This is My Body, This is My Blood

Senior Project

Hey you with the pretty face
Welcome to the human race
A celebration, mister blue sky's up there waitin'
And today is the day we've waited for

Mr. Blue Sky, Electric Light Orchestra

People say we're more like an old couple than mother and son, the way we bicker and make up, share a million inside jokes, fight over what goes in the grocery cart. I suppose it's because he's the only male that's stuck around in my life for more than a few months or years--granted more by necessity than choice. Or maybe it's due to the fact that from the instant I first laid eyes on this kid, I understood he was as much my peer as my prodigy.

As a child, J was the kind of kid who would sit cross-legged in the middle of the basketball court during summer camp, his spectacled head absorbed in a book while the other kids danced the ball around and over him. He was the one consistently sent to the office for distracting the class with his jokes, arguing semantics with a teacher, or standing up to a bully with words that sliced as deeply as the punches landing on my son. And he's the the kind of kid you pull out of school a half-dozen times, trying unsuccessfully to find an odd-shaped hole for a many-faceted peg.

He finally graduated from high school this week, thanks to a newly-formed charter school that worked one-on-one with J to help him garner enough credits to earn a diploma. He earned most of those credits at Cuesta College, and now has a year of general ed under his belt, putting him a full year ahead of most of his counterparts. The graduation ceremony was simple, sweet, and unrehearsed. The 13 capped students chose a song to accompany their walk to the "stage" (a semi-circle of chairs on the lawn of the cohousing community). Jacob chose ELO's Mr. Blue Sky, fitting in that for graduation I'd gifted him with 20-20 vision, and it was his first public appearance sans prescriptions lens.

I know my kid loves me, but he's not quick to say so, at least not in words. His way of showing affection is to crack my back when he notices I'm "off" or to pick up an extra pack of sunflower seeds when he's at the store. So I didn't expect much more than a posed photo or an indulgent hug last Thursday. What I got is this: a fitting reward for twelve-plus long years of trying to give J the best education available. What you get today is the gift of J's graduation address, copied below. Bring your hankie, folks.

Wait...I thought I was the juggling act. No? Ok, then (retrieving speech from beneath his crokked cap).

The transition from high school onward never seemed like such a big deal to me. What’s all the fuss about? After all, our schooling isn’t complete, in fact far from it. If you were to ask me, or be forced to listen to me ramble on as you all are, I would say that our schooling ends with a toe tag. There are so many things to discover and explore on this planet--from new sources of renewable energy to unseen species of tropical insects to new planets and stars not yet seen or given a name. Whether we go on to college or find what we love in a simpler life, whether we travel abroad or deeply explore the comforts of home, we will spend the rest of our lives learning the complicated rhythms of the Earth.

So what are we really graduating from? I sat at my computer for hours, unable to write more than a sentence about my graduation (then again, the James Bond marathon on TV didn’t help). I was stumped. Finally, it dawned on me. I think graduation isn’t just a celebration of what we’ve done-- although anyone who has sat through some public school lessons that made eating glass look kind of appealing deserves a medal (and most of us have). No, nearly everyone has endured 12 years of standardized, platform-building schooling that in and of itself is good mostly for celebration that it's finally over.

The real focus of graduation, however, is the glorious recognition and anticipation of all the varied and amazing things we will do in our lifetimes, the things that we’ll learn from here on out-- be it thermonuclear physics, computer science, art, or underwater basket weaving. Raising a family, caring for loved ones, discovering the balance of work and play; from this day forward we each break free of standardized credit mongering and walk our own paths in life, building the tools that you--not the State of California--decide you need, and discovering what it is in life makes your heart sing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "To be yourself in a world that is that constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." Then again, he also said that quotation confesses inferiority, so maybe he wasn’t the best guy to quote.

In closing, no graduation speech would be anywhere near complete without the standard thank you to a very unstandard woman. I spent what often seemed like every day of  1st -8th  grade getting my cheeky butt sent to the office, so my mother got to know a lot of secretaries very well. If it weren’t for my mother’s tireless work, I would never have received such a varied and exceptional education.

Words can’t begin to describe how thankful I am for your constant support and guidance, and the support and guidance I will no doubt require when I need to figure out how to do my taxes, or buy a house, or make pot roast, or take bubblegum out of my couch. If anyone deserves a cool little piece of paper and a nifty hat, its totally you, mom. If Mr. Emerson will allow me to quote him yet again, even if it does confess my inferiority, "Men are what their mothers make them."

At this point he ad libbed, "And now if you'll all indulge me, I've got some flowers here for my mom, and for my teacher, Amy, who put up with a long year's worth of procrastination and nincompoopery from me." Then he produced a beautiful bunch of roses for me and a bouquet of mixed flowers for Amy, and walked them to us one at a time along with warm hugs. There wasn't a dry eye on the lawn.

It was a very good day. I hope yours was, too.

Miss Understanding

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding. ~~Anatole Broyard

There was a time in my life when I needed to be right, would have traded my favorite toe ring, nay, my toe, for a resounding "I told you, so!" rather than let a misconception linger in another's mind. For some reason, it used to be very important to me that I made my point, disproved somebody's wrong assumptions, shed light on what longed to remain in shadowy shades of ambiguity rather than leave our backs to one another in steadfast attachment to conviction.

A few months ago I experienced one of these conflicting realities opportunities for growth and a part of me really, really wanted to convince the other person that they were wrong about me. I composed long emails in which I  proved their incorrectness, held imaginary conversations where I articulated my truth, turned a spotlight on my history so that they could see the lack of blemish on my record of good intentions. But I never sent those emails, never picked up the phone, gave up investing my energy in someone else's wrong perception of me. Frankly, it's just silly to throw away all that energy in exchange for righteous conversion.

My wasband once belonged to a group I kiddingly referred to as his Libbing Lub Kult, (it's actually called Living Love) in which the members have to memorize a long list of tenets and humiliate themselves to the degree they give into "group process" and admit they are "addicted" to some set of limiting behaviors. I'm not one for organized religion or anti-religion for that matter, and as much as I disagree with the methods of LL, one can always glean something useful from any set of principals. My take-away from this one is something they call being stuck in the g.o.o., short for Good Opinion of Others. For most of my life I was not only stuck in the goo, I'd been planted in it from the moment of conception. Growing up a preacher's kid, it's really important to set an example for others, and lord forbid anyone thought we were sinning at the Edwards parsonage let alone actually doing it.  We weren't free from sin by any means, but I did learn that it's a lot easier to be a good person than to try and cover being a bad one.

So I let it go, this need to be right--or mostly, anyway. And when he called and asked for a treatment, I said yes, and not much more. As is often the case, once I'm in massage mode Love takes over and I felt any residual resentment and frustration leave me as I did what I do. Afterwards we hugged tenderly, nearly silently. He left without the wall he'd been wearing when he arrived, and I was grateful for the opportunity to heal something without having to do it with words.

Once again, a phrase out of my father's mouth, memorized from the underlined and tattered pages of his favorite Bible that now rests on my bookshelf, comes crawling back to me. Specifically, Matthew seven, verse seven.  And you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. I believe there is no truth that matters more than one's own, and so long as you know it, you are free from defending it. It took a while, but having (finally) learned from past experiences,  I've decided it is far better, as they say,  to be happy than to be right.

Plus, I'm really bad at math so I need all these silly toes.