Graduation Dinner

Speaking of the second to the last episode ever of The Handmaid’s Tale in my last post, here is the main character surviving getting hung. I’ve rewatched it several times now. It does remind me of The Crucible, but with air strikes. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” was a famous line from the original book and season one. I love that the actress stares right into the camera when she says it. 

On another note, today Kevin and I went out with my daughter and my mom so my daughter could receive her graduation gifts from my mom. Even though she’s been out of classes for about a week and a half, the actual ceremony is tomorrow. I’m taking the day off and going by myself. Kevin has to work, and my mom doesn’t want to walk around at the stadium where it’s being held. 

I’m actually glad I’m going alone, because I feel like I’m going to sob. I’m definitely going to try and do it quietly. I have had three relatives who’ve all said that as soon as they saw their youngest or only child “walk across the stage”, they felt “ready to die.”  I thought to myself- I hope I don’t feel that way. Of those three relatives, only one was, actually, dying. The other two now that I look back on it, were just being a drama king and a drama queen. I’ve seen a lot of older people use their impending deaths to guilt and manipulate people. That’s probably what my two non-dying at the time relatives were doing. 

As for me, I’m just getting started. 

That’s my mom and daughter walking out of the restaurant. They look like twins not only from the front, but apparently they look like twins from the back too.  Almost the same hair. 

The waiter saw her opening gifts and automatically brought out the birthday strawberry. I guess they ran out of cake. 

When I graduated from high school 29 years ago, I remember the very next day just instantly feeling like life in the “real world” was so extremely different than what I’d been taught it was like when I went to school. Ever since then, I’ve unlearned and relearned a million and one things. 

Stuff I was so sure would happen never happened. Consequently, things I never thought would happen did. Like having her. Among countless other things. I was taught a lot of wrong things that I had to work very hard at to get right. In a way, it’s almost a good thing that I don't even feel close to feeling like I’m done relearning, because if I did, I might be actually trying to live vicariously through her. I just want her to pursue her own path and be there if she needs to figure it out all over again a few more times.