still processing

It's weird--I've been so busy that the hectic events of this past week seem almost months ago. Today I did something I've been hungering to do for a long time--I did crafts! Yesterday we finished Christmas shopping, and it's never Christmas to me unless I can make something. So I hit Michael's and got unfinished trays and one unfinished box that looks like a book. I'm painting them for various relatives, and it's bliss. Alas, I fear that I have ignored poor Esteemed One, even more esteemed today, his 56th birthday. But we've both stayed busy at our various pursuits, so maybe given our enforced togetherness last week (and forthcoming this Friday, when we head to Louisiana), some time to himself is exactly what he needed for his birthday.

So--the high point of graduation: the tears in MT's eyes when she hooded me. I'm quite sure she did not expect me to make it to that point, yet there we were, feeling sisterly, especially when she asked me to help her. There in the middle of the Hearnes Center, with a few thousand of our closest friends watching and my husband videotaping, I helped her sneak out of a sweatshirt she had on beneath her regalia. How she got it off, I still don't know. My part was to pull sleeves once they extruded over her hands. She was too warm and was fearful of fainting, as a colleague had done before, so she had to get out of the sweatshirt, but I can only wonder how many of the doting families have videotape of a scarlet set of regalia bumping and writhing as if two lovers were in it, making the beast with two backs. That wasn't the only weird event, but it certainly will be a moment I won't forget. I will smile every time I think about it.

The other high point was the party my older son's wife threw for me in our hotel. I had bemoaned to her that esteemed one just didn't understand my desire for a party--for cake and streamers and balloons and confetti and champagne. So she provided it. The confetti was in the form of black and gold stars, some of which bedeck my cheeks in the pictures we took. The cake was little petit fours, chocolate and white, with tiny icing diplomas on them. There were also a giant fortune cookie, champagne, balloons, and gifts. The kids had gone together and gotten me a necklace with a black Tahitian pearl (black for Mizzou), which is just lovely. I wore it during graduation. Esteemed one had managed to get me a license-plate frame for Mizzou and a Mizzou ballpoint pen. I think he feels he's spent quite enough on my degree, and he's right. We won't outlive my student loans.

Both sons and their wives were there, as was the husband, and we left quite a mess with the confetti stars. The hotel cleaning staff will be finding those for the next decade. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the kids had provided crackers--those poppers that explode with streamers. However, they were so loud, I nearly had a heart attack, and given the many shootings that make the news, I was afraid that the hotel security would break down the door and arrest us all. So we popped only a couple of them.

My friend Jackie, her husband Dale, and their very wiggly and adorable four-year-old son Calvin were also at graduation. We went out to breakfast with them the next morning. Jackie, knowing my love of all things Craftsman, had selected a tiny perfect vase in a green flame (Flambeau) pattern. It's too perfect to ever put a flower inside it, unless it's a perfect rose.

I'm sort of jumping back and forth as my memory ( like an I-pod on shuffle) selects details. Our speaker at graduation, an author of 14 books and the eighth chairman of the NEH, was okay. No Bill Cosby. My former classmate Mike Land got to have the famed comedian at his graduation, and I was certainly hoping we'd get someone fun. I'm sure our speaker (whose name is something like Bruce Cole, but I honestly don't remember exactly) is a nice enough fellow and probably could have been really interesting. At least he was brief. I won't remember him or what he said. He was no Shady Wall, the eccentric politician who made my bachelor's graduation memorable by telling us that the key to success was to marry someone rich. (That's what HE did.)

Everyone keeps asking me how I feel. Do I feel a sense of closure? It's odd. I don't. I still have this awful nagging sensation that someone will knock on the door one day and demand my diploma back. All I can hope is that somehow I will be an inspiration to my family, especially younger son and wife.

I've got to cook something for Birthday Boy, so I must abandon this post shortly. Just one more little story: My beloved old car made it down to Columbia without a hiccup. I had a good talk with her as I drove, telling her that I was not abandoning her, but that like good British nannies, she was moving on to care for the next generation. After all, she's been toting Younger Son around since he was eleven, and I'm quite sure that she has forgiven him for sitting in her on that hot summer day and running down her battery while listening to the radio with the engine turned off. If she hasn't forgiven him, she'll take her revenge slowly and subtly. I know her. Dr. S.