Finish Lines

One of our daughters is earning her B.A. this summer. I suppose it's the sort of thing that happens all the time. Summers are full of graduation celebrations, and it is, after all, the aim of every university to put diplomas in the hands of most of their students. Our daughter's story, while not unique, is certainly notable, though. She is the first in my branch of the family tree to earn one.

While my sisters and I, my mother and grandmother all completed high school, and some have even taken college level courses, none have finished with a degree. More common in my family are stories like my father's. He quit seventh grade in order to go to work and help support his family. My great-grandmother had only a year or two of formal schooling before she had to devote herself to the farm. None of these dropouts stopped learning. All recognized the value of education and sought out opportunities to learn. Dad filled notebooks with equations figuring air speed and lift as he studied for a pilot's license. My great-grandmother finished teaching herself to read and write and left my grandmother a handwritten cookbook from her days in a lumber camp.

Mine was really the last generation with a fighting chance of making it in America without a college degree. It's the last generation when knowledge, experience and dedication might count as much as the paper and even so, the road's not easy.

So, our graduate is the product of a line of reasonably clever people who spent their lifetimes in independent study but who, for practical reasons, had to abandon any advanced formal education. This alone would make her achievement notable, but she had other obstacles in her way as well.

Many college students are faced with choices they are unready to make - Which school suits me? What should I study? Who will I be?

But many have no worries about where the money will come from or whether they can afford to go. Mom and Dad will foot the bill, and there's never any question of whether college is a possible goal. For our kids, finances have been a definite concern. Parents without college degrees can rarely afford to sponsor children earning them. We offer what we can, but for the most part, our kids are making their own futures. They are working, applying for loans and scholarships that are becoming scarce these days, spending savings and foregoing luxuries to reach that goal, to cross that finish line.

Now, our oldest is there, surging forward to break the tape. I think about the little girl who started school in second hand clothes, whose birthday presents were often homemade and who suffered with whatever school supplies happened to be on sale. I think about the long hours she spent with me at the library while I worked because a single mom's paycheck couldn't cover childcare, too. I'm proud of how far she's come, not because I had anything to do with it, but because she's reached that finish line under her own steam. She studied. She planned. She worked. She earned her degree as much as anyone can.

Along the way, she's developed wisdom, humility and compassion. She volunteers at a hospice and an animal shelter. She never fails to speak up for human rights, for the poor or against prejudice. She uses her hard-won education to serve her community. I couldn't have hoped for a better adult to come from that little girl.

So, we are at the finish line - a child finally grown, an education completed. But life is round, and there are no real ends. It's human nature, when we come to a finish line, to run straight through. We rest a moment, but then we're thinking of the next race to be run. We reach our goal only to wonder "Where do I go now?" For our daughter, that means a master's program and a degree in library science.

So, today we celebrate a good race and the victory of crossing the finish line. Tomorrow, she'll line up at the starting block again with her eye on a new line and a lifetime of victories to come.