Graduation Day by Nannette Croce

If all goes as planned when you read this I will be at Skidmore College for my daughter’s graduation. As you can imagine on such an occasion, I am waxing nostalgic––not about my daughter’s life, but my own.

I have a good memory for times past (not for things that need doing). This has provided me, at each stage of my daughter’s life, with an understanding of what she might be thinking and feeling. And right now she, like me at the time, can’t imagine a day when the thought of dorm life sends chills down her spine and ending her night at ten is preferable to starting it at that hour or later.

On my first job I shared an office with a fellow alumna of George Washington U and was horrified to learn she hadn’t been back to DC in four years. Washington, DC was my second home. I planned to return soon and often.

In the end, it took me five years and since my time there coincided with the Metro construction (yes I am that old), the city looked completely different the next time I saw it. I went back with my new husband. We had a little more money to spend. Though not flush, we could splurge on some of the restaurants I had to pass up in my student days.

Five years earlier I couldn’t have imagined turning up my nose at that deli we all frequented or preferring dinner for two and a glass of wine over a crowded bar.

When my daughter swears she’ll attend every reunion and maintain contact with every friend, I nod. Living the future can be more fun than knowing it.

Mornings by Nannette Croce

Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep. In the still dark hours before sunrise God tells me of the plans I am to fulfill.
-George Washington Carver

Morning is my time. Even as a teen when my friends were being dragged out of bed by frustrated parents, I was never one to sleep in. Not just by choice. Physically I’ve always awakened early no matter what time I go to sleep, so that makes me an early to bed person as well. In college I’d find a bed to curl up on at late-night parties, then claim to have “passed out” in order to save face. Even then, 8:00AM was a late morning, and I don’t think I’ve ever in my life slept past 9:00AM unless I was sick.

Sometimes I’d like to be a night owl, making use of the wee hours, but with no more time clocks to punch and no more kids to get off to school, morning can be as quiet and productive a time for me as late nights. I can sit down at my computer and answer all my e-mails before even going down to breakfast where I still enjoy reading a printed newspaper with my morning coffee. But it is spring and summer, when I can sip my coffee outside, that I most love my mornings. For me, no nighttime activity can begin to compare with watching the sun rise in a morning sky and trying to judge by its gradations from yellow to orange to red what weather it will bring with it . Or listening to the birds tuning up for the day, first one or two here and there, then building to a crescendo.

Of all animals, birds seem to take the most inspiration from the start of a new day and the possibilities it holds. I take my cue from them.