Graduation day.
I am sitting at home after my morning walk with Waffles the pug, enjoying my cup of coffee–like nothing has happened. Yesterday at this time, I was driving across the desert from Cima to Amboy. I actually love that drive through the desert Mojave National Preserve and Sheephole Valley Wilderness. There is so much vast space—desert wilderness and craggy mountains with nothing but Joshua trees and wildflowers. We saw exactly one car going our way. There were five or six heading in the other direction towards Vegas.
We left on Wednesday to drive 652 miles for our daughter’s graduation. With my recent surgery, there’s no way I could sit in a car for 10 hours, so we broke it up with an overnight stay in St. George. I keep saying that I’d like to go to the beautiful sites around St. George like Zion National Park, but we’re always on our way to Salt Lake City with no time to explore. Someday, we say.
Walking into the Huntsman Center for graduation.
So, to get on with the story, we drove for two days for our daughter’s graduation. She was also moving out of the house she’s lived in for three years. Needless to say, she has a ton of stuff and although most of the work was done, there wasn’t a lot of time to relax. On the day of her graduation, we were working out where to pack and ship boxes that would not fit in her storage unit with furniture, kitchen stuff and winter tires — or either of our cars. Then graduation happened. I was shocked to see literally more than a thousand graduates in her major. We skipped the general commencement and I’m glad about that. The David Eccles School of Business was plenty long and meaningful. Then it was off to dinner with her friends at one of our favorite places, Valter’s Osteria. It’s a perfect place for a celebratory meal. And we listened to three or four happy birthday songs while we ate a delicious Italian meal.
This guy is mine for the next three months.
The next morning we were up early and she was letting in the carpet cleaners and throwing away junk left by the previous year’s roommates. On the road, we stopped to say goodbye to our dear friends, my husband’s childhood friend Pastor Scott of CenterPoint Church in Orem, who’s been a surrogate dad to our daughter these past four years.
Eventually, we made it home, and I wonder where the past few days went–let alone the past four years. I haven’t had time to process graduation, much less have time to enjoy it. All I can say is I’m glad my daughter is home for a few weeks. It feels so right to have her here–although she will be leaving soon for her next adventure in life.
And she’s a graduate.
Congrats to her on all her hard work and her graduation!
Thank you so much! It is wonderful that she was able to swim in college, but it’s difficult too. For example, her conference meet fell during midterms each year and they’d be gone for a week! There’s lots of travel and missing school. Student-athletes work so hard, but she loved it.
congratulations to all. Reading your comments above on the challenges of the student athlete–my nephew graduates Friday from Colorado School of Mines. He played baseball for them, and similar problems with competing commitments between school and sport. He ended up on the 5 year plan, and really enjoyed this last year without baseball–as he put it, not starting my homework at 10pm! And on to the next they go!
Thank you! Student-athletes do work hard, yet I believe they reap wonderful rewards. So many kids take five years without athletics these days. I think being in a sport makes them value their time more. Congrats to your nephew!