Big days, part 1

I should be sleeping. Instead I am making dinner for a friend who just had a baby. It's a joyful insomnia. It's easy to feel joyous. I have much to celebrate, and for now, I can choose not to dwell on the trials and tribulations around the bend. They'll intrude soon enough.

I am particularly proud of the fact that I made it through the challenges that piled up, one after another, in a week replete with celebrations. The first was my baby's birthday party. I suppose at four, it's inappropriate to call her a baby, but as my youngest, I'm afraid it's a moniker that will follow her into her adult life. After all, I'm still my mother's baby at 40.

This was my little one's first real birthday party.

We held it at the ballet school, yet again. For her, it was a dream-come-true. She dressed in the fairy costume Granma Thuthin made her, blew out the candles atop the homemade cake, and danced like lunatic for a full hour, while daddy ran out to put together goody bags. 

Best of all, she was surrounded by her best friends.

The party was absolutely adorable.

The kids giggled and played, and lived up to their gender stereotype. While the dance teacher sang out the instructions, the girls listened patiently while the boys ran laps around the studio.

Days after we celebrated four years of my sweet abundance of life, it was time to turn our attention to the culmination of our Chicago experience, my husband's law school graduation.

Before we could get the partying started, we had to deal with some logistical issues, like preparing an empty home to be inhabited by my parents, my grandmother, and my family for a week. I am so blessed to have made an amazing friend who was generous enough to move to a new home the week of graduation, leaving her old house ready for a South Texas invasion. She lent it to us not only to sleep in, but to host a party in, as well.

My husband and I set out borrowing beds from another dear and generous friend, moving sheets, pillows, towels, blankets, sleeping bags, table and chairs into the house. I then began the extensive shopping and cooking for Shabbat and a party. I was barely human by the time everyone arrived. Yet, somehow, we pulled it off. In fact, it was a pleasure, a real labor of love.

The week leading up to graduation was filled with events and parties for the graduates and their families. My husband took his mom to the "Last Lecture". I would have loved to have been there to hear the uplifting words of opportunity and gratitude, but I had to work. Instead, I got to go to the "Law School Prom". My husband and I dressed up, left the kids with the babysitter, and headed to the zoo for an evening of drinking, dancing, and celebrating with his classmates.

I was amazed how many of my husband's classmates with whom I had developed a relationship.

It drove home how much of a shared experience this had been for the two of us.

Many of his classmates had joined us at our home for a meal at one time or another.

Many I had met at various law school events.

I just wish we had had more gatherings like this during law school. I'll miss my hubby's buds.

Finally, it was time for graduation.

The process of getting to graduation was a bit crazy. My mother-in-law got there ahead of everyone and tried to save nine seats in a row, enduring name-calling and abuse in the process. In the meantime, I had to run out and get stockings and sweaters for my girls since the weather turned rainy and cold. Already in a rush, we attempted to get my grandmother into our high-up minivan, but her knees protested. we took two cars instead, my parents following with my grandmother in and out of Chicago traffic. At the venue we discovered that a wheelchair would have been handy. The ushers were calling everyone in, "we're locking up in two more minutes!", while my grandmother and I hobbled down the long corridors as fast as we could, until a kindly usher came along with a wheelchair. 

In the end, none of us ended up sitting together, and Granma Thuthin had to give up the nine seats.

Graduation itself was a beautiful and meaningful event for us, despite the chaos of trying to get the whole family there on time. The speakers captured the spirit of the occasion talking about the support and sacrifices of the graduates' families and of the hopes and opportunities of the future. In my deeply emotional and moved state, it all rang true. 

Northwestern University Law School does something beautiful I don't recall seeing in any other commencement ceremony. They invite the children to walk across the stage with their graduating parent. I've always found graduation ceremonies to be a bit tedious and merely endured, but this one was different. We may have been sitting in three different sections, but all of us were there together, all of us having made different sacrifices to celebrate my husband's commencement.

Part 2: Time to get the party started!