The Diploma I Earned at 64

The Commons

Afterward there was a reception in the commons, with sheet cake and coffee in big silver urns and punch in a glass bowl.

Families stood around taking pictures in front of a banner. Kenzie’s mother found me and hugged me and told me I was all Kenzie had talked about for two years.

Eric came over after a while. He was holding a paper plate with a piece of cake on it that he was not eating.

He waited until Jacob walked off to find his friends. Then he came and stood in front of me.

Ray did not walk away. Ray stood right beside me, with his shoulder against mine, the way he had not at Easter. I felt him there. That was his next time too.

“Mom,” Eric said. “I have to tell you something about this college.”

He looked down at the floor tiles. They were gray and white, the kind every school in Minnesota has. He looked at them for a long time.

“I should have told you twenty years ago,” he said.

I waited. I have learned to wait from being married to his father.

“You know I went here,” he said. “When I was twenty.”

“I know,” I said. “For a year. And then you quit for the job at the agency.”

“I didn’t quit for the job,” he said. “I got the job after. I flunked out, Mom. I failed three classes the second semester. One of them was accounting. They put me on academic suspension. I got the letter and I hid it in my glove box and I told you and Dad I was leaving because the agency wanted me full time.”

I did not say anything. I could not have if I tried.

“I was ashamed,” he said. “I was so ashamed I couldn’t even drive past this building for about ten years. I take the long way around to the mall. Amy thinks I’m crazy.”

He laughed a little, but not like at Easter. “And then you stood up at Easter and said you were going here. For accounting. At sixty-two.”

He finally looked up at me. His eyes were wet. My son, who sells insurance and coaches T-ball and fixes my gutters, standing in the commons with a paper plate, with his eyes wet.

“And I laughed,” he said. “Because if you could do it, then what was my excuse. I’ve been sitting with that for two years. I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry I said that. It was the worst thing I’ve ever said to you and I said it in front of everybody.”

What I Said

I want to tell you that I said something wise. I did not. What I said was, “Oh, honey.”

And then I put my hand on his face, the way I did when he was six and had a fever, and I held it there.

“You were twenty,” I said. “You were working nights at the lumberyard and taking a full load and you were twenty years old.”

“You were sixty-two,” he said. “And riding a bus.”

“I had your father walking me to it,” I said.

And Eric looked at Ray, and Ray looked back at him, and something passed between the two of them that I was not part of and did not need to be.

Then Eric asked me the thing I will remember until the day I die, which Eric would want me to say is not anytime soon.

“How did you do it?” he said. “How did you actually do it?”

I thought about it. Then I told him the truth.

“One Tuesday at a time,” I said. “I never thought about the two years. I thought about getting on the bus. And then I thought about the next assignment. And when I couldn’t do it alone, I let a nineteen-year-old help me, and I brought her lemon bars.”

He laughed then, a real laugh, wet and surprised. And I said, “You know, the fall term starts the last week of August. And the application is free if you do it online before July.”

He stopped laughing. He looked at me. “Mom, I’m forty-two,” he said.

“I know how old you are,” I said. “I was there.”