Through city streets he rises
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- May 7, 2018
- 2153
I’m not much of a hiker, but I can enjoy the beauty of a vast panorama by spreading a blanket on the ground and surveying with open eyes. When we traveled to my husband’s homeland this past winter, I bought sturdy tennis shoes because I knew we’d climbing the 365 steep crumbling steps up the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan.
I did think I might die as I got closer to the summit, but my kids and husband pushed me on. There was no stopping in reaching the top, and when we arrived – breathless and panting – I let myself feel the accomplishment.
Today my son is graduating from college. The baby. The last one. Today he receives his diploma.
It can’t be done alone. In theory it can, because each step must be completed alone, but a cheering section full of well-placed chants does make all the difference. His college was not your typical one.
There was no cushy cafeteria full of foods to feed you at all hours, no green campus and lawns to lounge on when the sun made the air feel like anything was possible. There were soaring buildings with tiny cramped hallways and endless rising stairwells, cold cement streets to walk to and from your building, and wicked winds that blew you side to side from your shoebox of an apartment to subway to class.
Yet the choices we make decide our fate, and no matter how many dollar slices of pizza sustained him throughout his four years in New York, he made it. He dreamt it, wings spread wide and city spread below him, and he made it.
College may not be for everyone, but it is an accomplishment. We were not pushers-of-higher-education per se, but each one of our children chose to further their high school diplomas; to go higher than either of us had gone.
I didn’t want to attend college and had no desire for it, that was me. So often I hear remarks by people who disparage a college education as unnecessary. An upturned nose or remark that says, “Well, not every job needs a college degree” and while this may hold a grain of truth, the speaking of it marks disdain. If I could count the subtle twitches in someone’s face when they heard he was attending an art school I could’ve filled a piggy bank.
But I’m convinced that it does take a village.
I thank the numerous people from home who visited him there, met with him at diners, slipped him money and bags filled with goodies and Troyer Cheese beef sticks. (Beef sticks CAN sustain you!) The people that sat and chatted with him in some of his most dogged times, when winter in the city seemed an endless trek through snow and cold. Those who prayed for him at home, sent cards and notes, even when there was no return answer.
You’ll never know what it meant to him. And to me. You believed in him.
I believe what we choose and persist through turns us into the people we’re meant to be. His college years were not cushy; they were filled with lean, hungry times. But his determination to push through every obstacle, to get that degree, to accomplish his senior thesis on his dad’s story. I can only look at him with admiration.
So, I’ll dress up and take a seat beside my husband to watch our final child accept their degree. As he crosses the stage I know I’ll only be able to see the little yellow cap and gown he graduated from pre-school with. That little face that sought mine in the crowd, so proud to have accomplished such a great thing. I know his eyes will still seek us, little face now a man. He will smile and so will we, as he turns toward a future that is in his hands. One he fought long and hard for.