Two packages came today. Both have pairs of white bucks in them; these are the shoes that my father wore every day to work( white bucks, crew cut, the whole package...see picture above!). Will wants to wear a pair to graduate in; to pay tribute to his grandfather and to acknowledge that he is the McKinley House prefect this year. Again, the layers of meaning in this gesture are many. I know everyone goes through this, and I am excited about Will's next steps, but our lives will feel a little empty for awhile without his big presence. So, here we are....can we really be here already? I thought I might just put a couple of pieces of my own up tonight to pay homage to Will, to RPM (my dad), and finally to US (I gave the graduation address in 2005 as the McKinley/Hawley years came to a close, and just talked of my myriad connections to US, especially my connection as a parent)..
I watch them amazed
They are both so beautiful.
He well-muscled, seventeen, tousled hair, that smile.
She tall as he, a slim beauty with long blonde hair,
a knock out at fourteen.
They are mine but even more,
they are each other’s.
He has loved her out loud even unborn,
my stethoscope in his ears, dancing to her heartbeat.
In those black Batman boots, he sang to her and
offered his favorite toy when she arrived.
All these years have slipped like
shuffled cards through my hands,
and here he is needing her advice on colleges,
making sure his girlfriend gets the nod.
Oh she teased him so;
making him jump through hoops to love her,
but she has watched his every move,
making him laugh, helping him write.
Needing him, she has grown
into this graceful beauty he loves to defend.
What finer reward of parenting than this?
Their love as sure a thing as Spring’s arrival,
as divine.
Love Song for my Father
Walking the great gray dog,
loving how her velvet ears stream out behind her
as she lopes away and blends perfectly
with the dun world of Cleveland March,
I feel him moving with us in these woods.
I feel him in this pocket of breeze
lifting, moving just those leaves and branches
near us, like a wave as we move,
touching my face and arms.
And suddenly I am there again and he says,
Why do you love me?
as he lies in the dark, fighting with his pain,
in the big bed with the cinnamon gum
all over the back of the headboard.
What a question to ask your daughter!
It surprises me, and I open my mouth to speak,
but somehow my words are swept from me,
unspoken. What a thing not to know.
What do I say now, now that you and your pain are gone?
That I forgive you for all you weren’t?
That I finally recognize more of what you were?
I wish you had shared more of you with us,
your daughters, who tried so hard
to be swept up into your enormous,
educating-boys, gifted life.
Your question was an offering
to me, an opening.
I know who I am, can you accept me, love me now?
But I stood thickly, didn’t I,
knee deep in anger and impotence,
letting this chance fall like water through my fingers.
With words, we shared illness, though.
For the first time, you wrote me letters –
Dear Cancer, love Vascular Compromise,
Dear Chemotherapy, love Aortic Bifemoral Bypass,
Dear Strength, love Patience,
Dear Metastases, Love Pain,
Dear Grief, love Loss.
As I stand looking at the school
you built, I feel you stirring in me.
I marveled as you clung by your bloody fingertips
to life, your jagged pain cutting you to ribbons.
But as I bear witness to my own disease,
I understand this fierceness,
this wild aliveness you gave me.
I feel your words working in me too,
your love of language, the way you worked
a room when you opened your mouth.
So I open my mouth to these woods,
and I say I love you out loud.
I shout it out over the lake,
I reverberate it through halls of timeless boys.
We have loved each other imperfectly,
unevenly, but time works you around me
a little closer each time I’m here.
The beautiful dog comes when she hears me yell,
her love so simple somehow.
University School Graduation Address given 6/3/05
Good morning Class of 2005! -- and good morning to your parents, faculty and friends. I’m delighted to be here. But I have to tell you that I have an eerie feeling that I was also destined to be standing here before you, right here, right now, addressing Dr. Hawley’s last graduating Class.
Now you may find this curious as you have never heard my name or seen my face before, AND I’m a girl, but as you may have heard in Dr. Hawley’s introduction, I have many connections to US.
In fact, I have so many connections that I thank my lucky stars I wasn’t born a boy, because if I had actually gone to school here too….well, as a physician, I can say that this situation might not have been compatible with life—too much US-ness. The truth is that this place has woven itself firmly into my DNA whether I have wanted it too or not.
I grew up here—literally. My father became the 5th headmaster of University School in 1963 when I was 3 years old. He reigned supreme for the next 25 years—until I was 28—when Dr. Hawley took over. Now these years are very formative years in a lifetime. During this time, my mother was the lower school librarian and reading specialist, and I have had the great good fortune to call the Hawleys friends since I was 8. And there are many more connections that I’ll talk about,
But before I do, seniors, I want to tell you about a little research I did in my office. I polled the office staff and some of the medical students I work with, and not a single one of them could remember who had given their high school graduation address or what the talk had been about. I’m not sure whether this makes me feel good up here, but at least I know what I’m up against. So, to make things simpler, I’m going to focus on just 1 word, and that word is foundation.
And I’m going to do this by telling you some stories:
My very first memory of US is walking over the wooded grounds of what would become this upper school campus with my father who was, and still is I might add, larger than life. I’m 7, and I remember that walking with Dad was a bit like walking next to Paul Bunyon. There he was striding over the rocks and through the forest as I scrabbled over rocks behind him. I remember him stopping and turning to me and saying” Lis, what do you see?” And I looked around and said something like, “a forest?” He said, “I see a school, do you see it?” Well, I have to admit that I was focusing more on the salamanders at my feet, but there was no denying his incredible excitement about this place, about education. This new property would be his foundation for educating boys.
Now I’m 11 years old, and it’s Saturday and I’m sitting in the conference room outside of the headmaster’s office upstairs. I’m folding a stack of hundreds of letters to upper school parents and putting them into envelopes. I’ve been hired with the promise of a ride in that convertible and ice cream if I get everything done, and I’m eager to spend time with Dad, so I agree.
But this is a dull task and a long one. What I remember is gradually beginning to pay attention to the conversation I’m overhearing. Dad has a record playing—It’s a Princeton Nasoons recording that a graduate has sent him. Over this I hear two very distinct voices, Dad’s and the new, young teacher whom dad really likes, a guy named Hawley. They are talking, loudly, back and forth, and laughing, for hours. Now what is so remarkable about this scene is that it is repeated many times until I realized that there are other things to do on a Saturday afternoon or dad hires some very needed help.
But until then, I went many Saturdays to that conference room. Each time the scene is the same. I clearly don’t remember everything about what was said, but I do remember the essence. I remember the excitement they shared. They were debating, and pushing each other, pounding fists, and laughing—a lot--, and I remember understanding at some point that these guys were working……they were loving what they were doing, and what they were doing was remarkable. They were developing innovative curriculum and programming that would challenge and stretch boys so that they took chances and failed sometimes, but felt supported enough to get back up and do something they didn’t think they could. They were developing an environment in which boys could build a foundation of scholarship that was unsurpassed, and that’s what each of these men committed their lives to doing, and this epoch has spanning the last 42 years. That’s a long time!
Ok, now I’m 15, and I am in the passenger seat of the old blue US truck fitted with a snow plow, and Dad is driving. Believe it or not, we are plowing the long upper school driveway at some crazy hour in the morning on a school day, and it’s freezing. Clearly Dad has not yet hired the help he needs, but the truth is he loves doing this. I’m sleepy, but I’m company as my older sister has rebelled and refused all things US, and here we are again talking about this school and boys and education.
I’m not exactly sure if dad ever really recognized that he had two girls, but that’s really a different talk. You do understand at this point that I couldn’t get away from it—from these discussions of education and boys. I mean being the headmaster’s daughter was just not always all that fabulous. All right seniors, would you date the headmaster’s daughter? I don’t think so. I began to rebel a little myself having grown somewhat tired of talking about educating boys. I went away to college, and there was Peace. I still heard about US when I talked to mom and dad, but mostly all was quiet.
Then I decide that I really have to be a doctor, and that Case is the place I must go, so back I come to Cleveland, just a little worried about returning to the whole US
Not only that, I spend many hours with his father who was the University School
And then what happens? I have a BOY! And at first, I think I’m not ready for this much US-ness, and Will goes to our local public school. But when that stops working for him, we send him across that checkered hall at the US
Fairly soon he realized that his heritage might not always be a blessing. Especially when he got into trouble with a teacher my Dad had hired who told him, “Will, I expect more from you”. Will came home fuming, calling it all so unfair, and then he hung his head and told me that he really liked this teacher, and that the teacher was right. This is what it’s about, isn’t it? Will stepped up and worked hard for this teacher. He was learning to build his very own foundation of scholarship.
And he has thrived here, and it is through him that I have my most important perspective on US-as a parent. Now I know that the road to seats you occupy today isn’t always an easy one. My son has had his struggles just getting through 7th grade. But it is through Will that I finally understand what Dad, Dr. Hawley, my mom, my husband Chip, Dr. Bob, and Ibby Gilkeson and so many others have been talking about: That this US education is so very formative. In this incredible environment you have worked very hard to lay down a solid foundation on which you now can build whatever you want.
My wonderful husband said to me early on in our relationship, “Lis, he said, I went to Princeton and my classes were nothing like Dr. Hawley’s philosophy class. I got three Ds in a row and that had never happened to me before!” and he pulled out a paper he still had from that class with more red pen on it than typing and the D- circled at the bottom. There are some words at the bottom that say something like, “Chip, you are capable of so much more than this”. And you know what? He knew it was true, and he worked like he had never worked for this inspiring teacher, headmaster, writer who knew what he was capable of.
And that’s what each of you takes from here. The knowledge that you were pushed and pulled and stretched – in whatever direction or directions it may have been, in the classroom on the athletic field, wherever, and that you have succeeded in building a foundation of excellence. And when college gets hard or you feel overwhelmed, you know you can count on it. This foundation will always be there, it will never go away, and you have it when you need it. What a gift.
And what a gift I’ve been given—to know this place and the people who have lead it so spectacularly and loved it for so long. And how lucky am I to be standing here talking to you today. It’s been such a pleasure. As my father would say, “Well done, gentlemen, and good luck!”
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