A Winter Evening
My postal carrier knocks hard on my door. He bangs on it, actually to deliver my mail. I’m not quite sure why we get the personal attention, but I think it has to do with us leaving Pringles and water out for him to enjoy on hot days.
“It says certified mail. Looks like a diploma.”
I instantly know. As I limp to the dining room table, my mom hands me the heavy cardboard envelope.
“Come on, Jon. Joel’s waiting in the car.” My brother can be impatient.
“He’ll be fine. Just stop. Stop. I just. Leave me alone.”
I feel it snowing inside me.
I begin to tear the envelope open at the seam. You know that perforated line thing designed to make things easier, and in the end, you just tear your stuff in half. Tear everything up inside.
I start going slower to see the words:
THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF
LINDENWOOD UNIVERSITY
ON THE RECOMMENDATION OF THE FACULTY
HEREBY CONFER UPON
JONATHAN MICHAEL SAUCEDO
THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN WRITING
“We’ll get a nice frame for you. We’ll hang it up,” my mom offers as I place it in a drawer where my cat won’t scratch it. I can always order another copy, but I want my original.
“I think I’ll get a grilled cheese today. Oh, and my new wheelchair is on the way. It’s kinda hard to stand for long.
“Okay. We’ll be home when it gets here.”
Have you ever walked through the snow in the morning wearing glasses? You feel the cold but only see white haze?
In 2003, when I graduated with my Bachelor’s in Theatre and Secondary Education, we recessed to Pomp and Circumstance. I remember looking around the quad for my friends but couldn’t find anyone. Everyone had scattered with their families.
“You’ll see them again, Jon,” my mom said. I nodded.
Where did everyone go?
I’m traveling to St. Charles, Missouri, to attend my graduation this May. I won’t know anyone, having studied remotely, except for my professors, but I just want to walk that stage, ya know. Or roll across it if it’s that time again.
I started this journey for my Master of Fine Arts with a map in my heart in 2003 that somehow got crumpled up and thrown away. The seasons have a way of fogging your glasses.
In 2020, when the world shut down, I sat alone in my bedroom with my laptop, an incredibly rough writing sample, and a letter of intent to Lindenwood University, and the admissions committee saw something they liked, and just like that, I was in my bedroom writing each day, one class every eight weeks, all my body and disability budget could withstand, and four years later, I earned my degree. A terminal degree. A college professor’s degree. Through illness and solitude and treatments, my words earned me back hope that I thought I lost in the early 2000s.
So long ago and so close to my heart.
I’m shopping for the perfect frame right now as I sit on my bed where this whole process began, and I don’t know why, but something aches.
Aches deeply. And I can’t put my finger on the pulse of it.
I will find that frame before I cross that stage in May.
It’s still winter here, though as my cat sits beside me. And the night is quiet. The snow comes again this week. I remember why I need to write:
All good things don’t necessarily end; they change with the seasons.
Note: Thank you to Jenny Lane, Editor-in-Chief of “Nowisms” at medium.com, for originally publishing this piece.
