The Diploma I Earned at 64

The Stage

Graduation was on a Friday evening in May, in the college gym.

They set up folding chairs on the basketball floor and a stage at one end under the scoreboard, with the flags and a table for the diplomas.

Families filled the bleachers and the chairs behind the graduates.

I wore a blue cap and gown like everybody else.

Kenzie helped me pin my cap on in the hallway, because my short gray hair would not hold a bobby pin to save its life.

She stepped back and looked at me and said, “Linda, you look like a judge.”

We lined up by last name, which put me a long way from Kenzie.

I stood behind a young man named Hanson who was going into heating and air conditioning and in front of a young woman named Hendrickson who was going to be a dental hygienist. Both of them were nineteen.

When we walked into the gym, everybody stood up, and the band from the high school played the march. I could hear my knees on every step.

I did not care. I looked up into the bleachers trying to find my family, and I could not see them, there were so many people.

Then I saw them. Not in the bleachers. Jacob had saved a whole row of folding chairs in the front, right behind the graduates.

Ray was there in his good sport coat. Amy was there. My sister was there.

And a few rows behind them, at the end, in a tie, by himself, was Eric.

He had come separately. He had come from work, I found out later, and he had come in late and taken the first empty seat.

He did not wave. He just sat there with his hands on his knees and looked at the stage.

They read the names for a long time. When they got to the H’s, I climbed the four steps up to the stage.

They were steep steps. A young man from the college held out his arm and I took it, and I was not too proud to.

“Linda Halvorson,” the dean said into the microphone. “Associate of Applied Science, Accounting.”

The dean shook my hand. She was younger than Eric.

She handed me the diploma cover, and she leaned in close and said, “I’ve heard about you,” and I did not know what she meant, and I still do not.

Jacob stood up in the front row. He stood up and clapped like it was the state tournament and the clock had just run out.

Then Ray stood up next to him. Then Amy, then my sister, and then some people I did not even know, in the bleachers.

And then Kenzie came out of her row. She was not supposed to.

She came up the side steps in her gown with her cap tipped over one ear and walked right across the stage and hugged me, in front of the dean and everybody.

She said into my ear, “You did it, Linda. You did it.” I said, “We did it.” She said, “No. You did. I just ate the bars.”

And she let go of me and went back to her row, and a man with a clipboard gave her a very stern look, which she did not notice at all.

Eric was clapping. Slowly. Not the way Jacob was, all elbows and noise. Slowly, with his hands coming together one at a time, like each one was something he had to decide.

He did not take his eyes off me the whole way back to my seat.