THE PUBLIC SHELF
For graduation day
Congratulations, kiddo. I mean that with my whole chest.
I watched you study at my kitchen table every Thursday for three years. You'd come over after practice smelling like the gym, eat half my fridge, and spread your chemistry notes across the whole table like a crime scene. You'd mutter at the textbook. Once you threw a highlighter at it. I pretended not to see.
The night you failed the midterm junior year, you sat at that table and didn't say anything for a long time. Then you said, maybe I'm just not smart. And I said, you're not stupid, you're tired, and there's a difference. And you went home and you went to bed, and two weeks later you got a B on the retake, and you came over and slapped it on the fridge yourself.
That B is still on my fridge. It's next to my grocery list. Every single time I look at it, I think about you at that table.
You didn't get here because school was easy for you. You got here because you kept showing up even when it wasn't. That's the part that'll matter, way after the diploma.
A piece of advice from your favorite aunt: keep your first paycheck stub. Someday it'll make you laugh.
Now go enjoy today. Then come over for cake.
Aunt Beth
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