Squished between Goldie’s dad and her grandfather, I saw Goldiella walk the stage and be handed her high school diploma. I stared at the very spot for some time knowing her time would come. And it did. It came at the beginning of a long line of people because her name was at the start of the alphabet. It happened and then I scratched my head and wondered, did it really happen?

When her transcript and diploma came in the mail, I held the evidence that it did in fact happen. I looked at various pictures of her in a cap and gown, smiling and standing straighter than ever. Goldiella graduated. Tests, paper writing, hours of homework to try to understand things that were beyond my own brain’s capability, musicals, choir concerts, studying, reading, on site work experience, and late nights… all led her to the stage where standing there the applause was loud and energetic.

Goldi’s open house was an absolute dream. We invited everybody in the world and everybody in the world came. Teachers, doctors, friends, neighbors, parents, the librarian, the mail person ( ok not the mail person. ) We wanted everyone to know that she had graduated. But more importantly we wanted them to know that they had touched Goldi’s life.

“Thank you for coming to my open house,” Goldi writes. Her calligraphic writing is a cross between a first graders practice printing and a third grade cursive writer. There were 101 to send. But that many came and she was thankful for that many. Now, she reads their cards over and over again. She may keep reading them for as along as she holds a smile about that day.

Summer doesn’t take its time. It speeds on even on unbearably hot days when you wonder what you would do inside for a whole long day. As the summer speeds on, it whispers change over and over again. I shiver at the thought of change. But without it, there is no growing and stretching and becoming who Goldi should be. Who should she be? Only God knows. With faith and trust, that is all that matters.