Always...

I guess my heart strings will always be pulled each year around this time. Somehow I always end up in the Mesa Community College clock tower courtyard alone in the evening, just me and the graduation setup. I remember the first time I saw the chairs. The white chairs that line the grassy area where we have our graduation ceremony were being set up. I don't think I knew that they actually did a ceremony; I guess I hadn't thought that far ahead when I first saw them. It was spring of 1998 and it was the end of my first semester. I was just finished with my CIS 105 class and exhausted. I was walking from that class through the center of campus when I caught a glimpse of the white rows of chairs. Instantly I had tears in my eyes and knew I had to be there in the ceremony some day.

Through much work I earned the right to sit in the white chairs. With loved ones around me I got to celebrate graduation and all its glorious festivities. And then it was over.

I graduated from ASU a couple years later and of course did the whole ceremony thing all over again, except this time it was in an arena and this time I made it on stage where people I barely knew said nice things about me to everyone present. Somehow I made it on the front cover of a local newspaper as well for looking the most thrilled, I think. In the picture I was hugging a girlfriend and absolutely elated that we made it.

Last year I was back to those white chairs again at Mesa Community College, only this time I got to sit there as faculty. I was totally moved that suddenly I was watching people I taught walk. Oh my god. I helped them reach the white chairs.

Today I took a final for a class I'm in. I went kicking and screaming to take the thing because it wasn't even a real final... Different story for a different day. Anyway, when I left the test there I was again all alone with the chairs. And nothing's changed. After all these years those white chairs make me want to push and earn the right to be sitting in them.