It's all over but the walk across the stage. My one and only granddaughter is graduateting high school on time. It's more than I hoped for when in pre-k she was diagnosed with autisim or ADHD. They could figure out which. She didn't learn to read until the 3rd grade when a reading teacher caught on that she memorized what on the page of the books and could recited them back word for word, but could not read the words in an unread book or work sheet. The city assigned in home after school tutoring and when she graduated the fifth grade she was reading and cmprehending on a sixth grade level.
In middle school, I said all I wanted was for her to be to be able count her change from a purchase, and know when there is a twenty percent off sale how much that really was.
High school worried me even more I had problems with second level algebra. Her grades sucked, she just passed most of her classes.
This year it was like the rest of her life, late to understand, but once she got it she knew it forever. Determined to graduate she kept an eye on her grades on the school internet, made up work, and most of all kept work, so when a teacher claimed she did not do something she had the graded paper as her voice. Between Saturday school and regular, she carried and passed tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade english.
With everything else behind her, some woman in the office told her she could not graduate until she met her finicial obligations, which acumalated from having to get a temporary ID to swipe into everyplace at the school, for the four years it came to ten dollars. She paid that off. Yesterday her mother was told she still owed for a unreturned book. At the beginning of the year the book had been returned, and records were checked, and it was in the 'tumbs' where the clerical help was disinclined to search. A threat to go over their heads to the principal lead to the search, book found, and reciept of book slip signed and given. My daughter returned to the school today with the slip that had the same woman's signature on it, and the deficit file was no longer in the system.
I am thrilled to be going Saturday to watch her end one chapter in her life and begin a second. This fall she's boosting her grades in a community college. Although she has two quilts, she is looking forward to the special memory quilt I am going to make for her. A photographic history from very young to end with a picture of her diploma. Like always she's in line as the third quilt I have to make, but she is willing to wait.
God Bless America!