The speaker

This is the second of Amber's graduations I have attended. The last was six years ago, though it does not seem so. Amber's time at Marist appeared to have no set end. I was confused when, a year ago, they said they would finish with a bachelor's degree. One must do that before beginning a doctoral program, though Cornell managed to disappoint us by not accepting Amber.

They are the commencement speaker for adult undergraduates--the college does not treat that cohort as valedictory, but that essentially is what Amber is. Upon arriving on campus, Amber revises their speech for the last time, rushing to a lab to print a new copy and emailing it to the few people who need to approve it and have it available on the dais from which they will speak in ten hours. I doubt the college's concern is Amber succumbing to a diatribe on inflammatory issues of social import. They are not so flashy, and they wrote a speech informed by the public speaking course they took through our library this otherwise fallow week--Amber is incapable of not being busy for any significant length of time. (If I were to write a speech for such a captive audience, someone would regret giving me the honor. I would add in something I erroneously thought was funny.)

Amber is fretful, which is their prerogative today. They ask if I had bought them flowers, though they had driven me and might have noticed the bouquet. I say I intended to do this today so the flowers would remain fresh.

There are better answers than this. Before I reach another building, I text Kristina to pick up flowers.

The award ceremony is at 9 a.m., and the commencement is, inexplicably, at 6 p.m., leaving much of the day unaccounted for. Amber says we could go home between, but they do not mean they want to spend an additional hour and a half in the car.

During the award ceremony, I marvel at the strange intricacies of the theses graduates wrote, wishing I could have a list to use for my College Experience class at my facility. They are full of queer pop culture and science that borders on occult. It is a shame the graduates' doting families are not presented with bound copies of each, but the plaques will have to suffice. (I have combed through several iterations of Amber's final paper on LAMP proteins and glycosylation in mocha mice--all forty-odd pages of it--and I cannot promise the layperson would grok them. I would love the chance to try.)

Amber receives two plaques, one of the few people who do.

I am delighted with how stereotypical each of the graduates is in matching their majors: anxiously hunched computer science majors, an artist in a dress like powder blue air, business majors in suits too warm for the day. Amber is elegant and humble in a light black dress they recently picked up from a free store.

When we go out for lunch with Amber's sister--who had flown from Texas to attend this--and mother, I suggest the venue that allows me to buy a bouquet to keep in my wife's good graces. They say I would be forgiven if they got flowers before their graduation party.

The awards

I am afflicted by the worry no one will believe me as I am besotted with my wife. Throwing base facts at the reader, such as Amber being the commencement speaker, only goes so far in affirming how stellar they are. It is almost a shame how I dote. When Amber does something extraordinary, my prose can only render it commonplace. I recall the long months when they studied in our living room as I tiptoed to make them dinner, and only with coaxing could I get them to disengage long enough to eat something. Of course, they are the speaker.

I misunderstood, though. Amber's being an adult graduate does not imply they will speak to only the tiny gaggle of likewise adult students. They speak before a packed house, families to the bleachers. I text them I am jealous. I have never had an audience this impressive. The closest I've come was a similarly (though quarter this size) standing-room-only auditorium at Otakon, who did listen to me ramble for an hour about monsters--which is not quite Amber's inclination.

Amber will not step up to the stage, give their tight five, and recede. They are not only a speaker but are required to sit on stage with the faculty for the ceremony, a notion my nervousness would make an impossibility in their shoes. I would barely be settled before my bladder would suggest I might need a break, especially as they had come from a green room with fruit and seltzer.

It would further compound my anxiety to stand behind the podium, seeming smaller than I was. Amber is a stately five-one. Though I had joked that Marist should provide them an apple box or step stool, being dwarfed behind the lectern might have been a lesser indignity.

Kristina joins us after work. Her usual radiant joy is taken up a notch, and I am even more delighted to see her on this occasion. Anyone who loves Amber enough to be here deserves all my fondness. We sit close, elbows touching, stage left. The angle is not perfect--it could not be unless we were graduates or capable of hovering over them--but we gaze on my wife in profile, confined to their dais on stage.

Their speech is perfect: encouraging but not so specific that it comes off as irrelevant or pandering. Amber includes a few laugh lines, though these are washed pale under the thrum of people talking. When Amber indicates their husband in the audience, I get more applause than anything they say, leading them to wonder if they shouldn't just leave on that. I suspect I get the applause because the audience might recognize this is where a speech might end.

I slink down the stairs and ask the security guard if I might present Amber with the flowers. He informs me he will not allow this and tells me to return to my seat. Daisies on the dais are not a privilege a speaker is due.

That the bleachers are peopled by those so lacking in manners that they talk over Amber incenses me. Yes, the ceremony is exhausting into the second hour. Still, basic decorum states you quietly stew, showing the modicum of respect you would want for your loved one after the computer voice announces diverse names with perfect pronunciation (an excellent innovation over some faculty member's palate moving through continents and languages).

I want resounding applause for Amber, but as they finish, they receive only tepid clapping from half the crowd, the same they would give anyone leaving the stage, expediting the ceremony to its close. After all, the audience's children have already walked, and what is the point of sitting still?

Amber receives a gift for their speechifying services. My wife is good enough not to tear it open on the stage, as might have been my urge. Afterward, I am on tenterhooks until they do so, revealing a brass statue of a fox, the college's mascot. Amber's eyes widen, turning it over in the light. It has a satisfying heft.

The gift

Amber's former professors are in a semicircle outside the graduation. I am astounded not only by how fond Amber's professors are but also by the fact that professors can be that fond. I warrant that I was not half the student Amber is, nor have I had a student with a quarter of their devotion to a subject.

If these professors could always keep Amber, they would. Even those who note with regret that they did not have Amber as a student give them additional hugs and offer to help in any way they can. I do not know how to have this relationship with a professor. It seems Amber cannot avoid it.

The professors do not understand what to do with me. I have surely been mentioned, though not with such detail as a Lysosome-Associated Membrane Protein 2--Amber's mistress. Adoring Amber as they do, the professors may have expected more than me for Amber's spouse. I can hardly blame them.

Amber lingers in the night's heat outside the building, surrounded by others in nylon robes. This is the only Marist graduation they will get, and I cannot deny them extending it by any means. They have been in their element at Marist, so much so that they just spoke and were treated as all but faculty. They return to being a little adrift tomorrow, even if we can ameliorate that with their graduation party.

Over a decade ago, I had the great surprise that Amber is fathomless in their intellectual curiosity. For the first year of our relationship, I would have listed Amber's virtues by the dozen. Still, I missed this capacity because they were too busy masking their autism to be showy in mixed company. Once I knew their intellect--though still only a fraction--my reaction was a profound disappointment. When I thought my lover was a passionate and talented artist, I could forgive a little that the world had failed to reward their efforts. Society underestimates the arts, something I, as an author, can say without reservation. That Amber is a scientist with equal aplomb in a lab, assisting veterinary surgery, and in a garden and that the world still looks the other way feels discriminatory. When they contacted faculty members and graduate students before attending a conference and a college visit to Cornell, they were met with adoration from everyone, well beyond the polite interest one might imagine people would show someone asking questions. Finally, people who mattered saw in Amber what I do.

In the week between the final assignment and commencement, Amber had returned to themselves in a way I can only call unclenching. They had been occupied with higher education for eight years, and now they have nothing stressful on the horizon. They threw themselves into prepping for the speech. They discovered the free classes our library offers. Still, it is nothing so pressing- though they have increased the fixation on renovating and cleaning our apartment.

They are not quite adrift, though the sting of Cornell's rejection left a mark. (They say they are no longer interested in Cornell but remain interested in something somewhere.) They have free time and are trying to get used to it. In fact, they want more free time, cutting back on their job hours since they do not need to pay tuition now.

The graduate

These have been long years. I came to accept that this was how it would always be. As Amber was fulfilled in the tedium of their studies (I felt it was tedious, but I cannot promise they would echo that), I accepted assuming the totality of the dinner responsibilities--it became one of my favorite chores, in fact, as I found appreciation in perfecting recipes and listening to podcasts while I did so.

Their graduation is a pivot on which our lives will turn now. They will have to do something else for a while. It is not sliding into a doctoral program hours away as into a hot tub. Cornell was not obliging, and shame on them.

Yet today does not feel so crucial. It is a great occasion worth celebrating, but not a colossal change. We will progress a little more in some direction--we do not know which--and it will not be today except in an imperceptible way.

I occasionally think about what brought Amber here. Not the big things, choices or classes, but the chain of unrelated coincidences, of nested possibility, that ended here (or led to this point because graduating is not the terminus of a dream). I pin part of it on a bike ride I took where I afterward mentioned Grandiflora, a gardening shop on the outskirts of town, was hiring. Amber got the job and, later, brutally injured their ankle when stepping into a deep hole a rich person thoughtlessly covered with a tarp. They had to go out on workman's comp since it was no longer feasible to continue to pretty up gardens the wealthy would see one week a year. They endured years of physical therapy to get them fully mobile again. Without that, Amber would have continued working at the flower shop, and I cannot figure out where she would be now. They say they had already been thinking about going back to school. It was not definite as long as they had easier options.

Had I not biked by the garden shop that day--and I rarely do now--or told them of this opportunity, would Amber be sitting in a sleeveless Marist t-shirt now, their second bachelor's diploma on a table in a place of honor, guarded by their honors plaque and fox statue?

Graduation does not change their immediate job prospects. Their animal hospital does not especially care about Amber graduating, except that it might make them more available for shifts. This is not what Amber wants, as they have grumbled more than once about wanting to figure out if they could reduce hours or, perhaps, quit entirely. I have assured them we can afford them to explore other paths for a while, though they have yet to commit to genuinely wanting this.

We have never employed the cracked, decade-disused basketball court in our development for anything more than pacing when we are on the phone (at least, I have). The last time we planned an outdoor party of any size, it was in our backyard beside the thin woods, where the property manager would prefer I do not set fires.

The friends

Daniel comes, though he does not stay over despite my offer because Amber and I tend to go to bed too early. Sarah M is a mainstay of our parties, as is Kristina, who deserves a bit extra for coming to Amber's graduation. We expect others, but I give up caring after the first hour. Anyone who did not come missed out.

My parents, younger brother, and Amber's mother and sister come. My parents declined to go to the graduation, having seen enough of these for a lifetime and finding them dull. They watched online, texting my color commentary about the exoticness of the graduates' names announced by major, noting which majors attract which nationalities.

Amber invited most of their coworkers, but none show up, even those who say they might. In their positions, I would, but we cannot know what Saturday plans they erroneously thought would be better than drinking beer and eating cookie brownies while admiring the fox statue. Amber seems unbothered by their failing.

We end up with too much food to pack away, but I had budgeted leftovers into my weekly meal planning, so there is no significant loss. Better to have too much than too little.

I do not recall a time in recent memory when I felt this happy. Yes, there is pride that Amber had accomplished this--not surprise, as I am inured to that when it comes to Amber achieving something--and the contentment of being around loved ones and too much food, but it is more and deeper.

We are a tribal species, a rhetorical button I press whenever I realize the solitude or contemporary existence has abated momentarily. Being around so much food and a spitting fire feels like being in the right place. Outside a marked occasion, I do not know how readily I could make this happen. I am not vivisecting the Holy Moment with Doritos dusting my fingers.

I am not shy about stating my wedding was the happiest I had ever been, a realization I had when the tent was still up but people, flush with cake, were already leaving. All the ingredients were there--loved ones, a blessed occasion, food--though in grander proportions.

This graduation doesn't assure more of these, though it might give us the breathing room to find further happiness. I do not yet know what Amber will do without the specter of unfinished schoolwork over their head. My path has been oddly straightforward, pressing against the walls of publication and writing until they opened to me. I required few pivots, but I likewise have fewer graduation parties.

last watched: Loudermilk
reading: The Illuminatus! Trilogy