Sean Graff

Written by people in the Yale community, these 100-word stories celebrate the people and the things they love — ranging from a long term partner to a favorite mug. We hope you’re surrounded by people you love and we invite you to appreciate love in its many forms. 

Everyone says finding love at Yale is hard, but I disagree. I’ve found love in the Commons dining room, the unplanned meeting spot in which I always find a familiar face and a saved seat. I’ve found love in the words of wisdom scribbled on post-it notes and left on my desk by the suitemates-turned-sisters I never thought I’d get so close to. I’ve found love in the sanity-inducing late night walks down Prospect Street in which I talk about everything and nothing with friends, knowing that as long as they’re walking by my side everything will be okay.  There really are few places on Earth in which I’ve said “I love you” more than I have at Yale.

-Irene Colombo

The thing I love most about my University of Nebraska mug is how it feels in my hands when it’s filled with Trader Joe’s organic ginger turmeric herbal tea and there’s snow on the ground outside. I bought the mug a couple of years ago at an all-things-must-go office sale. I also bought a big cork board and a desk chair, but the mug remains my favorite purchase because it is the only one from which I can drink Trader Joe’s organic ginger turmeric herbal tea. I like to think its previous owner attended the University of Nebraska. Go Huskers. 

-Will Cramer

I look exactly like my father. I have his tonsils, too: gigantic, gargantuan, larger than most medical professionals previously thought possible. I was sick all five weeks of winter recess. When my fever came back my dad took me to three doctors in six days. Maybe bronchitis, maybe strep throat; maybe you should consider a tonsillectomy. My dad waited in line at the Duane Reade for each prescription and kissed my forehead to see if I still had a temperature. Don’t worry about the surgery, he said, I’ll buy you ice cream after — pretending we weren’t both lactose intolerant.

-Audrey Kolker

After many years, your face looks more familiar than my own in the mirror; your moves and gestures often liken to extensions of my own body. Our love takes refuge in these consistencies, yet also occasionally peeks out in fleeting surprises. The world may sometimes trip us, and our daily dance isn’t always graceful, but by now we’re well practiced in straightening those stumbles, regaining that rhythm. The world can also gift us novel and fascinating syncopations; and when we manage to catch these in stride, we recapture the naive freshness of our first beautiful promenade, half a lifetime ago.

-Professor David Evans

Remember when we collaged together? We collected articles, newspaper clippings, literary magazines, old letters. Cut them up into bite-sized pieces — literally bite-sized, to hold in your mouth, let melt on your tongue — wherever and whenever our attention drew us.

Then we sat in the clouds. Clouds of words scattered around us on the wooden floor. Some we grouped under categories — family, love, loss, GHOSTS, death – while others I sorted by feelings. A cloud for the sentences that smell like rain. A cloud for the chirping of birds after an all-nighter. A cloud for you: for home and hope.

-Eunsoo Hyun

My grandma takes me to lunch. Over Arnold Palmers, she tells me that when her first husband divorced her, she realized her deficits — bills, paperwork. She tells me to drive my own car and answer jury duty summonses. She has had three long-term partners. Still, independence is her gospel.

It makes me think of how I love my Robinhood account. I’m not kidding. I love its line graphs — “checking on my investments.” And I love affixing a comforter to a duvet cover with the corner ties … I just found out about those.  I love these ways of knowing I will be alright. 

-Abigail Sylvor Greenberg

The sand we laughingly flung at each other knee deep in the lagoon; our living-room wrestling matches and foam-sword fights; the bedtime ritual of obstacle courses, over bed, around corners, under the table; frisbee throws connecting sender and receiver, back and forth. For the first 15 years of our siblinghood, my younger brother and I were linked by the materiality of our shared activities. College has brought physical distance, but debriefing campus frisbee culture and tournaments, the tangible connects us again. With the buzz of a text or the crackle of his voice, I’m glad to feel him near me.

-Wilhelmina Graff