Skipping Graduation

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club:

Well, now that school is officially over, I can confess that V never graduated.   I will never forget the excitement of that day:  The beautiful dresses; the carefully-applied makeup; hair combed and styled and sprayed just so.  Cameras and camcorders and grandparents and diplomas wrapped up in yellow ribbons.  Her older sister, offering advice.

My husband went out to the lawn to claim a few of the folding chairs that had been set up hours earlier in preparation for the big event.  I took V to the assigned room. 

She paused at the entrance.  “I’m not doing it, Mom.”

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Dolly Derby

Well, Squints and a friend are making a devil’s food cake with butter cream frosting and trashing my kitchen as they try to separate the eggs.  Perhaps I should give them a hand, but I won’t.  The cake may be delicious.  Quite possibly, it will be a disaster.  But, short of a fire, I will stay out of their way, acting only as consultant.  I will allow them to own this project because of a lesson my parents repeatedly taught my siblings and me years ago, a lesson that said that in order to succeed, we must first fail.

* * *

A gigantic cardboard box waited in the center of the main room at the K of C Hall.  A gaggle of girls crowded it, some kneeling on the grimy chipped tiles, others standing and leaning forward, watching the proceedings.

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