There’s a particular kind of pride that builds slowly, over years, until one day it crests all at once. That’s how I felt watching my brother-in-law PJ cross the stage at Bemidji State University graduation last weekend.
I first met PJ when he was in middle school, so I have had a front-row seat to his journey ever since. That’s a long time to watch someone grow up, struggle, recalibrate, push forward, and ultimately arrive somewhere wonderful. His educational journey had plenty of starts and stops, zigs and zags, and detours that looked like setbacks at the time but turned out to be essential parts of the path. He navigated all of it while being a devoted father, husband, employee, National Guardsman, and volunteer. The diploma alone would have been plenty. But PJ didn’t just finish – he finished Magna Cum Laude. I did not know that was coming until I saw it in the commencement program, and I probably would have been embarrassingly loud about it even in a more restrained setting.
Getting There
We flew into MSP Thursday morning and made a mandatory stop on the drive north: Cup and Cone in White Bear Lake, a local institution that delivers exactly what its name promises. It’s a one-of-a-kind of ice cream shop that serves up shakes, cones, and oldies in its iconic location. Thus fortified, we drove the three-plus hours up to Bemidji.
Katie’s other sibling and her family had also made the trip, which turned this into something rarer than a graduation: all of Katie’s parents’ kids and grandkids in the same place at the same time. As our Lake Tahoe family reunion last summer reminded me, full gatherings of the extended family are increasingly precious and increasingly logistically heroic. The cousins spent the weekend in a sustained state of joyful chaos – and the chaos had a lovely side effect. Both kids were so thoroughly stimulated and physically exhausted each day that they napped hard, conked out fast at bedtime, and generally gave the adults a much-appreciated window each evening to actually talk to each other like grown-ups.
We stayed at Ruttger’s Birchmont Lodge right on the shores of Lake Bemidji. Rustic and warm, it felt exactly right for northern Minnesota in May. Everything budding, the lake placid and blue, the air carrying that particular crispness that only the upper Midwest delivers this time of year.
The Run
Friday morning I woke up early and went for my longest run in years. I’ve been gradually working back toward distance since getting back into running shape, and the conditions here were almost comically favorable by comparison to training at altitude in Boulder: flat terrain, essentially sea level, and clear skies in the low 50s. My legs felt like they had been given an unfair advantage.
The Ceremony
Friday afternoon we made our way to the Bemidji State commencement. When they announced PJ’s name and the Magna Cum Laude distinction along with it, the section of seats containing his people got noticeably louder than the surrounding ones. Not our most dignified moment, perhaps, but entirely appropriate.
Afterward, we gathered for a celebratory dinner, and then later that evening we migrated to the lakeshore for a bonfire. S’mores were made in serious quantities. The sky did its northern Minnesota thing, going from pink to violet to a full spread of stars. It was one of those nights that doesn’t require any particular activity to be memorable – everyone just around a fire, full and happy and together.
Up the River
Saturday we drove north to visit the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Itasca State Park. Standing at the spot where the massive river that drains a third of the continental United States begins its 2,300-mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico – and fits in a shallow channel you can cross in a few strides – was a surreal experience.
There were stepping stontes and even a felled log for crossing. I chose to take my shoes off and wade through the water directly; that felt much more “Minnesota!” The water was glacially cold, recalling the cold plunges in the glacially fed Swiss lakes when I lived in Lausanne.
On the way back through Bemidji, we stopped to visit the enormous statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, which have been greeting visitors since 1937. It has been decades since I have heard or read the folk tales of Paul Bunyon, so it was fun to reconnect with those legends.
Saturday evening wound down with a games night in one of the cabins. We played Carbles and Cribbage until considerably later than any of the adults should have allowed on an evening before an early drive. My 7-year-old was in heaven – and then asleep approximately the moment their head hit the pillow.
The Drive Home
Sunday we drove back to MSP, stopping at Charles Lindbergh State Park in Little Falls for a picnic lunch. The park sits on the land where Lindbergh grew up, and there is something moving about having a sandwich at a picnic table a few hundred yards from the childhood home of the person who flew across the Atlantic alone. That was a much greater ordeal back then, taking more than 33 hours from New York to Paris! We squeezed in one more Cup and Cone stop before the airport, because some traditions require reinforcement.
What It All Means
I keep coming back to PJ. In football terms, what he did is something like completing a long drive in the fourth quarter, on a difficult field, with constant pressure, wearing multiple jerseys at once. Father. Husband. Soldier. Employee. Volunteer. Student.
That kind of resilience can’t be taught in a classroom, which makes it funny that it culminated in one. The lessons PJ modeled for his kids this weekend will last longer than any he learned in the lecture hall, and they are exactly what I hope my own kids absorb as they watch the adults around them navigate their lives. As our family running tradition has taught me, what kids learn from watching us work hard and follow through compounds with interest over time.
Congratulations, PJ. You earned every bit of this, and I couldn’t be more proud!