Graduating

 

When I had my vinyl floors put in recently, I had to empty the guest room closet. It’s tiny, but it gets stuffed with all the holiday decorations plus clothing I only use on occasion (like my snow jacket).

One of the items I pulled out was draped in a plastic garment bag, and for a moment I wasn’t sure what was inside. Was it the killer-sexy formal black dress I bought to chaperone prom years ago? No. It was my cap and gown. From 1988.

The “flood” of memories was more like a tsunami.

True story:

In 1984 I left my awful husband who swore he would never pay child support (and never did). At age 30, with no employment experience (despite being a published author), I was having trouble finding a job. A poet friend from my writers group came over one night and read me Wordsworth’s “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.” I fell in love that night—not with the friend, but with Wordsworth and certainly the poem, which is still one of my favorites. (Thank you, William. By the way, I named a dog after you—but that’s another story entirely.) The poet friend had been trying to convince me that, instead of getting a job, I could go to college and study such lovely compositions as Wordsworth’s poem. That night, he finally convinced me.

Here's what happened next:

I enrolled in our local community college (Chaffey—go Panthers!) and became a fulltime student in the fall following my divorce. Keep in mind, I had four young children, so mornings went like this: Get all five of us ready, including lunches made. (“Sam, for the fifth time, buddy, where are your shoes?!?”) Drop three of them at the elementary school, then drop Sam at pre-school, then drive up to the college and attend classes all day, then pick up Sam, pick up the other three, and head home to do homework, make dinner, get everyone bathed and sorted and break up one or two or ten fights, get everyone to bed. (Shali, I see you still reading after lights out.)

Repeat every day for five, then collapse exhausted on the weekend. Begin again the following Monday.

In two years, I had a 4.0 grade point average and an acceptance to the University of California Riverside—with a scholarship that paid my tuition. I also had a longer commute to school from Chino Hills, but the kids were two years older by then, so things weren’t quite so crazy as they had been my first year but boy howdy, they were still crazy.

There was that time I went out to the car, carrying backpacks and herding kids as I went, only to find I had a flat tire on my little Toyota Corolla. I had a roommate at the time, and she helped me change the tire in ten minutes, I swear. (I think she just wanted to make sure I was out of the house for the day.)

So many memories….

But the kids were troopers and I passed my algebra classes and excelled in my literature classes and two years after I transferred to UCR I was ready to graduate. by the end of my final quarter of school, I was exhausted, having written twenty English papers in ten weeks while nursing three of my four kids through chicken pox. Shali, as a teen, had it the absolute worst. She was so sick she laid in bed for days, commanding me to stay out of her room lest I become sick and miss my graduation. As it was, she missed it, something I felt sad about until, years later, she had her own college graduation.

But I did it, damn it. I did it. Booyah!

At 34, I was the first of my mother’s children to earn a bachelor’s degree, and I did it with a 3.73 grade point average, awarding me, along with 19 other students, the cum laude appellation in the commencement program. Mom came to my graduation and quickly noted—poking her finger repeatedly into the commencement program page—that I had not graduated summa cum laude (“with the highest distinction”) as only three other students had. She wanted to know why.

“I thought you were a good student,” she said. “Why aren’t you over here?” she asked, poking her finger at the page once again.

She wasn’t kidding, y’all. Sigh. That was Mom. All I could do was stare at her.

Dr. Wayne Hubert, one of my favorite profs at Chaffey, gave me some great advice when I let him know I was headed to a career in teaching.

“If you’re going to teach,” he said, “learn how to pat yourself on the back.” He reached his arm around to indicate how I should do so. “Because you may do an excellent job, but most years, no one is going to notice.”

His words remained with me, and despite my mother’s attempt to diminish my success, I gave myself many pats on the back for being, in fact, a stellar student while raising four rambunctious kiddos and somehow keeping us afloat financially until I could get my teaching credential and get a job.

I rocked it. I am prouder of that accomplishment than anything else I’ve ever done.

So I kept that cap and gown (and the stole I received when I earned my master’s degree four years later—while teaching high school fulltime with three teenagers at home so yeah, booyah again, Kay!).

But when I slid the garment bag away, I saw that the gown and the stole had faded. With a sigh, I decided it was time to let them go. I’m retired now, and 70. I don’t want my kids to take on the drudgery of determining what should go in the dumpster after I die. I’ll get this one, my loves.

So the gown and stole were taken out to the trash. I kept the mortarboard, though, tossing it in a drawer of the same nightstand I’ve had since I was a kid. At some point, I’ll toss the cap, too. But for now, I just love remembering, from time to time, how indescribably difficult those years were—and subsequently how empowered I felt when I finally achieved what I had worked so hard for.