On Graduation Day we had originally planned to meet at Boston Public Garden’s and go on a Swan Boat ride. This would have been a nostalgic trip for Helen and Sue and they thought that Kaelina would like it, but due to logistics and timing issues we had to regroup on our plan. We ended up meeting at Mathew’s house and then walking to a nearby cafe expecting to have lunch. Much to our surprise they only served a breakfast menu on Sunday – so we all had breakfast for lunch. Fortunately the food was great. Because we wanted Kaelina to take a nap, Janet, Amy and I took a taxi to the graduation area, and then the rest of the crew, Brian, Kaelina, Helen and Sue came in the rental SUV. We used Sue’s local knowledge extensively on routes, places to park etc. The cab got caught in very heavy traffic due to multiple graduations, a Red Sox game in nearby Fenway park and normal weekend traffic. It took us twice as long as normal to get to graduation and we didn’t even have to find a place to park!
Amy got there in time to get her gown on, hood on, and get in line for the march into the huge tent they had set up in case of inclement weather. We figured that the tent must have had seats for 2000 people (500 which were graduates) and faculty and guests. There were about equal numbers of graduate degrees awarded and undergraduate.
The commencement speaker was a lady MD who has had MS for 30 years and spoke from a wheelchair. She called it her “mobility assistant” or something like that. She gave a very upbeat inspiring talk. Kaelina was very well behaved during the whole event and we were very proud.
After the graduation we drove to Boston’s North End under Sue’s guidance and to dinner at an Italian restaurant called Ristorante Fiore. The service and food were out of this world. Appropriate for a graduation celebration dinner. The only problem was when we had to wait about 30 minutes for our car when we were done because the Celtic’s had just won game 7 in the playoffs and downtown was a zoo with all the Celtic’s fans walking and driving around downtown and generally causing chaos. But it was worth it! Thanks Sue! Afterwards we headed back to Matthew’s house and called it a night. Helen, Sue, Brian and Kaelina headed to NH.
It was a great graduation day and celebration of Amy’s accomplishments.