borrowed cap, borrowed gown, tattered shoes

I wore my borrowed cap, my borrowed gown and my well-worn shoes. I stood in line nervously, out of breath. Was this the right time, the right place, the right line? I had missed the graduation practice, since I was still working up the money to get my diploma in the first place, and so, with no idea of what to expect, and with hardly anyone expecting me to be there, I arrived for my graduation day.

Our little campus on the hill can be beautiful sometimes. It was one of the first things to impress me about the place. There isn’t the kind of million dollar landscaping that some schools pride. Some of the trees are a little weary, a little wiser, for the storms that bent them. All the sun was there that day, and all the clouds, and the light came through the clouds in rays. Perhaps the sun often pours through the clouds like that, but it took an important day to notice. I remember the first day there on that lawn as vividly. On a day in a place when everything is new, nothing can be taken for granted, and everything begs for attention. On a final day in a long-familiar place, nothing can be taken for granted anymore, everything begs for attention, and so everything is new.

I wish I could say I looked across the dark teeming sea of tassels topping the faces of a hundred friends, but I was in the middle of a long line of strangers. I only knew a handful of names to go with those faces. Only a smaller few from that group were my friends. Much of the speechifying was about what it would be like once all the friends and familiar faces were gone. “You’ll never be in the same room together again” we were told moments before the bagpipes announced our arrival. Fine, I thought, I’m in a room full of strangers – and a room full of ghosts. Over the past three years or so, the sea of faces that I do know has flooded through here, like a great wave against the rock, scattering into the mists and clouds.

Chuck was the one who pulled me out of my confusion. He said he though I could use a friend to walk through the whole ordeal with, so he signed me up to be next to him. He lined up, and me with him, near my friend Mina. Mina was about to be announced as one of the top of her class, proving that it is possible to party and to study harder than a hundred people ever could. Mina had Sonja at her side, anxiously scribbling out the spelling of her first name, respelling it phonetically, half-a-dozen different ways, lest the professor mispronounce it. Allison was behind them, chastising me for not having spoken to her often enough, for not having let me read my novella, and for my hat being on backwards.

The bagpipes cried out.

Say what you will about the sound of bagpipes, but when they play those pipes for you, you stand a little taller, you walk a little stronger. Someone said a prayer of thanks, for all the ways this day could have never come. Say what you will about the power of prayer, or its place in the academy, but it was the perfect prayer for me.

When the faculty came to the field, one of my most feared professors smiled when she saw my shoes, and she laughed. They’re scuffed shoes, with holes in the soles, and a rip in a place where my big toe sticks out. This is the same professor who made fun of those shoes in a meeting, once. I told her I love my shoes. They’re comfortable. In fact, they’re the same shoes I wore on my first day of college. I decided, in that meeting, that I would graduate in those old shoes, no matter how old they became, before I retired them. They’re a pair of black, canvas shoes, Chuck Taylor brand shoes, and they were worn even more after that meeting, but I wore them anyway. The high heel shoes only stuck in the earth and the dressier shoes made noises on the stage. My shoes are as old as my college career – older now, and they show what a walk it was for me. It wasn’t a short and easy road for me, but I traveled it anyway, and so I wore my shitty shoes with pride.

I bought a new pair of shoes to replace them that day, but I can’t wear them yet. The paper they handed me on graduation day is blank because I still lack three credit hours. I’ll start taking those credits this week, and in three weeks I’ll have my actual diploma, and a new pair of shoes to wear as I walk away from this place.

Where will I walk?