The Emerald Rose

And I’m a “prima facia” witness of that,….but let me expand and show you what I mean.

My parents did the VERY best they could to provide me with the best educations available for both grammar school as well as High School. Both Parochial and rigid to be sure! Just as their sacrifices were in the 1950’s and 1960’s, it was virtually a financial “no go”,….but they found a way to make it happen, ….and not just for me, The oldest child of their marriage, BUT my other four siblings as well! We ALL got the best we could get from them,and that bore that sacrifice heroically, and unbeknownst to us the children! Little did we know piling all the children in the car after school and going to see my father every Friday, was not just to say “Hi Dad, we love you! Though the window as he came out of the A&P Supermarket he worked for, to give our mother a pay envelope. (In those days pay was made the “old fashion way” with cash in a small envelope. We would then continue to drive, and go to various places, like the Bank that held their mortgage, the pharmacist who extended them, ( and all five children) the medications, and medicines credit a young family with five children who routinely were the “germ magnets” who brought home , measles, mumps, chicken pox, “whooping cough” and things like “lice”, execema ,…and for lack of medical terminology,…”creeping crud” which also spread through the entire house!!

Now all that said, and all those sacrifices they made for us, their five children,….what did we do with it? Here’s the score card. Myself the oldest, applied to one college and dropped out before the end of the first semester. Number two,my sister, decided to become and X-ray technician, succeeded, eventually became a manager and leader in her field, until she retired a few years ago. My brother opted to do “the honorable thing” and married a girl who he had gotten pregnant and went to work for the A&P Supermarket as and “apprentice” meat cutter. My other sister, wanted to be a nurse and she completed a four year nursing school, got both a BS in nursing and her formal designation as a “Registered Nurse”, our youngest brother went to the same private, Jesuit High School as my Dad, and then went on to Northeastern University to become an “HR” specialist, and follow in my father’s footsteps as a Labor Union Worker, and eventually a Labor Union Vice President, and a Corporate Vice-President of a Fortune 100 Company, and recently retired after forty years. I applaud all of them! So WHO AM I, AND WHAT DO I REALLY WANT FROM MY LIFE?

Well for starters , after 53 years of “living”, (I was apparently a slow learner!) I’m beginning to arrive at the answers to the BIG questions in life that both my parents AND my wife and I expect our children to answer at 18 years old!

OK, so what have I “found” at 72 years old? First of all I found the college that I really want to go to, were I “young” enough to do it at this age. Secondly what would I do with that education? And Thirdly, would it have changed the woman I married 51 years ago, or a minute of my “life experiences”,…to that one,…. the answer is absolutely NO, and punctuate that with an exclamation point (!). Let me share my conclusions and wishes on my past an future life.

I wound up using the GI bill after six years in the U. S. Navy and got an “Associate of Arts in Business”, (Summa Cum Laude, I might add), plus about 100 more college credit hours for other and subsequent courses I took and passed , but not in the right order, or “regimen requirement” to get a Bachelors Degree,….but that’s ok, they can’t “suck the knowledge” out of me,…right? “I” still studied it, and “”I” OWN IT!!

But last year,after FIFTY years of research, and study, my IDEAL college to attend came forward. It would be Hillsdale College, in Michigan. Why? It is real, requires mandatory study of the “Constitution of the United States” as well as the entire “Federalist Papers”, and other (What I call “ESSENTIALS”, in becoming and AMERICAN CITIZEN), as well as ongoing communications and knowledge of the Political “History” of this country, as it is evolving!!

So what else did I decide I want? Well, at 72 you start a “BUCKET LIST”, (you know, things you want to do before you die). Since I’m already 72,and my Dad graduated from Boston College in 1938,…..I got a shot of being a graduate of Boston College, (in one my specialty fields of study, both accredited and self studied, History and Oceanography) in 2038! Exactly ONE HUNDRED years after my Dad, from the same College, Boston College. I know that would have been a Crowning glory of his life, ( he passed in 1972) and me basically saying,…”See Dad, I understand now, even if it only took a hundred years, I understand.”.

Ok so you picked up on the “Oceanography”,……that’s part two which I’ll write tomorrow,….trust me it’s worth th 24 hour wait,….I promise you!

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