needed to compare them with anything else. A rule repeated everywhere around you does not feel local. It feels like reality.

Then you enter another place and discover that people live differently without appearing troubled by it.

The couples on the grass did not change my opinions in a single afternoon. They did something simpler. They showed me that another normal existed.

That was enough.

Years later, I cannot remember most of the registration procedure. I do not remember which office I entered first or what forms I carried.

I remember the lawn.

Maybe beginnings are remembered this way. Not through the official moment, but through the first small thing that tells you the world is larger than the one you came from.