Dream Deferred

Dream Deferred

Susan W. Hudson

I performed my final duty of the day as a Customer Service Representative at a centrally located bank in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At five o’clock sharp, one of the other CSR’s and I locked the two outside doors to the bank. We unlocked the doors to let lingering customers out, but nobody came in. 

It had been a long, busy day, and I was ready to go home. I drove to my apartment, checked on my younger son, and changed into comfortable clothes. I decided to walk down to the mailboxes to check my mail.

THE envelope was there! I sat down on the curb next to the row of mailboxes and cried. I don’t mean little streams trickling down my face and dripping onto my shirt. I mean loud, heart-wrenching sobs coming from deep within my chest and sheets of tears.

I had started my quest for a college degree nearly 30 years earlier, in my junior year of high school. I loved my English teacher. I loved poetry, reciting “God’s World” before my classmates with a mad passion I didn’t know I had; I spoke with a breaking voice and tears in my eyes. I loved books and the places they took me and the many unknown things they introduced me to.  And, baffling my classmates, I loved diagramming sentences and conjugating verbs.

There were no books in my childhood home except perhaps a Bible.

I came home from school one day near the end of my junior year of high school with a notice about juniors taking the SAT and preparing for college. I showed it to my parents, and their response was a resounding “we can’t afford it.” They had never been supportive of my yearnings. They provided the basics. I had food, water, heat, and necessary clothing. Besides, I was wearing a diamond engagement ring given to me by my football hero boyfriend.

My mother’s first child, a girl, was born out of wedlock. My mama never recovered from the humiliation. Mama didn’t want me to go to college. She desperately wanted me to be safely married. Johnny was a good guy, and I was his homecoming queen. So, I never took the SAT, and my fervor for going to Appalachian State Teachers’ College was dashed.

Shortly after being crowned homecoming queen in my senior year and graduating with honors, Johnny and I parted ways. He really was one of the nicest people I have ever known. I said “was,” because he died young of Type One diabetes. I still think of him often and fondly.

I opened the letter from Mount Holyoke College tentatively. It was the news I had waited for all my adult life. Not only was I admitted to Mount Holyoke College, but with a full scholarship!

They have a program called FP, the Frances Perkins scholarship, (named for the first female in the Cabinet - Secretary of Labor for FDR) which allows women to enter college after being away from high school for a variety of reasons. Mine was that I got married, raised a family, and worked at menial jobs all my adult life. My goal was to transfer my credits from East Carolina University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and UNC-Charlotte, finish my junior and senior college years at MHC, graduate, and go to law school. 

That college degree had always been my goal and I always felt it was the impossible dream. Could it really be happening? My older son was at Princeton, writing his dissertation. My younger son had just graduated Chapel Hill High School and was headed out for Emerson College in Boston in the fall. So, lots of things were changing for my little family. I had always been a helicopter mom; now I might get my chance to fly.

In my early twenties, I had married a man who was so like my mother. Any time I told him I had a big idea about something I wanted to do, his reaction was, “You can’t do that.” He didn’t mean he was forbidding me; he was just negative and did not understand my gumption. The last thing he said to me when I left him was, “You will not survive.”

In spite of my husband’s negativity, I took college courses at my local community college including transfer courses from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Later, after I left my unequally-yoked marriage, I worked full time and took college courses half-time at East Carolina University and later at the University of North Carolina at Chapel. 

In the fall of 1993, a friend from Chapel Hill drove me to Mount Holyoke in his van. We drove through South Hadley, Massachusetts, which is the formal address for Mount Holyoke College. It was a small, run-down town. I was not expecting that. Ultimately, the Mount Holyoke campus opened up. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It is a botanical garden. My friend helped me move into my room in Pearsons Annex, a house for FP’s next to Pearson Hall for “traditional” students. I brought my clothes and my stuffed bear collection.

My friend had to leave to drive back to North Carolina. I was left there alone, very sick with a terrible head cold, and no direction in sight. I sought out my advisor for help. I thought she would take me under her wing and groom me for a Women’s Studies degree, and my fight for women’s rights as a lawyer. She told me to try different classes to see what I liked. How does one try out “other classes,” when she is already pre-registered for and expected to be attending others? We never spoke about it, and I performed work-study duties in the Women’s Studies department.

I knew I was living my dream. Two weeks ago, I was a customer service representative at a bank in Chapel Hill, NC. I really liked my job, but I was so vastly underemployed. 

My supervisor, there was a single, unabashedly flirtatious bleached blonde about my age who wore outdated sexy dresses and very high heels. She batted her false eyelashes at her male customers; she was jealous of my relationship with my co-workers and friends who were half my age, single and very adventuresome. We went dancing, to the beach and to the lake. We played and I was living my second childhood. Therefore a promotion for me was not in the picture. 

However, the degree had been a very long-term dream. I gave up my rental apartment, sent my younger son to spend the summer with his friend and his friend’s dad, and stepmom. I sold most of my worldly possessions and packed my bags.

Of course, I said yes! It was the chance of a lifetime. I had taken a lot of courses in the humanities, but never took courses that required extra time away from my sons with a “lab.” I lost a lot of credits from all the part-time classes at ECU and UNC, but I knew it would be worth it. I had to take a foreign language with a lab, a math class with a lab, and a science class with a lab. 

I chose Spanish as my foreign language requirement. I loved the language and was quite excited to begin learning it. During my first two semesters at MHC, I was summarily humiliated every day at 9:00 a.m. On the first day of class, the teacher said, “this is the last time I will speak to you in English. My lessons will be in all Spanish after today.”  I knew I was in trouble. Many of my fellow FP students declared a disability and were excused from their foreign language requirements. I, being determined and stubborn, muddled through. Fortunately for me, the woman who was to become my best friend at college (also an FP) had just come home from a year in Ecuador and was fluent. With her help, I passed the final exam which looked nothing like what we had been “learning,” in class.

It was not that I could not learn Spanish. It was not that immersion in a target language was not an appropriate and useful technique in the hands of a good teacher. Rather, it was that the class was billed as introductory but included students with more advanced knowledge (most had just graduated high school where they had taken Spanish classes) and that the (new) teacher spoke at a level above introductory.

Over the last few years, my older son has self-taught himself Spanish and has acquired basic proficiency. I have also self-taught and learned some. Hoy es viernes, el catorce de agosto, 2020. 

One of the first things I did when I got settled in at MHC was to join the College Democrats. I’m a Yellow Dog, so I thought this would work for me. I was the first FP to do so. I had the privilege of meeting Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and the female democratic senators, including Barbara Mikulski, Senator from Maryland. I possess a beautiful picture of the two of us together. I later met and interviewed Gloria Steinem (also a great picture).

The second thing I did was to join the College Debate Team. Again, I was the first FP to do so. It was a wonderful group of intelligent young women. They welcomed me with open arms. We practiced twice a week. We competed with prestigious colleges, including Harvard, MIT, Smith, and Wellesley. We often won, and I learned so much.  At one debate event, a young man mocked my southern accent. I protested and had him called on the carpet; his team lost a point and the match. We trudged, with luggage to many colleges. We dressed up and managed our luggage on the T train. Most of our fellow colleges had snow blowers, as did we. We trudged through the slush very carefully, wearing high heels, to get to our appointed destination. We slept on college dorm room floors. It was hard on my 45-year old body, but it was worth it.

I had little time to feel lonely at Mount Holyoke, although my life there was very different from my life in Chapel Hill. I did miss my friends, Robert, Don, Rod, Sandy, Rhonda, Tom, Robin, Jerry, Mimi, Scott, and Nick a lot. I missed the men’s UNC-CH basketball team members who lived in Granville Towers, across the parking lot from the bank and were my loyal customers. My friends threw a party for me at the bank the day that I left. They brought gifts, and roses (or had them delivered). One of my friends, Robert, brought me a beautiful poster of Chapel Hill that he had mounted on poster-board and that had been signed by my friends. My adult sons brought champagne. Two of my co-workers toilet-papered my car and added happy notes for a big send-off.

A couple of times, I took the Peter Pan bus from MHC to Boston to see my younger son or to board the train to Princeton to visit my older son. I loved Boston; I am a history buff and the hustle and bustle of a lovely town intrigued me. I loved Princeton. That campus was almost as beautiful as my own. Peter Pan was not that pristine, but the ride was. In North Carolina we see the beautiful puffy clouds high up in the blue sky. On the Massachuttes Turnpike, we drove through them. WOW.

I left my beautiful campus to spend the summer of 1994 in my former home town, Chapel Hill, NC. I flew down with a promise of an internship at the Women’s’ Center in Chapel Hill in my back pocket and my life saving ($300.00) pinned to the inside of my bra. I exited the plane in Charlotte, NC. I kissed the ground and boarded a bus for Albemarle, NC. I took my luggage and walked to the insurance company I had always used, bought insurance for my son’s old, brown, beat-up Toyota Corolla (he could not have a car at Emerson College). I got a taxi out to my ex-husband’s garage. He signed the title to the car over to me, and I took off.  I drove to Chapel Hill, moved into a friend’s basement, and started my internship in Chapel Hill. It was a wonderful summer. I organized a huge yard sale and made a  lot of money for the Center. I had another great send off and headed back to campus in the battered Toyota with my TV in tow. Holding my breath the whole way, I drove across the Tappan Zee bridge. A breakdown would create great havoc. I crossed the 7-lane, 2,415 foot cantilevered truss bridge over the Hudson River at the widest point and the beauty took my breath away.

While at MHC, I actually saw the purple mountains majesty. I saw snowdrifts taller than I am.  I walked in the annual Laurel parade (we tied laurel branches together to make one long strand which we carried along the route together) with my fellow seniors just days before our graduation. I became very spoiled by walking over to Pearsons Hall for a full, warm, and always tasty meal three times a day and M&C’s (Milk and Cookies) at 9:00 p.m.

I’m not sure how much I learned from the courses I took at MHC. But I found many new friends, I experienced many adventures and a few challenges; I learned a lot about life and about myself.  I took that coveted B.A. in 1995. I have about a hundred pictures. My two precious adult sons were there cheering me on and crying. The Honorable Ann Richards delivered our Commencement speech. When I crossed the podium and took my degree, I stopped (against protocol) and shook hands with her. I will never forget or regret my sacrifices for my second chance at that dream deferred.