Festina Lente
By Monica Jones

Like Augustus Caesar’s motto “Festina lente,” I am making haste slowly. I’m laying down bricks one at a time, building my way to a degree. I’m filling in the gaps that were passed over while I was too busy dealing with the circumstances of my life. The road will never be as straight as one of Caesar’s, but that’s OK. And when my journey seems a little drawn out at times I think, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and plod on, feeling better. The bricks are the strides in my education, although I’m not sure where the road will lead me.

“What for?” my mother said. “Why?” asked my father. “College, at your age?” said my know-it-all teenage niece. “But what are you going to do with it? What’s the point? At your age?” people kept repeating when I first told them I planned to go to college. “You’ve got a good job, you don’t need an education, you’ve got life experience,” they said. Negatives kept ringing again and again in my ears. Not once have I screamed in reply, “Because I want to!” With patience I repeat, “an education is never wasted, “ or “it’s never too late to learn.” I don’t tell them that I can’t quite explain my desire either, that I’m still working that through.

My first day at the local community college was unnerving. I had no idea what to expect. Would I have the ability to succeed? Would my brain be able to circumnavigate the facts, absorb and analyze, even understand the concepts presented to me? I lined up at the window that first day of class to purchase my books for the first two courses: Freshman Comp I, and World History I, and my knees knocked. When I left class that day I practically floated to the parking lot. Albert Einstein once said, “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge” and I count myself lucky that the teachers I had for my first courses agreed with him.

As it turned out I was attending a satellite location of the larger campus and classes were really small and intimate, the students diverse, and the professors mostly retired who loved their work and were happy to enthuse, encourage and praise this older student who had entered the classroom with great trepidation. Gone was the painfully shy little girl from my youth who turned beet red whenever spoken to; who never volunteered anything; who tried to disappear into the background. This transplanted wallflower began to blossom.

I hated being in the classroom as a child. I can’t remember any of my teachers holding with Einstein’s theory; their job seemed to be to humiliate me as often as possible. I was just terrified of giving the wrong answer or asking a stupid question - it was easier to stay silent and not tempt fate. The boys would only snigger, the teacher would give an impatient huff and I would sink further into my chair if I didn’t say the right thing when called upon. There’s an old Chinese saying that states: He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. It’s taken me all these years to realize I can survive being a fool for five minutes.

But I can still remember incidents that make be boil with anger or shame and make me feel like I’m fifteen all over again. I sometimes think we go in circles within ourselves - revisiting feelings, regressing again and again if necessary - to get the impetus to spin off and grow. There’s one episode I remember quite clearly which I revisit repeatedly - the Shinebaum incident.

I don’t think Mr. Shinebaum, the head of the English department at my school, ever spoke to me except for this one time. There I was, in navy blue skirt and blazer, white shirt and navy tie with red stripes, sitting in my assigned seat in the auditorium, waiting for the ceremony to start. I was about to receive an award recognizing that I’d earned the highest grade in the whole school district for my GCE in English Literature. Fifteen-year-old me, shy, blushing, never shining, only a blending-into-the-wallpaper student. 

He bent over so he could look right into my face. I expected a “congratulations” from him and felt the redness creeping into my cheeks. “Well miss,” he said, “Whom do you think you surprised more - yourself or me?” He turned and walked away leaving me feeling like I’d been hit in the face with a medicine ball. I still received my award that day from Mr. Chamberlain, the headmaster, in his long black robe and mortarboard. I still got to shake the hand of the local Alderman, who stood stoutly wearing his chains of office, and I still have that red book with the label on the inside cover stating: “Stratford Grammar School, 1965 - Collins Prize for English.” But I remember Mr. Shinebaum’s words clearly whenever I look at that red spine lodged between the other books sitting on my shelf.

Just before my 11th birthday, I rushed home from school with the good news. “Dad,” I said as soon as he walked through the door. “Dad, I passed! I passed the 11 plus - I’m going to Stratford Grammar!” This was “the” school that only the brighter kids attended - the ones who passed the dreaded exam that decided at that young age if you were to receive a classical education or a vocational one. This was “the” school of my dreams.

In his forever stoic and practical way back then, Dad replied. “That’s all very well, but you’re taking up a boy’s spot. You’ll only get married and have kids - so what’s the point? Deep down I understood his reasoning - both Mum and Dad had been educated up to the age of 14, and education wasn’t high on their list of priorities. But I was different. I was going to travel the world and speak obscure languages and have all sorts of wonderful experiences.

It was when I was 16 that my life got out of sync with everything. I fulfilled my Dad’s prophesy, but not quite in the way he expected. I got pregnant. 

Although my teenage years didn’t turn out as planned, I’ve never once looked back with regret. I threw myself into motherhood and marriage, which was a given circumstance of pregnancy in “good” families of that time. I loved what I did. I had the cutest baby, the whitest set of nappies flapping on the washing line, and I immersed myself in my new responsibilities. They say you forget the pain of childbirth, but I’ll never forget the feeling of power that childbirth gave me.

When my son turned 16, I called my mother and apologized to her. It was only when I had reached that milestone that I could look back and understand what I’d put my parents through. We laughed, remembering some of the silly incidents, like the time we went shopping for maternity clothes. The only outfits available back then were “kangaroo skirts” and the “I love Lucy” flaring blouses with peter pan collars. I tried on an outfit and sobbed as I looked in the mirror. “I look like an old lady,” I cried, the tears dripping down the knife-pleated front of my shirt. One sewing pattern later, with a very patient mother overseeing the whole process, I produced my one and only maternity outfit - a flowing peasant dress with lots of room for growth. 

My son was the first in our family to go to college. My parents traveled from England for the ceremony here in the U.S. They were proud grandparents sitting in the hot sun watching their grandson receive his diploma, although a little confused with everything unfamiliar that was going on. My mother asked me the other day “Will you still be going to college when you’re 60? Will they still let you graduate if you’re that old?” 

My life hasn’t been all motherhood and marriage. Time passes, children grow, and things change. I did get to travel to some interesting places despite my digressions in life. My later career took me to luxury resorts and wonderful destinations and for a while I was thinking, “life is an education,” which it is, of course, but for me something was always missing. I managed to acquire some self-confidence over the years, but I always felt like Oliver with my bowl stretched out before me asking for more. 

Why am I striving for an education at this stage of my life? I’m not really sure, except that I’m growing so much, I can’t stand myself! Not only am I more aware of what people are talking about, but I’m able to contribute to conversations, offer up ideas and opinions, and participate in life to a greater degree than before. I can unearth from some dark corner of my brain that Alfred Stieglitz is the photographer who produced stark black and white pictures at the turn of the 19th Century. I can organize a local poetry reading and become excited about it. I can formulate questions to, and consider things I don’t understand, like why are most religions based on death and the glorious hereafter, and not birth and the power it holds? 

If I met Mr. Shinebaum today I might just have the confidence and where-with-all to explain how hurtful his words were to a vulnerable young girl of fifteen. But then again, knowing myself as I do now, I probably wouldn’t. I’d say, “Mr. Shinebaum, you don’t remember me from all those years ago, but what you said one day has stuck with me and given me the incentive to go college.” He’d glow with self-importance and say, “Thank you, it’s always nice to know you’ve made a difference.”

I’m striving for an education because it means I’m constantly growing, just like Audrey, the man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors saying, “Feed me! Feed me!” I felt empowered when I gave birth to a new life, but when I started college with my knocking knees and my doubts about my abilities I was giving birth to my new life, and I feel empowered now. How long will I go on learning? As long as it takes. I am making haste slowly, and enjoying every step of the way. In Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll wrote, “begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.” I think I’ll take his advice.