a graduation

a graduation      (for Heather)

   

The moon has been your guide in the land of the rising sun
   and your companion on the shores of human genesis.
In Hiroshima, you didn't filter the far-off echoes of a once-withered earth
   before turning to walk with the ghosts,
   or begging to hear from slaves, scholars, and immigrant children.

A pilgrim, you’ve learned to listen to their stories
  and shamelessly tell your own, 

  drafted with sacrificial goats, political rallies,

  and volcanic hikes to views shared with the gods.
You understand not many can speak of finding serenity
while finding cracked, thirsty lips
  on the dying brown people, in the cracked thirsty earth
  of a dying brown desert.

You’ve learned about oppression and depression and life
  from books filtered through your experiences,
  and from life filtered through nothing but its living
  and your passion.

As you speak of this, they will declare you learn’ed.
And though I'll photograph the moment
  through the lenses of my unearned pride,
  my contentment will be in knowing

  you've also learned that love finds the music,
  magic weaves the forest canopy,
  and a rhyme can feel alive.

I believe you’ve discovered people needn’t be taught fantasy,
  though all dreams must be encouraged;

  and finding a child who believes in unicorns
  will excite your hopes in hesitant times.

Woman, my child, that you also understand
  how travelers must be brave yet humble

  and getting lost can mean a new route home;
  that the luxury of having can’t compare to the riches of giving,
  and that in exchange for loving passionately
   your word can call an army to encircle you;

That you understand means you are ready.

   Humbled, so am I.

Love,
Mom
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The intro, moved down here based on feedback :)

In a few weeks, my daughter will graduate college. She has an impressive resume: she's been playing the violin and cello since she was in elementary school, she earned her black belt in Karate her senior year of high school and then left immediately to re-do that senior year as a Rotary exchange student. She learned Japanese from her classmates in a public Japanese high school and followed that up a few years later with learning Wolof from her Senegalese exchange family while she improved her French as a student at the university there. She spent school vacations teaching a college course to male inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary, working as a maid in Yellowstone, doing a senate internship in Washington DC, and sunburning as she left water and food in the Arizona desert when she worked and camped on with a border humanitarian group. And of course, she spent the academic years working with ESL students in an elementary school while carrying  full course loads and writing for her college newspaper.

That she has experienced so much of life thrills me. But it's who she is that makes me proud. I'm proud of her for seeking out the experiences, for grabbing life by the horns and riding it like a wild bull. I'm proud of her for being able to love with all of herself and for leaping into the unknown as though she was a 500 pound sumo wrestler and not a 5'4" waif. And the relationship she has with her sister and three brothers makes me choke up every Christmas when they're all home. Her experiences throughout her college years have definitely helped mold her into a strong and capable woman, but she has been a force of pure stubborn joy since the day she was born.

If you're reading this Heather, congratulations on all that you've achieved so far. I'll see you soon. You'll be able to spot me in the crowd pretty easily, I'll be the one sitting with a ghost beside me and we'll both be beaming while watching the woman you've become. Enjoy the next few weeks; they will be both an ending and a beginning.

It's true. You've only just begun.

With all my love,
Mom
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One Shot Wednesday: A poetic flashmob.