The Mother’s Day Column
Best Mother’s Day gift ever. This is what I felt driving south to my daughter’s university graduation – that I was headed to a celebration of one of the greatest things you can do.
Education was highly valued in our family. If my mother had regrets, top of the list was that, in the 1950s, family circumstances meant when she’d moved to Wellington after high school, instead of enrolling at Victoria University, she’d had to work full time to support herself and didn’t ever make it to the campus up the hill.
So she was pretty delighted that both her children grew up and went to Vic’. She had our Bachelor of Arts Degrees framed and hung them proudly on the wall.
My daughter’s path also went in a different direction after high school but in her late twenties she knew – clearly and passionately – that she wanted to teach, and enrolled for a degree in teaching. It is incredible to me (“incredible” as in, I don’t know how she did it) that she spent the past three years as a sole parent of two while in fulltime university study. I get exhausted just thinking about the logistics involved in managing that, let alone the financial challenges.
When I graduated in 1984, it had been under much easier circumstances – I was single and childless, and my degree had been fully funded. The graduation ceremony was a stiff, formal affair, though made fun by having my parents and brother there – especially my brother who took me off to Wellington’s Bolton Street Cemetery to take photos in my gown and mortarboard that were definitely not stiff and formal.
For a graduation gift, my mother had gone to her favourite shop, Kirkcaldie & Stains, a fancy department store on Lambton Quay, and found a beautiful pewter photo frame which felt like a very grown-up gift at the time.
I still have the frame – it has held different photos over these forty years, currently a delightful picture of my mother as very young girl.
So for Holly’s graduation gift, I went to one of my favourite stores and found a crystal encrusted photo frame, slipping a current family photo inside it before they gift-wrapped it in the shop.
Holly’s graduation from the Tauranga campus of the University of Waikato was a vibrant, joyous affair. We clapped and cheered as each graduand became a graduate, and there was a spine-tingling haka from the very young brother of one of the students that brought the room to tears. Many of Holly’s cohort wore colourful korowai (traditional Māori cloaks) over their academic gowns – Holly’s was made by her stepsister.
The night before, I gave Holly a letter which she read aloud to me and her godmothers. In it, I told her that having a degree is a big deal and that I like having mine – it signifies that I spent several years of my life filling my brain up with interesting things: books, ideas, politics, friendships, civics. Thinking and dreaming. That I am still a big fan of thinking and dreaming, and we need to remember to make space for it.
A degree – or an apprenticeship, or any kind of study - is not just about what you learn for the assignments, but all the other things you learn in the process of getting it. It is also about community – the friends you make, and the people you then go on to work with.
The best Mother’s Day gift is seeing your child happy.