Dear Reader,
I am SOOO exhausted, so this will be brief!
Today had a slightly unreal feel to it. How could this possibly be our last day of graduations? That might sound strange, but we have invested so much of ourselves into this university. Watching it change in such organic ways under my husband's leadership has been a phenomenal thing. And, while I am totally happy with our decision to move, it is still hart-wrenching at the same time. We serve a lot of low-income, first-generation students who have real challenges getting an education. Watching them graduate is always such a joy because you know that person's family tree is forever changed. I love watching the shoes go by in front of me. The ones that tug on my heart-strings are the cheap, black, fake leather shoes that were obviously bought for this occasion. For me, those shoes say it all. The financial struggles, the hardships ... then going to Payless or Wal-Mart to get these dress shoes to where to walk across the stage, to interviews, and to jobs. To wear into this shoe store when they finally get a bigger paycheck and these shoes are worn out and need replacing. I remember one of my first pair of dress sandals I had after graduation. I wore the heels down almost and nice, literally, and kept the black leather straps across the front of my foot tied together with black embroidery thread. And I REALLY remember the day the embroidery thread broke as I was crossing Main Street in the middle of downtown Houston. Since the shoes had an ankle strap, I had to stop in the middle of,the crosswalk and unbuckle my shoe and remove it, and then hobble across the rest of the street with so many people watching! I wonder what I did the rest of the day? I think I kept embroidery thread in my purse and retied the straps when I got to the office. I think I'd remember if I had to go barefoot the rest of the day!
At the end of each ceremony (we have two) they asked me to come up in stage, which I did - happily enough - without tripping! My husband and I kissed and then they said a lot of things ... kind of got lost during the emotion of the moment so I don't remember them ... gave me a bouquet of roses, and then I walked with my husband in the recessional. We then went a good ways down the back hall and then stopped and told all of the professors goodbye. This is such a special group of people! One of our students who graduated is in a wheelchair. Our provost told us about how her chair had broken and there were delays getting her a new one, and one of our math professors just went and bought her one out of his own money. That's the kind of people these are! It was hard telling each group of them goodbye!
It had been raining hard before the first ceremony and the curl came OUT of my hair and the frizz came INTO my hair! Our image was up on the huge jumbotron and I noticed! So, in between ceremonies, after a luncheon with our guest speaker, I rolled my hair again, sprayed it a lot, and it held up fine that time. For our final recessional, we were asked to lead the way out. I was carrying the roses in my arm and holding his hand ,,, and it felt like we were in a wedding!
We came home and I got in bed and slept till 7:00, then got up and finished up dinner. We ate and watched a couple of shows and are in bed. He is sound asleep of course. If he is horizontal, he's asleep!
Supper wasn't any good, but I ate too much anyway. And I ate a lot of chips preparing it. Me think it's safe to say that fatigue is one of my triggers to overeat. I feel gross right now and like I never want to eat meat again. I am very close to going back to vegetarianism!
So ... later!
Lisa
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