Yin and Yang

When it comes to most everything, my husband Scott and I are yin and yang, opposite, but complementary. He is the eternal idealist, given to frequent wild flights of fancy, I am the realist, pragmatically rooted to the ground. He is a scattered scientist, I remember names, dates and details. He pushes limits with his ideas, I enjoy convention. Somehow we have survived forty three years yoked together. I make sure his shoes are tied. And he often coaxes me, against my better judgment, to join him on his lofty forays.  

Such was the morning of the Fourth of July. Impulsively, Scott announced on the holiday eve that he intended to see dawn break on the 250th anniversary of our nation on the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. No matter that “the shot heard round the world” did not take place there until mid-morning. Scott wanted to be at the bridge by dawn. At first, I assumed he was trying to compensate for our hijacked plans to celebrate the semiquincentennial as a family in Boston. Brutal heat and cranky grandkids had forced us to abandon our plans to walk Boston’s Freedom Trail and tour Lexington and Concord. But it soon became apparent he simply wanted to seize the moment.

To be fair, Scott did offer me a pass. He told me I did not need to get up at 4 in the morning with him. But because I had spent the United States’ Bicentennial in a small hotel in Guatamala City, I felt obliged to celebrate this patriotic anniversary, compelled to experience a new dawn. So off we went in the predawn hours. We arrived just before dawn, and in the quiet of the morning took it all in. We walked the footbridge, surveyed the slow moving Concord River, and stopped at the memorial to the dead British soldiers and the monument to the minutemen. Just the two of us. And a chorus of birds.

Against this backdrop, Scott recorded his birthday tribute to America. I captured his tribute: Yin to his yang–he had not thought to bring a tripod or selfie stick. Soon after we were interrupted by someone.yammering away on a speaker phone. I hated to admit that perhaps Scott had been right. Greeting dawn at the Old North Bridge had given us a stillness to consider our American heritage in solitude.

As we turned to leave, I saw the Old Manse just to the right of us, and I was drawn back into the Transcendental world of Concord, an ephemeral world I had inhabited during graduate school.  I remembered the history of the Old Manse. The Rev. William Emerson had watched the first skirmish of the Revolutionary War from an upstairs room. His grandson Ralph Waldo had written “Nature” in the house. And Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody had spent the early years of their marriage there, eating from the Emersons’ orchard and the abundant garden Henry David Thoreau had planted for them. I looked back again at the slow, meandering Concord River and remembered how enchanted I had been of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s description of it in “The Old Manse.” I also fondly recalled how the joint journal he and Sophia had kept during their newlywed years that had inspired Scott and me to do the same in our early marriage.

It was not yet six o’clock when we returned to our car, so I wondered if we dared also stop at Walden Pond. I had read Walden, or, Life in the Woods, in high school, college, and graduate school. Thirty years ago, when I went to see the woods where Thoreau had “wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see . . . what it had to teach,” I had been sorely disappointed by the chaos of modern outdoor recreation. The Walden I saw that day was not the Walden Thoreau knew. We could not even find a parking spot in the overflow parking lot.  

My instinct was right. This time, I saw Walden Pond–though it is hardly a pond in my eyes as it covers 61 acres and is roughly half a mile long. It is true as I looked down on the pond through the trees, I could see a few open water swimmers wading in and a canoe skimming its surface. But I caught a glimpse of what Walden might have been. And a glimpse was enough to satisfy.

As we began the short drive back to our Airbnb, I was glad I had fallen sway to Scott’s persuasion. In the early morning hours, I had not only celebrated the dawn of our nation, but also reclaimed memories of my intellectual past. And as I thought of those days when I was young and when I was idealistic and when my mind resided in Concord, Massachusetts, I was left to wonder. When did I become so cynical? Or is it possible that my model of yin and yang is not completely accurate. Maybe Scott and I are more alike than I think.

Best Graduation Procession Ever!

 –Best graduation procession ever! (And anyone who knows me knows that I almost never use exclamation marks.)

Daniel graduated from the University of Virginia yesterday. (Well, technically, he graduated in December. He participated in graduation ceremonies yesterday.)

A few thousand graduates walked "the Lawn," the large 200-yard terraced court. Part of Jefferson's Academical Village, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the students descended the steps of the Rotunda, walked past the statue of Homer to their seats at the front of Old Cabell Hall.

Obviously, this procession steeped in historical tradition is intended as a serious exercise. But the 35-minute procession reminded me of a Macy’s Day Thanksgiving Day parade, just with smaller, personalized individual helium balloons–Elmo, Bluey, mermaids, unicorns, even the poop emoji. The balloons not only expressed each student's individuality, but helped parents identify where he or she was in the grand procession. Daniel texted us to let us know he was next to someone with a race car. Luckily, Daniel is 6'4" tall and we were able to spot him soon after the Data Science banner passed by our section.

At the end of the procession balloon wranglers collected most of the balloons so that they were not a distraction during the ceremony. We were told they were donated to the local children’s hospitals. It was all quite spectacular and a fitting beginning to a well executed commencement ceremony.

As I watched this best procession ever, I gratefully, but wistfully noted that this graduation ceremony was the end of an era. Most likely the final graduation in the Scott Stornetta nuclear family. (Although one can never say never.) So as I contemplated the sweep of our family graduations, I came up with a list of "bests" presented chronologically.

--Best graduation present (BYU, My B.A., English, 1979) 

I don’t remember much about my own graduation. I sat next to Stephanie Parker Johnson during the convocation. I think I walked across the stage for my diploma in the Smith Field House. My parents split up during the college commencements as both my brother Steve and I walked at the same time. We ate lunch afterwards with Daniel Shanthakumar, a family friend who graduated with his master’s degree, at Heaps Pizza. 

I do, however, remember shopping for my graduation present with my mother. We hit the O.C. Tanner in downtown Salt Lake City where my mother bought me a gold Seiko watch with the help of Clarice Williams. I loved that watch. Grieved when it stopped working. It didn't make much sense to repair it given that I now live by the dictates of my Apple Watch. (It was interesting to take note on the train in Geneva, Switzerland that many people still do wear expensive watches.)

–Best mother-in-law memory (BYU, Scott, B.S., Physics, 1983)  

When the hostess at Magelby’s told us we would need to wait forty-five minutes for a table for our graduation celebratory lunch, my parents, Scott and I hit the nearby computer store as we waited. Scott had a “come-to-Jesus” moment as he listened to my mother knowledgably converse with the computer salesman about an Apple IIe computer–the state of the art back then. 

As he listened to his mother-in-law banter about buzz words, he realized she knew more about personal computers than he did. (It was fellow students who had helped me through my computational linguistics class.) He decided he would spend the summer before graduate school learning to how to program a computer. The beginning of a long and productive career in technology.

–Best commencement speakers (Stanford, Scott’s Ph.D., Physics, 1989) 

Garry Trudeau. I don’t recall much of his speech anymore, but I remember how engaging it was, particularly as I was walking the concourse of the Stanford stadium with six-month-old Nathan. I was so happy. So happy to be enjoying the California sunshine. So happy to have my little family of Scott, Chrissy, and Nathan. So happy Scott was nearly finished with his Ph.D. (He walked at the graduation in June, but defended his dissertation in August, the morning after a 5.4 earthquake in the middle of the night. A little nerve-wracking, but at least we missed the big one (6.9) that hit two months later during the World Series.) And so, so happy Scott had a job.

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf (BYU, Nathan, B.S., Economics; B.A., Spanish, 2014) 

Replete with humor and requisite airplane references. In particular, I loved his opening: “I love this university. During my years as an airline captain, I would sometimes cross this beautiful part of Utah on flights from Frankfurt, Germany, to Los Angeles. When I did, I would often announce to the passengers that if they looked out their windows they would have the privilege of seeing the world-famous Brigham Young University below. Some captains might reserve such an announcement for sites like the Grand Canyon or the Eiffel Tower, but to me Brigham Young University has always had a special place in my heart.”

–Best student speaker (Morristown HS, Nathan, 2007) 

Obviously, I am Nathan’s mother. But I still occasionally run into people who mention his speech. Of course, one of the best parts was that he used one of our family’s favorite quotations attributed to Mark Twain: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

Scott's favorite memory, a quotation that has stuck with him through the years: "Integrity. If you have it nothing, else matters. If you don't, nothing else matters."

–Best musical number (BYU, Chrissy, B.S., Math Education; B.A. Music,  2009) 

Again, a mother’s view, but Chrissy’s flute duet in the Wilkinson Center during the commencement for the Mathematics graduates surely was the best musical number ever.

--Best advice to graduating high school seniors (Columbia High School, 2011)

Scott taught Math at Columbia High School in Maplewood, NJ for eleven years. First Class, his advice to his seniors in 2011 is a classic.

–Best pre-graduation festivities (Penn State, Chrissy, M.S., Applied Statistics, May, 2019) 

We took Chrissy's children, Adella, Marshall, and baby Max, to Hershey Park and Gettysburg before their mother's graduation. I wanted to make sure the graduation would be memorable and that maybe, just maybe, it would inspire them in their educational pursuits.

The festivities were almost marred by a miscalculation as we drove from Gettysburg to the arena in State College. New Tesla users, we miscalculated how long our charge would last and it was a nail biter getting there. I think the two kids were young enough to be clueless. 

Never again have we cut it that close. And now our grandchildren watch our screen so closely, they would never let us get anywhere near to running out of charge.

--Best near miss of graduation ceremony (General convocation, University of Chicago, Nathan, M.B.A., June 2019)

I was frantic. Despite all my best planning, somehow, Scott was nowhere to be found just as the ceremonies were about to begin on the Quad. He was forgiven as he found us just as the procession began. Seems he had stopped to buy a homeless person breakfast.

–Best walk across the stage to receive a diploma (The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Nathan, M.B.A., June 2019) 

Nathan’s walk across the stage to get his MBA diploma with three-year Jim in his arms was truly endearing.

–Best non-event graduation (Georgia Tech, Nathan, M.S., Computer Science, 2020). 

A diploma arrived in the mail in August 2020. In the midst of Covid. The university held a socially distanced graduation ceremony in December, but by then, a ceremony was kind of irrelevant. Nathan never stepped on campus for classes. Why start for graduation?

–Most intimate setting for conferring diplomas (UVA, Daniel, M.S., Data Science, 2026) 

Old Cabell Hall was the perfect setting for an intimate graduation ceremony. 

–Commencement words best tailored to my child (UVA, Daniel, M.S., Data Science, 2026)

In conferring their degrees upon the master’s degree candidates in Data Science, University of Virginia President Scott C. Beardsley encouraged the students to pursue their careers caring for ethics and the privacy of others. Spot on for Daniel, who has tried to scrub his online presence, insists upon communicating with me via cryptographically secure Signal channels, and made me create a 32 character password for my password management program. Note, in respect for Daniel, my posted graduation photo of Daniel is not of his back to show off his master’s robes, but to avoid showing his face.

Proudest parents, bar none: (Forever and for always)

Scott and Marcia Stornetta