I was at the picture framing shop, having a crisis.
“I’m not sure I can go through with this,” I confessed to the owner.
“Why not?” he asked me. “It looks perfect. My only question is, why take 40 years to frame your diploma?”
“Well… framing it, now, means giving up on ever getting it right.”
“What do you mean? You can’t want that ugly beige matte, it was so boring….”
“It’s not that. You see, this diploma came, 40 years ago, with a little slip of paper that said: ‘A decision awarding honors in your major came too late for inscription on your diploma. To have it added, return diploma to your Dean’s office and it will be mailed to you over the summer.’ … the summer of 1976!”
“Which you didn’t do, I guess?”
“Of course not! I’d worked too hard for that thing to hand it back to anyone. But I didn’t want to frame it, either — not till it was updated. So I put off deciding.”
“But 40 years?”
“Well, one thing followed another; I kept changing jobs, and apartments, and then we got married and had children, and anything I didn’t absolutely need just went to the attic. Then I kind of lost track…until this morning, when I found it again. But now…I just don’t know… I don’t want to frame it without the inscription…”
“But, if you don’t finish framing it now, it will just disappear for another 40 years.”
“Well, by then it will be my children’s problem!”
“Yes, and you know that after you’re gone, the kids are just going to back a dumpster up to the door and start pitching. From the top of the attic, to the cellar, everything is going into that dumpster… unless you have it framed. That might slow them down a little.”
“But — the inscription?”
“I’ll tell you what. We’ll put the note in an envelope on the back. Trust me, love. Nobody else even cares. Now, what’s with this one — your husband’s degree in Engineering? Don’t tell me there’s something wrong with that, too?”
“Nothing’s wrong — except I almost got him fired from his job, years ago, when I couldn’t find it.”
“That’s not the whole story,” says my husband, walking in after parking the car.
“Are you telling this, or am I?”
“You go ahead,” he says. Which means, I must tell the story until it pleases him to jump in and “correct” me.
“Okay. So I was home one day in late spring, pregnant with our first baby, just sitting and watching my feet swell up from the heat, when my husband calls me from work.”
“‘Judy,’ he asks me, ‘Do you know where my diploma is?’”
“Sure, it’s somewhere in the attic. Why?”
“Oh, nothing serious; just that the HR Department was wondering if I could prove I had a Bachelor’s Degree.”
“Well, have them call the school! That’s what they’re there for! You don’t want me to go up there rummaging around, looking for it, do you? It’s probably at least 100 degrees up there, plus I don’t even think I’d fit up the attic stairs, any more.”
“You’re right,” he told me. “Forget it. I’ll just call the school.”
“Except I’d already called them.” That was my beloved. I knew he’d be interrupting, but this was news to me. “You called them first? What had they said?”
“They said they had no record of my graduation. That’s when HR started to worry.”
“Well, of course you graduated! I hope you told them so!”
“I did, but HR wanted ‘due diligence.’ So I called again. The second time, the school said the electronic records didn’t go back far enough, and they couldn’t check any older files until Fall.”
“I don’t understand; why would the season matter?” Now the framer was curious, too.
“In the summer they’re short-handed; and apparently, to check files in the warehouse, they needed two people: One to go through the boxes, and another to shoo away the rats.”
“Ugh,” I said, and noticed that the framer had let go of the diploma. “So then what?”
“They eventually found my file, and I kept my job.”
I had no idea that had all been going on. Of course, I’d been a little busy with a newborn. “And I never found the diploma,” I added, “until it turned up this morning, with mine, and we came straight here. At least if this is framed, and nailed to a wall, it will have more trouble disappearing again.”
“And yours, Judy?” They both turned to me.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Done is better than perfect,” I said. “Do it!”
They’ll make a nicely matched set. After wandering for forty years in our magical attic, at last our diplomas will reach, if not the Promised Land, at least a promised spot on the family room wall.
