T Plus Thirty-One Years

I spend a portion of every day thinking about my mother.  These days especially with the world having been turned upside down and inside out, I think that although I miss her terribly, a part of me is relieved that she is not here to endure it.  Not simply because she spent the final two decades of her life living in a state presently being run by this imbecile.  

Today, probably more than yesterday and perhaps more than tomorrow, Mom is on my mind quite a lot.  It was thirty-one years ago today that I graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder.  The youngest of her six children, mine was the final "kid from college" graduation on her dance card.  Mom traveled to Boulder for the ceremony, as did Kara, and my two fellow Buffs, Jill and Joe (Class of '87).  If memory serves me correctly, Wilma set her alarm for 2:00 am on whatever date it was several months before the ceremony that the Hotel Boulderado began accepting reservations for graduation, which they did - by telephone - at midnight Boulder time (a/k/a "2:00 am Jersey time).  To no one's surprise, Wilma's plan worked and my four-member support team encamped at the Boulderado. 

My two most distinct memories of my college graduation?  How overcast and gray it was and how incredibly hungover my great friend, Alex Schreiber, and I were.  Schneedz and I were roommates in Farrand Hall our freshman year and ended up living together three of our four years in Boulder.  Way back when, in 1989, graduation was held at the Events Center, which is where the basketball teams play their home games.  Given the number of students who graduated in 1989 from the College of Arts and Sciences, there was no reading of the graduates' names, one by one.  Rather, someone said something like, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the College of Arts and Sciences' Class of 1989" and up we stood, en masse, adorned in our caps and gowns.  Three to five seconds later, down we sat and the show rolled on.

Schneedz and I sat together, of course.  To ensure that his mom, who was herself an absolute angel (may she rest peacefully), and Mom knew where we were, we used tape to write "SCHNEEDZ" on his cap and "ADSEY" on mine.  Fortunately we did this prior to drinking our respective body weights the night before graduation, which ensured that what we intended to write is what actually appeared on the caps.  Even more fortuitously, we resisted the urge to throw up into our caps during the ceremony.  

Post-ceremony, photographs were taken outside of the Events Center.  Whether more than one photograph of Mom and me was taken, I do not know.  I know simply that this is the only one I have ever seen and it is the only one I have ever had...

Mom and me - CU Graduation

May 12, 1989

...and its absence of artistic finery notwithstanding, it is the only one I shall ever need. 

-AK