Last year around this time, my sister Missy, niecelet Lily and I took a road trip to NY state, on a college tour.
Since the brilliant Lily got into every college she applied to (and some she didn’t!), she had a tough choice to make. She selected Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate NY, near Lake Ontario.
Last weekend was Brick City Homecoming, a city-wide event. The campus was filled with events and dinners, pumpkin-pitches and sports. All, of course, in the pouring rain.
The highlight of Friday night was meeting her sorority sisters at Alpha Sigma Alpha. I’m happy for Lily that she made that choice.
Saturday’s highlight was a talk by Michael J. Fox. I’ve never actually seen him in anything because I don’t watch TV and have missed the Back to the Future movies. I love talks, books, movies that make you laugh and cry at the same time and Michael J. Fox was a master. Shaky because of his Parkinson’s disease, with slightly slurred speech, he commanded the audience with his warmth, wit, and wisdom. He told this story:
One of his frustrations with his children was that they would bring him issues that he felt they should be able to solve for themselves. When they would go on and on about how difficult this or that problem was, he told them a story he had read. Short version is: in Rwanda, during a terrible flood, a woman was about to give birth. She could wait for help and be swept away forever, or climb a nearby tree. In labor, in pain, she climbed the tree. There she gave birth to her child, alone. True story. So whenever they start whining, he reminds them: “A woman had a baby in a TREE!”
