Rose jumped as the doorbell rang, looking up from where she was helping Lizzy change into a pretty sundress instead of her usual shorts and t-shirt. The little girl tried to run to the door—she loved visitors—but Rose restrained her, calling to Jack instead.
"Jack, can you get the door, please?"
A moment later, she heard the door open. Jack’s voice rang through the house.
"Hey, good to see you! We didn’t think you were going to be here."
Rose finished tying the strings on Lizzy’s dress and opened the door, letting her out into the hallway. Lizzy darted ahead of her mother, squealing in delight when she saw who had arrived.
"Nana! Great-Grandpa!"
"Hello, Busy Lizzy." Kathleen scooped her great-granddaughter up and gave her a hug, then passed her to David, who tickled her nose, making her giggle. "Rose, Jack, I’m sorry that we’re so late, but we got a flat tire coming here and had to wait for Auto Club to come and change it for us. We tried to call, but we were in a remote area and couldn’t get a signal for the cell phone."
"That’s okay," Rose told her, giving her a hug. "We’re just glad you made it. I was beginning to get concerned that something had happened to you two."
At seventy, Kathleen was still strong and vibrant, like most of the women in her family, but David was not so healthy. In spite of being two years younger than his wife, his health was much poorer, and he had suffered a mild heart attack six months before. Rose worried about him, although there had been no problems since.
"Now, where is my new great-grandson?" Kathleen asked, looking around for the baby.
"He’s still napping," Jack told her, taking Lizzy from David and showing the Flemings to the room he shared with Rose, and now with Paul, too. "We’re keeping him in our room for a while so that he doesn’t disturb Lizzy, or she him."
Paul was beginning to stir when they walked in, so Jack took him from the bassinet and rocked him gently, forestalling the baby’s cries. "Here he is—Paul Michael Dawson."
"My little brother," Lizzy added, looking as proud as if she had brought him into the world herself.
Kathleen took the baby first, cuddling him and cooing over him, while David picked up Lizzy so that she could see her baby brother. Finally, they traded children, David cuddling his great-grandson—or as close to a great-grandson as he would come, since his only child, Rebecca, had never had children of her own. The newborn in his arms gurgled contentedly, not caring what relation he was.
When Paul grew tired of being held and began to fuss hungrily, he handed him back to his mother and left the room with Kathleen, taking Lizzy by the hand so that her parents might have some privacy.
Rose sat down on the bed to nurse the baby, watching as Jack retrieved his cap, gown, and his tassel from their closet. After seeing the high prices for graduation attire when they had graduated from Masline City College two years earlier, they had saved their graduation attire to wear when the finished at UCR, too. The simple black caps and gowns worked just as well for UCR as it had for Masline City College, although they had had to buy new tassels, both to show the year they graduated and to show what their degrees were in.
When she finished nursing Paul, Rose put him back in the bassinet and went to help Jack with the cap, which kept sliding off his head. Laughing, she finally took some hairpins from the dresser and began using them to secure the cap.
"Rose! Come on!" Jack tried to brush her hands away, to no avail.
"I don’t want you losing this in front of all those people. Nobody’s going to say anything. They won’t show."
Jack finally stood still, giving her a long-suffering look, as Rose pinned the cap in place, arranging the pins so that no one would notice them.
"You look fine," she told him, tugging on his tassel to be sure it was secure. "Do you have your speech?"
"Right here." He pulled it out of his pants’ pocket. "Rose, I’ll be fine."
"I know you will. I’m just fussing over you."
"I know. Thank you."
"Good luck."
"You, too." Jack gave her a quick kiss. "I’d better get going. I have to get there early."
"We’ll be along shortly. We’ll meet you in front of Rivera Library after the ceremony, okay?"
"Great." He gave her one more kiss. "I’ll see you then."
Rose escorted him to the door, then turned to rounding up everyone to go to the area where the graduation ceremonies were being held.
*****
At three o’clock, Rose was sitting in the audience with the rest of the guests, watching the graduates file into their seats. Jack was already on the stage, sitting with the chancellor, the dean, and the person who would sing for this ceremony. Several members of the faculty, wearing the attire showing their different colleges and degrees, sat nearby, facing the graduating students and their audience.
Jack shaded his eyes against the bright afternoon sunlight as he searched for Rose and the others in the bleachers. Finally locating them, he looked at them for a moment, his eyes locking with Rose’s. She gave him an encouraging smile, then turned to break up an argument between Daniel and Lizzy, both of whom were overexcited and beginning to grow overtired, since they had spent naptime playing instead of sleeping.
Rose smiled at Jack as the last of the students arrived to the notes of Pomp and Circumstance. He smiled back, a little nervously, and then turned his attention to the chancellor, who was the first speaker at the graduation.
She sat back, listening with half an ear while she divided a box of crayons between Lizzy and Daniel. The two young children couldn’t be expected to sit quietly through the graduation ceremony—it was hard enough for adults, and they certainly wouldn’t nap, not with air horns blaring around them. Each child had a coloring book and crayons, but they were already arguing over who got which crayons. Rose and Helga each dug a few more crayons and markers out of their purses, items left there by their children, but the grouchy youngsters needed naps and took it out on each other.
Rose leaned forward as Jack walked up to the podium to give his speech. She smiled, proud of his accomplishments. Many people who had faced similar troubles in life never got as far as he did. They had helped each other along.
Jack adjusted the microphone—the singer had been much shorter than him—and began to speak, looking towards his family and friends as he did so.
"Here we are, gathered together one last time after our years at UCR, ready to step into the next phase of our lives, whatever that phase may be. Jobs, families, further schooling…we’re all going somewhere. Nine years ago, I would never have expected to be here now—unless it was to add to the crime statistics."
There were a few nervous laughs from the audience; crime was a problem at UCR.
"But I overcame my past, and pushed on to where I am today. Many of you have also faced obstacles in meeting your goals, and while those obstacles may seem small to some, they were important to the people facing them. But the important thing is that you did face them, and overcame them to get where you are today. If there’s one thing that’s especially important that I’ve learned over the years, it’s that everything and everyone is important in some way. If you close your mind to what’s around you, or to the people around you, everyone will suffer because of it. Keep an open mind and keep learning. Everyone has something to teach us, and our education doesn’t put us above anyone. We all matter. Take life as it comes and don’t worry all the time about money and your career, or you’ll wake up one day to find that your life has passed you by. Make your life count, each and every day, and you’ll never be sorry." He paused, allowing his words to sink in. "Thank you."
The audience applauded, and some cheered, though whether it was because of his words or because of the brevity of the speech, he wasn’t sure.
Shortly thereafter, the degrees were awarded, and he heard his friends cheering from the audience as he accepted his diploma folder—the second member of his class to receive it. In spite of everything, he had succeeded.
*****
Almost as soon as the first graduation ceremony had ended, people began to arrive for the second, making things crowded and confused. Jack and Rose met in front of Rivera Library just long enough for Rose to congratulate him. There were a few hurried pictures, and then Rose rushed to put on her cap and gown, soon heading to the stage for her part in her graduation ceremony. Jack and Mari returned to the house to get snacks and drinks for the restless children, for whom it was dinnertime even though dinner tonight would be later, after the graduation was over. Fortunately, this one would be shorter, since there were fewer students receiving degrees in these majors.
When they returned, the others had found a space in the bleachers again and had saved space for them. Jack held Paul, Lizzy sitting beside him. Daniel sat on the other side between Helga and Bill, the two children temporarily separated for pulling each other’s hair. After being given juice boxes and some slices of fruits and vegetables, the whining children calmed down. They had wanted some cookies, but their parents had no intention of filling them with sugar—they were restless enough already.
They were sitting quietly, drawing pictures on sheets of notebook paper that Sophie had given them, when Rose stepped up to sing. Jack leaned forward a little, startling the infant in his arms, but he quickly pulled a bottle from the diaper bag and gave it to him, silencing his whimpers.
Rose took a deep breath as she stepped up to the microphone. She had warmed up her voice before the students had begun to file in, but she was still a little nervous. The university’s song wasn’t too difficult to sing, but she was also singing the national anthem, which was notoriously difficult, even for the best, most experienced singers.
When she had finished the school song, she launched into the national anthem, trying to block out the people watching her as she looked at Jack, who was smiling proudly at her from the audience, Paul in his arms. On the cue, she began to sing.
Oh, say can you see
By the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed
At the twilight’s last gleaming
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watched
There so gallantly streaming
And the rockets red glare
And bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there
Oh, say does that star-spangled
Banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free
And the home of the brave.
The audience applauded when she was done. Rose stepped back, her face lit with happiness. She had done it, singing the national anthem without a hitch. She had hit every note, remembered every word, and had sung it the way she felt—simply, with no pretentious vibrato or would-be opera arias.
After another speech, the degrees were awarded, but for Rose, her greatest accomplishment that night was to sing that song—singing it for a wide audience, and not just the small groups she was accustomed to. Jack and Mari had encouraged her over and over to keep singing, as had her professors—and they had been right. She could do it, and she had. And in that moment, Rose’s plans for the future, which had been vague, crystallized. She would take her education and her talent and use it both to help others and to bring joy into her own and her family’s lives—just as she had been doing, but on a larger scale.
Politics, music, the rights of people—all of those things had fascinated her for years, and she was going to do what she could to make the world a better place. Just as Jack planned to help individuals in need, she, too, would help people—but for her, it would be the society as a whole that she would try to help. Both of them would do their best to make valuable contributions to the world and to their fellow human beings, no matter how long it took, or what form their work took. Together, they would make a life for themselves and their children—and in doing so, they would try to make the world a better place for everyone.