Pomp, circumstance, and soggy scrapbooks

 This past weekend has been jubilant and celebratory. Our granddaughter Alandra graduated from George Fox University as a mechanical engineer. That is, indeed, an accomplishment. The whole class of 2024 is to be congratulated for their courage and persistence. These young people entered their college experience in the fall of 2020 at the height of the COVID pandemic. What was to have been a long-awaited experience of collegial life—new friendships, classes, all the challenges involved in this phase of life—turned into a marathon of masking, six-feet apart fellowship, hand-sanitizing, and Zoom classes. Not at all what was expected. Rather than collegiality, isolation.

But they persisted and formed bonds that only those passing together through a hard time can experience. And the weekend celebrations were, indeed, jubilant, at time raucous.

We celebrated Alandra. For four days we celebrated: Thursday, Honors Convocation; Friday, Baccalaureate; Saturday, Graduation followed by a family meal; Sunday, reception with family, friends, food, and the sharing of memories. Our dear granddaughter beamed all weekend long. She has passed through one door and entered another, the door to the rest of her life.

Graduation day was drizzly, this being Oregon, but the skies held back during the ceremonies, not actually raining until afterward when people gathered in the Quad to congratulate the new grads. One special moment during the actual ceremony happened as Alandra came forward to accept her degree. The moderator paused to tell the crowd that she was a fifth-generation graduate of George Fox University. (He didn’t supply the details, that her parents graduated from GFU, as did her grandparents (us), her great-grandparents, and her great-great-grandmother. Quite a legacy.)

Alandra doesn’t know what’s ahead. She hasn’t yet applied for a job, and for the summer she is moving back home to live with her parents, a temporary situation she insists. She senses the need for a break, for a time to reflect on where she’s been and to wait on God for an indication of where she’s to go. That seems wise.

For me, last week didn’t begin on such a high note. On Monday morning the director of Resident Services phoned to let me know I needed to get right down to the basement storage units. Each resident has their own cubicle and ours was stuffed. She informed me that a pipe in the ceiling had sprung a leak that had affected a few of the many cubicles. Ours happened to be the most affected. She gave me a number to call in case any of our stuff was ruined and needed to be replaced. That was not a reassuring piece of information. So I hurried down.

Sure enough, wetness reigned. A tarp covered the top of the affected cubicles, funneling the water from the still leaking pipe into a large garbage container. It didn’t pour, but the steady drip drip was not music to my ears.

All our stuff was wet. Fortunately, we had stored most of it in plastic containers and the contents of these stayed dry—winter clothes, Christmas stuff, some documents and memorabilia, etc.) Our suitcases, camping gear, and bicycle pump were wet but not damaged. But I had stored some items in cardboard boxes, never thinking something like this would happen. These items were damaged. They included my high school and college scrapbooks, something I’m sentimental about. Also a shoebox of love letters from Hal from before we were married. Mushy stuff, now literally mushy.

The staff loaned us an empty cubicle where we could store our stuff until the situation was resolved. And I brought the scrapbooks upstairs, pried the pages apart and spread them on the floor, table, and chairs to dry. My soggy memories. I’ll be able to salvage some of it. It will now have an antique, wrinkly look, quite artistic (at least that’s what I’m telling myself).

In the college memories book, I found my graduation program (“The George Fox College Year of Jubilee Graduating Class of 1967”), some photos (sticky), and a newspaper article with me in my regalia looking quite pleased with myself.

I love the coincidence (a coming together—a co-happening—of two separate incidents) of the two graduations—my granddaughter’s and mine. There are differences—for one, 50 graduates at my ceremony and just under 500 at Alandra’s. But the goofy smiles and the sense of accomplishment and celebration—these are universal.

Hurrah for the celebration of landmarks!

Hurrah for the links between the generations!

Hurrah for good memories!

Hurrah for new beginnings!

God is good. Hurrah!