Blessed Day!

Today is graduation day for Justin. I am so pleased with his perseverance in obtaining this goal. It has been a long and expensive journey for their family.

All of our children have made this journey at their own expense and hardship.

I can't begin to express the joy it gives me....I have told them from the beginning that school does not end without the college diploma. I am pleased that they allowed me my indulgence.

I hope that they will choose to continue learning their entire life. I believe that education is the great equalizer. Challenging yourself to learn and grow. Promising that you'll never allow yourself to become stagnant.

You will never be too old to learn something new. For instance:

Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn

The language of the trees.

That's done indoors,

Out of a book, which now you think of it

Is one of the transformations of a tree.

The words themselves are a delight to learn,

You might be in a foreign land of terms

Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome,

Where bark is papery, plated, warty or smooth.
But best of all are the words that shape the leaves

–Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform –

And their venation–

palmate and parallel –

And tips –

acute, truncate, auriculate.

Sufficiently provided, you may now

Go forth to the forests and the shady streets

To see how the chaos of experience

Answers to catalogue and category.

Confusedly. The leaves of a single tree

May differ among themselves

more than they do From other species,

so you have to find,

All blandly says the book,

"an average leaf."

Example,

the catalpa in the book

Sprays out its leaves in whorls of three Around the stem;

the one in front of you

But rarely does, or somewhat, or almost;

Maybe it's not catalpa?

Dreadful doubt.

It may be weeks before you see an elm

Fanlike in form,

a spruce that pyramids,

A sweetgum spiring up in steeple shape.

Still, pedetemtim as Lucretious says,

Little by little,

you do start to learn;

And learn as well, maybe,

what language does

And how it does it,

cutting across the world
Not always at the joints,

competing with

Experience

while cooperating with

Experience,

and keeping an obstinate

Intransigence,

uncanny, of its own.

Think finally about the secret will

Pretending obedience to Nature,

but Invidiously distinguishing everywhere,

Dividing up the world to conquer it.

And think also how funny knowledge is:

You may succeed in learning many trees

And calling off their names as you go by,

But their comprehensive silence stays the same.
Howard Nemerov

So much to learn-so much power in knowledge, in words! It's magical.

I have been blessed with the most amazing children-they are a gift to me and a gift to this world. They bring magic to my life.

I'm over the moon