Corn rows and graduation caps... gun shot means go.

This weekend was...  momentous.   For starters, my childhood best friend managed to accomplish something I've only seen infrequently and usually by people without the slightest bit of infused personability (I can say this because my close friends are still going through it and the 1, maybe, that's already done is definitely not reading my blog right now).  She graduated from medical school.  She's officially in charge of all sorts of life-like things.  Namely:  people.  

As momentous as this was for her and her family, and, well, me and my family by proxy of love, it's generally a momentous occasion not because of the technicalities, but because her journey through the technicalities displays a degree of dedication that blows me away.

My childhood cohort has wanted this since forever.  She wanted to be an emergency medicine doctor, potentially specializing in pediatrics, and now I'm in a position to actually consider moving to her city to have children so when they break things they'll be fine.  

I guess I'm still in a bit of shock that I've watched this girl hold on to her dreams through all sorts of adversity and yet I'm stumbling to be able to even express how important it is to me that she made it.  She is a testament to will power and fortitude and kindness and sacrifice and all those things whose absence make your dreams seem unattainable and far far far away.  

At the same time, I have to wonder how much of this feeling of awe rests in the fact that she's unequivocally committed now.  Like.  Committed.  Like, she's doing a residency in Boston in emergency medicine and she has the debt to prove it.  She's starting something that she'll be doing for a long long long long time.  (Hopefully long enough to treat my aforementioned accident-prone children.)  She is and will forever be a doctor.  As of 2pm yesterday it was official and it will be official until the day she can't tap out a script for her infirmed long-time friends who, at 80 something years old, just want to drift off into oblivion - legally.  

This woman started something when she was a CHILD, made it through the process without veering in any appreciable direction that would compromise the vector of her mission, and then flat out committed to a lifetime of emergencies.  Empirical proof that the picking of a direction isn't an epilleptic event or that committing to a profession doesn't have to be at the goading of a hand grenade...  I would call and ask her how she's holding up today (in the aftermath of this momentous committment), but I'm afraid she'll still be that effusive, brilliant, committed, driven, focused woman I was drunk with on Saturday.  And then what?  

Then what excuses will I have?  

Let's just say I'm stalking my career right now.  And someday soon I'll pounce and slay my chosen vegetable patch with gusto and I'll bring the bits and pieces up to Boston for emergency medical attention and I'll tell my ER doctor just how much of an inspiration she's been in my life.  This doctor, who as a girl of 12 once asked her priest if I was going to Hell for not believing in God.  He said yes.  I'm pretty sure she stuck around all these years to convince me that there is a God so that I don't go to hell.  (She's really that great, she'd totally do it.)  But it backfired.  1) Now I'm toying with the idea of starting a new religion convincing the world that SHE'S a God and 2) I thoroughly believe her priest was merely a stout, omniscient vegetarian.