Tag Archives: graduation

Monday morning is particularly bittersweet this week.

Posted in Family, Friendship, Life Ramblings, Relationships by

This weekend we celebrated with family friends as the youngest of us kids graduated from high school… The baby isn’t a baby anymore.  Nope, he’s now taller than me, plays in a band, and never walks around in a firefighter’s hat anymore, though  my sister and I both swear he had one on his head for most of his childhood.

Graduations used to be our benchmark.  There was one every other year, guaranteeing a good party to mark the passage of time for the last decade.  Now we talk about engagements and weddings and when we’ll all bring babies into the mix.  Obviously the transition has been gradual, but it still feels sudden.  All of the childhood memories of summer nights by a fire now seem just out of reach.

I was given a quilt by a friend of my parents when I graduated from high school many moons ago.  She chose fabrics with patterns that look like they could have made old childhood clothes, playful and fun.  At the time it was given to me I thought it was an odd gift… she was not someone that I was particularly close to.  I didn’t even know she made quilts.  But after my Sophomore year of college, when my apartment building had a massive flood and we had to evacuate, it was the first thing I grabbed.  And yesterday, as I was cuddled on my bed after everyone had left and the apartment was quiet, it was what I pulled over me.

In some ways I’m sad that we’re all grown up now, but mostly, I just feel blessed.  It’s easy to forget all of the people and places that made us who we are, but as we sat around flipping through old photo albums this weekend, it was nice to remember.  I think the older I get, the more I love that quilt, because I realize I am the product of a fabulous collection of memories.  Some of the people in those memories I never see anymore, but they still shaped me, while they were around.

I know we could end up anywhere after this.  We have no idea where we’re going to raise a family.  We don’t even know where we’ll live when the summer ends.  Mostly I just hope we find a place with as many fabulous people as where I grew up.  I want my kids to have people to look back with like we did this weekend, to retell stories with, and to laugh with.

Monday morning is particularly bittersweet this week.

A Week Of Celebration, Then A Nap

Posted in Cute Foods, Dessert, Life Ramblings, Recipes by

From Sunday to Sunday we celebrated.

It started with my husband’s birthday.  He claimed he didn’t want to celebrate – apparently another year over 29 was just not something he wanted to acknowledge.  So I said I would just make a cake and we’d have a nice dinner…  We ended up with an apartment full of friends that night.  But it was a perfect way to kick off the week.  We ate cake, had a few drinks, and kicked off our week of celebrating with laughter and memories of the last three years.

I cheated with a box devils food cake in two 9 inch rounds, iced with the Hershey chocolate frosting recipe off their website.  It is the MOST chocolatey-chocolate frosting I have ever tasted… 3/4 cup of cocoa powder chocolatey.  I thought it was a bit much but my husband loved it.  After completely frosting the cake, I took a shot at creative decorating based on some Pinterest inspiration.  Before the frosting dried, I surrounded it with Kit Kats in two-piece chunks and covered it with M&Ms, tied with a fun ribbon to keep it all together.  It was a huge hit. (And it’s the perfect way to hide a cake tier that breaks coming out of the pan… Not that I’d ever let that happen of course.)

Then on Monday, fresh off not studying all weekend, we took our last final and celebrated with a nice dinner out.  I was ready to be done.  I didn’t care about the grade anymore.  I handed it in, took a sticker that said “I finished law school FOREVER” and bounced out of the school.  I was still bouncing when we went to dinner.  As in, I freaked the waitress out because I was literally bouncing in the booth.  There was also singing and twirling… and martinis.  Every once in a while, in the middle of a conversation I would stop and ask, “we’re really done?”  My husband would affirm “we’re really done.”  It didn’t sink in.

Tuesday’s celebration was all about me.  Finally done, I took the first step in getting back to my pre-law school self and literally “lightened up.”  I knew I couldn’t go back to the light platinum blonde I was from dark brown all at once, but I was pleasantly surprised how light she could take me in one sitting.  It’s definitely blonde.  And immediately, I felt like the world was a lighter, happier place.

Wednesday we celebrated with a reception and a banquet at school.  On Thursday we celebrated with the entire class on a boat cruise with an open bar.

Then on Friday night, the main event.  Hung over and/or exhausted from finals and two nights drinking on the school’s dime, it seemed from the Facebook posts that we all did the same thing for most of the day – cleaned in anticipation of our family’s arrival.  And then we put on our big heavy gowns, lined in velvet, and marched out into the square in 95 degree heat to make it official.  AND I DIDN’T TRIP WALKING ACROSS THE STAGE.  You’d think I’d be over that fear, three graduation ceremonies into my education.  But no.  That was, in fact, still my biggest concern.

We followed the ceremony with a late meal at one of my favorite restaurants with both of our families and close family friends (which is always a source of anxiety for me, because the inlaws have almost nothing in common).  But for once, everything went smoothly and everyone was in good moods.  It finally started sinking in… we were done.

Saturday was our final culmination of the weeklong celebration.  We spent the day with family friends who are more family than friends… the girls shopped, the boys golfed.  And then we all came back to their house, and got to celebrate the engagement of their oldest son and his girlfriend of six years who we’ve all come to love.  We grilled out, we drank way too much wine, and we finally got to relax.  No more mingling in uncomfortable shoes, making painful small talk.  Just laughter pouring through the house.

Yesterday, we met my parents for lunch, returned my sister to them, and then we came home and napped. Without an alarm set. Without guilt.  It was, perhaps, a celebration in itself.

We finally have our lives back.

The Graduation Restoration: Person Under Construction

Posted in Life Ramblings by

It finally feels like the end.

For the last few months I’ve been counting down the days, praying that some number would trigger the feeling that the end was near, and really it had been doing the opposite.  100 more days felt like a lifetime.  80 felt worse, because the 20 between 100 and 80 had seemed to last forever.  But we came back from our weekend away and it hit me the moment I walked in the door.  Law school is almost over.

We’re still 37 days out from graduation, but that number feels much smaller when I look at my calendar.  I’m going to finish out the week, spend most of next week in DC, and then have one week left when I’m back.  Then finals… and to be honest, when you’ve made it to the end, two self scheduled finals seem pretty insignificant.  Then lots of banquets and dinners and parties… and then it’s all over.  It feels simultaneously like it’s been forever, and like we just started yesterday.

I could expound on that anomaly, and I’m sure I will later, but I think the reality is this: I haven’t felt like myself this whole time.  There’s this weird image in my mind of me walking into law school, blonde and pink and happy, and then slowly this other person taking over who I don’t even recognize.  She’s darker, more cynical, perpetually annoyed and chronically tearful.  Even I can’t stand her, but none of my many efforts to fight her off worked.  I see the real me waiting at the end, like somehow, when it’s over, I magically get to be ME again. But can it really be that easy?

I want it to be.  I’ve even considered uprooting us and trying to put my life back to the way it was, just to expedite the process. But really, I know that doesn’t work.  We could move back to the city I left but still have an abnormal crush on, but I wouldn’t suddenly be in college again, or in my time off after college.  I wouldn’t be single and content to live on a shoestring budget.  My friends aren’t all still there, and the ones that are I haven’t seen in ages.  Three years changes a lot, and the rest of the world wasn’t in this law school bubble with me.  It kept right on going.

But even though I can’t go back, I want HER back.  A married, older version of her is fine, but this dark, twisted version isn’t.  Maybe she is just magically waiting at the end of the gradation stage.  Diploma, handshake, POOF: old me.  But in case she isn’t, I’ve decided to develop a plan.  The Graduation Restoration.

Restoration: the return of something to a former, original, normal or unimpaired condition.

That’s all I want.  Not so much to ask for.

Taking the advice from Ben Franklin and Gretchen Rubin, I’ve decided this requires blueprints.  A real, honest assessment of what needs to go, what needs to come back, and how I’m going to make that happen.  If I have no idea what the future holds right now, I can’t leave it to chance.  I need to figure out how to get back to being a person I liked, before whatever is coming actually gets here.

And so, I’m starting with the easiest thing, a symbol that I’ve returned: I’m going back to blonde.  I had platinum blonde hair when I started law school (and pink glasses… I was trying to play up the legally blonde angle to convince myself it would be a fun adventure.)  But three months in it felt all wrong, and I took it dark brown.  It’s been that way ever since.  It’s time to lighten up, physically and mentally.

Now on to the tough stuff…