Commencement

Robert graduated from college this past weekend. Jim and I, along with Robert’s godmother, Gerry, attended the commencement ceremonies at the University of Texas down in Austin. What a weekend! Robert’s college had its ceremony Friday afternoon at the enormous Frank Erwin Center on the UT campus. Afterward we had a cookout at his apartment complex with several of his Grapevine friends who have been together since elementary school. Saturday night was the campus-wide ceremony at the foot of the famous UT tower, with all the colleges represented. The tower was lit for Robert one last time, with the year ’09. Immediately afterward the school put on a spectacular fire works show for the grads and their families.

There were several moments when I had to fight back a few tears, and I had anticipated I would cry more than I did. There were times when I had a lump in my throat and tears threatened just behind my eyes. Of course I was as proud as a parent can be, but then Robert has always made Jim and me proud and joyful parents. The oddest sensation I experienced was sadness at the realization of the end of all our little traditions and habits we’ve established during Robert’s four years in Austin.

We’ve stayed at the same hotels, eaten at the same restaurants, and shopped at the same stores for four years. I suppose the familiarity of those habits helped to keep that old empty nest thing in check. We drove down for parents’ weekends (only the first two, I swear), Mother’s Days, and award ceremonies. Robert even volunteered us to act as judges at the business fair in which he participated. We’ve become rabid Longhorn football fans, even turning our backs on our beloved Michigan and Illinois teams.

While I won’t miss the college tuition bills and the dorm and apartment expenses, I will miss the rituals and traditions we built. The weekend was also a commencement for Jim and me. The folks at Webster say that commence means “to have or make a beginning; to begin to be or act as;” thus, commencement is “the act or time of beginning.” There are plenty of old saws about the irony of calling the end of school by the term for “the beginning,” so I won’t go on about that. I suppose it must be time for me to “begin to be or act as” the parent of an independent, grown-up young man. Ouch. Now I’ve got that lump in my throat and those tears threatening again.

Donna

The Graduate

Last weekend I was in Austin celebrating Mother’s Day and a friend’s college graduation from St. Edward’s University. It was a whirlwind of a weekend, starting with a reunion Friday night with a high school classmate whom I had not seen since 1966, and culminating with a lovely brunch at a grand old hotel in downtown Austin on Sunday. In between we had the graduation, a flat tire on my old SUV, lunch on the cliffs over Lake Travis, and a trip to a popular Texas barbeque joint Saturday night. Other than the flat tire incident, it was a wonderful weekend.

It was David at Goliath.

The graduation took place in the Frank Erwin Center on the University of Texas (UT) campus. St. Edward’s is a Catholic liberal arts university with a student population of around five thousand. Add a zero to that number and you get the student population of the University of Texas, literally just up the road. The Frank Erwin Center seats between seventeen and eighteen thousand spectators. This is more than the Ft. Worth Convention Center arena seats and almost as many as the Dallas Stars hockey team arena seats.

St. Edward’s, a tiny little 125 year-old hilltop University, sits like a watchtower above Interstate 35, as if to say, “We see you wild and lawless students down there on the UT campus." The valedictorian made it quite clear that he was tired of the comparisons to the University of Texas and that St. Edwards is not UT. In fact he compared UT to "some George Orwellian nightmare."

In my opinion, his style was rather mocking and he had a chip on his shoulder, but the young people in the audience loved the valedictorian’s speech. He worked goals, gratitude, and humility elements into it between jokes and wisecracks. What I did find most remarkable about his speech was his rant about being sick and tired of people asking him: “What are you going to do now?” Isn’t that ironic?

“There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out.” Russian proverb.

His speech suggested that he wasn’t certain about his future plans. He spoke at length about the difference between not knowing and knowing nothing. “Don’t be afraid to say, ‘I don’t know,’” he advised. The young man had a list of accomplishments that went on and on—I thought the nun who introduced him was talking about someone who had lived much longer as she rattled off his achievements and honors. And yet here was this brash young man with a Thanksgiving platter of life ahead of him, frustrated by the same question that I am: “What are you going to do next?”

It would seem we'll never have all the answers, but for me the lesson is clear. We may not know what we’re supposed to be doing next; but no matter how great or small our beginnings, or how much we’ve done, we must always be learning and doing something more.

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” C.S. Lewis

Donna