Pomp and Circumblur

Dear Maureen, thank you for passing over the graduation cap. I'll hold on tight until the first week of October when my official graduation from unpublished to published comes and goes. Until then, I'll stay jittery and anxiety riddled just like you have been. Must be a rite of passage.

As I reported a few weeks ago, my baby graduated from high school. Since he attended a gargantuan public high school and I had forgotten my binoculars, there are no special moments to recount about him crossing over on the stage. Actually, I missed it. Wait a minute, I take that back, I saw him walk through the lens of my camera.



Note to self. Don't ever do that again. Not worth it.

What is worth it is his grand feeling of accomplishment. Two days before graduation I got a call from our lovely high school advisor, Vicki Crowell. "Lisa," she said, as soon as I answered. There was a sing-song in her voice. "This is your sixteen-thousand dollar-phone-call!" Tennessee offers the lottery scholarship to all who earn at least a 3.0 GPA and it amounts to 16K for four years! All of my efforts to harness his senioritis had paid off. Even though, there were days during the last four weeks of school when I just knew the two of us would end up in either the jailhouse or the hospital.

Now he's off to Middle Tennessee State University where he is going to major in Audio Recording. He wants to engineer records . . . and play the piano. Let's just hope he ever sees a paycheck. Ohhh, the flip side of the creative genes!


That's his graduation present by the way.


The other handsome gentleman in the picture is Will's big brother, Michael. He graduated 3 years ago and he's majoring in photojournalism. Maybe someday I'll get a business major out of a granddaughter.