By the time spring finally reaches Blair, everyone seems ready to leave.
The weather gets warmer. The countdown to summer gets shorter. Conversations start filling with plans for June, July, internships, trips, camps, and the question everyone asks around this time of year: “When are you going home?”
After months of homework, practices, meetings, and cold walks across campus, summer sounds pretty good.
And then, somehow, May arrives.
Suddenly, the things we spent all year complaining about start to feel different.
The walk back to the dorm after dinner. Sitting outside because it is finally warm enough. Someone stopping by your room when they were only supposed to stay for five minutes and somehow leaving an hour later.
Nothing about those moments is particularly important.
Until you realize there are only a few of them left.
Portuguese has a word for a feeling close to this: saudade.
There is no perfect English translation. It is usually described as longing or nostalgia, but neither word completely captures it. Saudade is the strange combination of missing something, loving it, and knowing that even if it returns, it may never exist in exactly the same way again.
It is not necessarily about wanting the past back.
Sometimes it is simply recognizing that something mattered because it cannot stay.
That feels especially familiar at the end of a school year.
We spend most of the year moving forward. There is always another assignment, game, rehearsal, weekend, or break ahead. It is easy to assume the people and routines around us will still be there tomorrow because, for most of the year, they are.
Then suddenly there is a last class.
A last practice.
A last Saturday night with the exact same group of people.
For seniors, those “lasts” are obvious.
For everyone else, they are easier to miss.
Your roommate might live somewhere else next year. A senior you see every day will graduate. A teacher might leave. Your friend group might look completely different in September.
Even if everyone returns, you will not return as exactly the same people.
That is where saudade becomes interesting.
You can feel it while the thing you are going to miss is still happening.
You can be sitting with your friends, laughing about something completely stupid, and suddenly become aware that one day you will remember this moment.
The conversation does not stop.
Nobody knows you are thinking about it.
But for a second, the ordinary becomes important.
I think we usually notice how much something meant after it disappears. Saudade asks us to notice a little earlier.
It does not mean spending the last weeks of school dramatically mourning everything before it ends. We should still be excited for summer. We should still want a break.
But maybe there is value in paying attention before rushing toward whatever comes next.
Take the long way back to your dorm once.
Stay outside a little later.
Take the picture even if nobody looks particularly good.
Go to the event you were considering skipping.
Talk to the senior you keep assuming you will see again.
Because eventually the year will end, whether we are ready for it or not.
And when we return, Blair will still be Blair.
But this particular version of it will be gone.
That feeling has a name.
Saudade.
Missing something not because you want to stop time, but because you finally noticed how much you loved it while it was passing.
