We first met Melissa, thirty-one-year-old mother of five, when she moved across the street from Granny’s House nearly three years ago. She ran a tight ship at home, expecting good grades, on-time homework assignments, finished chores, and respect for grown ups.
It wasn’t until she came over to help us plant flowers at Granny’s, however, that we got to know, not only “Melissa-as-Mom,” but “Melissa-as-History Buff.”
“I love watching the History Chanel,” she said, “cause that’s where I learned how all the states got their shapes.” While scooping black dirt and fertilizer pellets into flower pots, she talked and talked and we got a taste of her keen intellect and desire to make things better for her family.
I began wondering just how far she’d gone in school, but wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject. I finally took a chance and asked, “Hey, you’re so smart! Have you ever considered going to college?”
She had, in fact, considered the prospect of college but, first, had to conquer the GED, she said. She enrolled in GED classes a few weeks later, and passed the GED exam not quite a year after the day we planted flowers together. Unlike her stint in high school, this time around, she loved it:
“It’s as if my desire to learn went from fifteen miles an hour to a hundred and fifty miles an hour…I so loved soaking it all up.”
She obviously soaked up a lot while at Douglass High’s GED classes. She was an exceptional student and was asked to give the student speech at graduation. In her speech, she told of her attempt to return to school with the responsibility of a new baby - the difficulty of balancing homework assignments and late evening work at a car wash:
“Most eleventh graders had lots of time to hang out with girlfriends, but not me…
All that came to a screeching halt when I had the baby.”
Now, Melissa can hardly wait to enroll in classes at Columbia College this fall:
“When I was in elementary school, I used to dream about going to college. I always wanted to make my parents proud… Now I want to go to make my kids proud.”
Congratulations Friend!! We’re so proud of you!!