Commencement

I did not take my undergraduate commencement seriously. My mother and father did; they dressed formally and exchanged friendly words. We walked through the Common and the Garden afterwards, and we ate a fancy Italian dinner at Davio’s on Newbury Street. The May afternoon was bright. The restaurant’s roll butter was firm and cool. A fresh slice of lemon accompanied each glass of ice water.

I was eager for the pomp to conclude. I had my real life to get back to: my bookstore job, my friends, the pubs, the trips to Singing Beach. It never occurred to me to move home after graduation. I belonged in Somerville; Mom and Dad belonged in Havertown and Woodbury. They had birthed me, fought over me, and sent me to school. I was free of them now, or at least I wanted to be.

Although I’d been accepted to a few four-hat schools (the ranking system the Princeton Review directory used), I chose the three-hat one. During my stay, I changed majors once, significant boyfriends twice, and apartments three times. I journaled a lot and studied a little. I visited my family on Christmas and called them on their birthdays. They came to Boston more often.

A few years later, I wandered into graduate school—I liked to read and write more than I liked to do anything else. I also developed a fondness for professors’ praise. These seemed like good enough reasons to get an MA and a PhD.

It was convenient and simple to get my Masters up north, but for the PhD, I had to look elsewhere. Before leaving Boston, I told my father over the phone that my part-time college teaching was going well (it was). He was so proud of me, he said. He died of a heart attack a handful of days later. He never got to hear about the doctoral scholarship, the one Mom was so impressed with. She contracted a brain tumor six months after I received it.

I took a brief leave of absence from the program after she died. I sat in the whirlpool next to my neighborhood clubhouse a lot. If I kept my eyes on a particular spot, all I could see was palms and bougainvillea. I could forget the inhospitable city surrounding them.

I moved my husband and our two cats away from the city we loved, and I’ve stranded us in Miami with no exit strategy. I’ve been pursuing the PhD for four years now. I have read, and I have written. I have haphazardly chosen a research topic, and I get the impression that I have not lived up to my department’s expectations. With each semester, I want to do this work less and less.

(I want us to go home. I don’t know where that is.)

Next week, I will submit another draft of my prospectus. I sat across from my adviser in her office on Friday afternoon, listening to what kinds of questions she’s planning to ask during the oral exam. Her office is green and dusty, and she enjoys a view of the tall banyan trees. Some of the questions sounded easy, others hard, but none of them truly registered. In my head, I was whispering, “I don’t care! I don’t care!”

She asked if I would consider asking another professor to serve on my committee. Her implicit goal is to recuse herself, I think. She’s wanted to do this for a long time—I’m simply not her cup of tea.

If my parents hadn’t died, and if I had gotten my PhD during some future May, perhaps Patrick and I would have taken them to La Palme D’Or at the Biltmore to celebrate. My mother would have oohed and aahed over the intricate ceiling patterns, and my father would have ordered an extra portion of Kobe beef. I would have held Patrick’s hand under the table. I would have enjoyed the hazelnut mousse cake and the candlelight, and I would have thought about how wonderful everything was.

My adviser wanted to know if I had anything else to discuss. I told her no. You need to schedule a seminar room for the exam, she mentioned as she flipped through papers and lifted the receiver of her phone. She said I had better go right away and check with the department secretary—the whole campus is closing at three today.

It’s Commencement.