Free Adelaide Piper by Beth Webb Hart Page B

named Beryl Dunlap dropped by to introduce herself as our small-group leader during orientation. She sported a yellow men’s polo tucked into red plastic workout pants. Out of her crinkly-sounding pocket, she pulled a flyer for some kind of athletic team tryout.
    â€œPlay lacrosse?” she asked.
    Huh? Never heard of it.
    â€œI don’t think so,” I told Beryl, who had been playing ever since her sophomore year at Miss Porter’s.
    â€œI’ll pick you ladies up in an hour and a half and escort you to the convocation,” she said. “It is best,” she announced to all parents, “if you say your good-byes before then.”
    Tears filled Mama’s eyes when Daddy said, “It’s time, Greta.” She put the last sweater neatly in my drawer and could not even look me in the eye to bid me farewell. I reached across the threshold and hugged her. “It’s okay, Mama. I love you, too, and I’m going to be just fine. Don’t worry.”
    â€œYou’ll go to the cafeteria and eat something after convocation,” she urged. “It’s open until seven fifteen.”
    â€œYes,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
    â€œI saw the menu,” she said. “They’re going to have lasagna and green-bean casserole, and the salad bar looks really fresh. And I left you some tomatoes in your minifridge and even some leftover Mexican casserole that I brought up in the cooler, and there’s a microwave down the hall by the lounge.”
    â€œI’ll eat. It’s a primary need. Don’t fret.”
    I could tell that she just didn’t know what to say or what physical gesture to give to express the joy and sadness this moment brought to her. I guessed that she was thinking of every diaper she had changed, every runny nose she had wiped, every multiplication table she had called out, and every science project she had stewed over, and now she could hardly bear the rite of passage that was before her firstborn.
    I kissed her on the cheek. “Mama, I’ll be okay.”
    Though Lou didn’t fully understand what was going on, she knew enough to hold my hand tightly all the way down the steps and out the dorm to the station wagon. Dizzy understood exactly what was happening, but she had more pressing issues to attend to.
    â€œI’m starving,” she called to Mama and Daddy as she puckered in the mountain air and reapplied her jet-black lipstick. “Can we stop at that Hardee’s on the way to the highway?”
    â€œYes,” Daddy said in a hushed tone, while Mama wiped her eyes with his handkerchief.
    After a last farewell, I watched as the wagon drove out of the Tully dorm parking lot and over the speed bumps that led down the hill and to the tall brick gates of Nathaniel Buxton University.
    â€œGood-bye,” I said to myself, and I was surprised by the lump in my own throat.
    â€œC’mon, Adelaide!” Ruthie called from our dorm-room window. She was already in a church dress with her hair in a French braid. “Convocation starts in twenty minutes!”
    The NBU convocation was held in the stone chapel in the center of the colonnade on the top of the great green hill. The college president, Dr. Neil G. Schaeffer, addressed us from an opulent mahogany pulpit that seemed miraculously suspended in the air, eye level with the balcony.
    Jif, Ruthie, and I were on the left side of the floor-level aisle with members of the class of 1993 surrounding us. We lifted our chins up toward the pulpit to hear the speech.
    â€œThe mission of NBU is to cultivate intellectual growth in its students in a setting that stresses both the importance of individual honor and integrity and the responsibility to serve humanity through the productive use of one’s education,” he said without looking down at his notes. He was a tall, stately man about the age of Papa Great. His deep-set eyes had a way of looking into a