Once Upon a Weekend

Saturday was Alumni Day at Penn - it's always the weekend prior to graduation, which is always on a Monday in mid-May. Except for last year when there was a conflict with the NLH's Spring Festival, I've gone every year since graduating.

The weird thing is that the campus, including the Nursing School, has changed much. But instead of being irritating and somewhat sad when I went back to Champaign and finding the two places that I was most attached to razed and turned into utterly hideous, generic apartments - it's actually energizing to see how it's evolving and improving each year.

I was planning to go alone, but Thea woke up and was willing to get dressed and get moving faster than she usually does, so she came along. I had pre-registered for both of us, so she was pleased that she got a name badge of her very own when we checked in.

We took a minibus to the LIFE Center at 45th and Chestnut - which was sort of close to where I lived while at Penn, 47th and Pine. After the buffet breakfast and a few speeches, there was a street fair to celebrate LIFE's (Living Independently For Elders) 10th anniversary. Thea loved the inflatable bounce house and slide, until something happened to the pump and the whole thing began to deflate. With my kid still inside. Thea came out, unscathed and unperturbed by the experience. At noon, the minibuses took us back to campus for the Parade of Classes. Thea was dying to help carry the nursing school banner, but the dean and others usually do that -but she did get to hold onto the nursing school flag. And other than one small mishap where she wasn't maintaining good control of her flagpole and nearly clocked the dean, she did a wonderful job.

The parade ended at the tents on Hill Field and we had lunch in the nursing school tent and then checked out the kids' tent. This was the first year that we investigated what there was to do for Future Quakers. There were tables for art projects, with little goody bags for the children, a bounce house maze, a magic/juggling show - and this was just on Hill Field, there was another chidren's area near the library. Thea made a 'P-E-N-N' necklace with ceramic beads and got a spray on tattoo of a tiger that she was quite proud of.

We went back to The Button in front of the library at Thea's request - she wanted to climb and explore it. Then we made our annual pilgrimage to the bookstore, and back to The Button and the photo booth, where a serious and a goofy picture were laminated into a luggage tag or some sort of tag. We could have had two made, but I had given the tickets for this to Thea to keep in the pouch in her name badge and when it came time to hand them in, there was only one. Live and learn.

After that, we went back to The Button, again - how a gigantic white button can hold a five-year old's attention is mind-boggling. I went and sat on a bench while watching the horde of children swarm up, down, in, out and around - and a medical school alumni who was celebrating his 40th reunion shared the bench as we speculated on whether or not the artist who created The Button envisioned it being used this way.

Then it was time to hobble (new shoes, good-looking, but they totally chomped on my feet) back to the nursing school's garage and the car. Thea had a good enough time to conk out for a 30 minute nap on the ride back home.