I Watched My Daughter Receive Her Doctorate

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Saturday evening, June 12, was an incredible event in my life.

The day had been filled with celebration for the four graduates in our family.  A festive luncheon filled the afternoon, as relatives gathered to congratulate my niece, my nephew, my husband and my daughter.  The highest honor was to my daughter, who was receiving her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine that evening.  So overwhelmed with seeing relatives I don’t often get the chance to reconnect,  I didn’t have much time to really dwell on the fact that the nine years of college my youngest had put in would be finally coming to fruition.

It was watching her walk down the aisle to her seat with her class that evening that started the  flashbacks.

Just for a second, I was back on the delivery table.  They were telling me that my baby had the strong heartbeat of a boy.  I could not see anything but directly in front of me the tunnel vision was so intense, and  I was gripping the nurses hand as she returned the squeeze.  One final push and I heard “It’s a girl!”  I looked at my husband and I said, “Dave? It’s a boy, isn’t it?”  Dave attempted to hide the disappointment on his face and I tried to switch gears in my brain.   Though I had prepared for a boy, I always said that of course there was a minute chance that our second child could be a girl, too.  I guess I really didn’t believe it, though.  They put her on my chest and she looked down at me with a slightly dazed look on her face.  “Oh Emily!” I said, “I wasn’t expecting you!”  And the minute I laid eyes on her I fell in love with my second daughter and final child. She had a full head of thick black hair, and was known throughout the ward as “the baby with the hair” for the next three days we spent at the hospital. During her young childhood, I couldn’t have asked for a child with a sweeter, kinder disposition.

As the class sat down, they introduced the speakers, and gave special recognition awards to alumni.  My mind went back to another time.

I was in the first stages of recovering from a complete nervous breakdown. My oldest daughter had gone to college, but my youngest had taken my illness badly.  She  had become, by the middle of her Sophomore year slovenly in appearance, overweight, and her grades were minimal at best. Our relationship was badly strained, and I had said  things out of anger and bitterness over the the whole situation that I  still regret terribly. She had been volunteering at  a nursing home and I didn’t see much of a future for her the way things were heading.  Then out of the blue she told us at dinner one evening that she had decided to become a doctor. My husband and I  both told her how difficult it would be to turn her grade point average around at this point.  She  simply replied, “Watch me!”

We watched the class stand up and take their oath.  My husband got some good shots of her with the camera’s zoom lens.

I remembered her walking down the aisle at her HS graduation.  Her grade point average had been improved just about as much as possible within the two and half years.  But it was her state test scores that won her a place among the  honor students at graduation, and a college acceptance in pre-med. Though she had not fully reconciled with me, I couldn’t have been prouder of her.  My husband had tears welling in his eyes the whole time.

At that point in the ceremony, the parents were asked to stand up as the audience was told how important our support was to them.

I remember her telling me in her second year of college that she was switching to veterinary medicine. With anybody else I may have thought that was a copout. Many students think this is an easier field, but veterinary medicine is twice as difficult a field of study, twice as difficult to get into a college, and only half as respected and half as well paid as their MD counterparts.  But I knew my daughter… the one who collected stuffed gorillas and stuffed sea turtles as a child.  The one who spent time volunteering her time at the herpetology lab and knew each frog, lizard, and snake by name and genus. I never once doubted her sincerity.

The role call began as the students prepared one be one to receive their hood.

My daughter graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.  It was one of the proudest moments of my life. But she had received some every disappointing news.  She had missed the cutoff for entering veterinary college by 4 people.  The board was extremely supportive, telling her that she didn’t have enough large animal background, and if she returned again with this  required experience, she had a good chance of getting in.  For the next year she worked ceaselessly in horse clinics and hospitals  and my house often smelled like a barn as soon as she stepped in.  But our relationship was slowly mending, and it was so good to have her home for awhile. I don’t think I have ever seen anybody so determined to reach her goal.

When she returned the next year, she was on pins and needles until they personally called her to tell her she was accepted.

As they called her name I watched this confident, mature woman stand in front of the professor who placed the hood around her neck.  With her dream job awaiting her in three weeks, she  was not even the same person that entered four years previously.  But for a second my mind flashed back further and further until I saw the “baby with the hair” sitting on my stomach, saying hello to me and the human race.  It was just yesterday… and it was an eon ago. And ocean of time separated these two events, and yet they were still intimately connected in my mind.

As the newly graduated class filed out of the auditorium, she looked up at me and blew me a kiss.