One of the reasons I wanted to take a year off was so I could be front and center for family celebrations - especially the graduations of the next generation of Brightbill/Rules. As I planned my summer, these dates became central pillars to work around:
May 6, 2023 - My son Luke earned his bachelor's degree from University of Wisconsin-Stout
May 12, 2023 - My niece Grace earned her master's degree from Duke University
June 11, 2023 - My niece Charlotte earned her bachelor's degree from Northwestern University
For Luke's graduation, we stayed in an AirBnB near Menomonie, WI with family and saluted his accomplishment with cake, games, and lots of food. I kept trying to make everyone watch old home movies, maybe as an attempt to have Mike in the room. Who else could truly understand the difficulty I was having with reconciling this poised, handsome, college-grad-with-a-digital-marketing-job-waiting-for-him version of Luke....with the tiny baby we brought home from the hospital just a few weeks ago? I truly don't know where the time went. And I don't know how this miraculous kid made it through college - let alone graduated magna cum laude - when he spent so much of the last 4 years taking care of his dad, me, Josh, and all his friends. But what I do know... what I am absolutely certain of... is that I'm massively proud of this kind, generous, hardworking, resilient, and brilliant human.
Directly after Luke's graduation, I kept the party rolling and drove to North Carolina, where I met up with family and moved into a double queen hotel room with my nieces Charlotte and Maddie. Grace had planned an entire weekend of fun festivities for us, and I felt super fortunate to be included!
May 12th was graduation day at the historic Cameron Indoor Stadium, home of Duke basketball. The commencement ceremony was relatively short. Afterwards there were popsicles, a walking tour of campus, then an Awards Night where the speeches by the graduates restored my faith in the next generation. YAY! Hope for the future! (The desserts were good, too.)
Over the next few days we met Grace's friends and their family members, went out for meals and ice cream, stayed in for cards and pizza, and took a memorable stroll through the gorgeous Duke Gardens.
Regarding my amazing niece Grace: She is - and always has been - a deliciously charming sack of sass. She hides it well with brains and athleticism - the combination of which landed her on the world-class Princeton and Duke field hockey teams - but really this calm, insightful lady is always watching, always waiting to make her aunt Jenny laugh with a joke or a look or a shared glance. The future is brighter for her having studied for the last two years at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy, and now putting that education to work for the good guys on Capitol Hill. One needs strong moral fiber, core strength and a sense of humor to survive in D.C., and she's got them all in spades. The only questions is, will D.C. survive Grace?
On June 11th I sojourned to Evanston, IL to attend the Northwestern commencement for wildcat Charlotte Katherine Brightbill, aka CKB. Neither cold, nor rain, nor blustery gale stayed these courageous celebrants from the earned celebration of the worthy graduate. (In other words - it was rainy, windy and 55 degrees for the 9:00 a.m. outdoor ceremony - brr!) After graduation we went to a delicious lunch at Peckish Pig, then played cards, listened to music, napped and hung out in a downtown Chicago hotel. I left to drive home, battling fatigue, but wish I had stayed -- later that night the celebration continued at a dinner out with all of Charlotte's friends and their family members.
A quick word about my amazing niece Charlotte: To start with, she's literally the best hugger in the entire world. Her hugs are FIERCE! And that fierceness comes through in everything she does. She survived and thrived as a Neuroscience major at Northwestern during a global pandemic, she taught herself guitar, and did I mention she's a kickboxer? Don't mess with CKB. And with the biggest heart around, her fierceness benefits us all. She and her friends raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity for the Northwestern University Dance Marathon (NUDM), one of the largest student-run philanthropies in the nation. She's ambitious and positive, warm-hearted and wicked smart, and currently participating in a Northwestern study abroad program in Eastern Europe on the topic of Global Health, when most young adults who just graduated are thinking of putting their feet up for a while. I'm so excited that when she returns she'll be sticking around the midwest, giving me an excellent excuse to sojourn to Chi-town regularly.
Thank you for indulging me in a little brag session from a proud mama and aunt. And to Luke, Grace and Charlotte - KUDOS and CONGRATULATIONS from your #1 cheerleader!
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