GRADUATION II

     It was fun! At that time, only the students from the Liberal Arts Department were graduating, and their creative abilities were evident in the way they went about the business of graduating.

     Their names were announced by two people. Sometimes they would be very special, telling us something different about the graduate. One young man's name was announced as: "Peter-I-Love-You-Dad-Smith". Another one was "Frank Cannonball Rogers". The announcers used thick French or Spanish accents, when introducing kids with the degrees in the fields of the French or Spanish languages. 

     All the while I was waiting to see my daughter to grace the stage and get her diploma. Finally, she showed up in a group of her classmates. My little camera couldn't capture her to the best advantage, but she must be on this photo somewhere!

I think, she is the one, standing without her cap.

     I thought, after Hanah gets her diploma, we'll be just dying of boredom, waiting for the end of festivities, but the fun continued! Young people decorated the flat tops of their hats with different designs. One young lady had it looking like one of those Latin singers' hats:

You can see the Latin fruit bowl girl here.

with the fruit piled up on it! Others glued golf balls to their caps or had on corsair hats  with the feathers instead. The crowd of parents and relatives ate it up! We yelled and roared with laughter, as some graduates from the Dance Department chose to waltz down the steps and through the aisles, waiving their diplomas joyously!

     As the ceremony concluded, a girl with a wheelchair came to fetch Roberta again. I felt torn: on the one hand, we needed the wheelchair: the terrain was too rough for Roberta to brave it on her own uncertain feet. More importantly, we had to meet up with Hanah, give her all the leis we prepared for that occasion and congratulate my child with her amazing accomplishment! And there was also the third hand: I had to go to bathroom! So, I let the young volunteer push the chair with Roberta in it to the bathroom, thinking that, after I use it, I can see my charge to the car and come back to be with my family to congratulate Hanah. I told Taka and Sonny to look for her in the meanwhile in the huge crowd of graduates and relatives. 

     Remember, what I told you about my family and making arrangements to meet each other? It never fails! Taka and Sonny gave up too soon on trying to find Hanah and just walked away. She, as she revealed it later, was looking for me (zeroing on every bright red head of hair). Everyone ended up in a different part of the campus, and it took us some time to get together. It also took tremendous amount of patience not to blow up at my inapt menfolk!

Here she is, my beautiful grad, 

proudly holding her diploma! 

     Here she is with Sonny (and all of us) at a wonderful Japanese restaurant, aptly named Hana as well. 

It was lovely to see my daughter! She will now move to a new apartment (otherwise, she'd have to pay rent for the summer months), come home just for a day and go to her summer job in Santa Rosa - a town two hours away from us by car. 

See you soon, Hanah!