Dreams Don’t Have an Expiration Date
A Mother’s Day tribute
At Diana Place’s Quest 2024 event earlier this week, speakers were asked to provide their “bumper sticker” quote. Mine was what I frequently say:
It’s not too late. Dreams don’t have an expiration date.
My inspiration for this insight is my interest in the encore stage of life, and the guideline for my life: My mother.
Born into a French Canadian immigrant family in the U.S., my mother was the oldest of four siblings. Incredibly smart and an avid reader, she was headed into her 60s with a singular regret: Not going to college. Characteristic of the community she grew up in, the family sent the boys and not the girls to college.
Her frequent message to me as I was growing up—go to college, go to college, go to college. It was one of the few pieces of advice that this rebellious teenager took, thus becoming a first-generation college graduate.
One day, after raising our family of five, and spurred on by my younger sister, my mother looked at my Dad and said:
Ray, I’m going to college.
And with that declaration, she did. She enrolled at the local university, attending at the same time as my youngest brother. It was hard, she relayed to me in our Sunday night phone calls. She would narrate her challenges. A native French speaker, she was sometimes dismissed by her French professor for not speaking “Parisian French.”
And yet she thrived on every minute, enjoying the perspectives of younger students in a way that she might not have appreciated those same insights coming from us. She was eager to share them and to learn from everyone and everything around her. It was hard, and it was fun. Challenging and exhilarating.
Four years later, she graduated, magna cum laude. She was now fluent not only in her native French and English but also in Spanish and Portuguese, languages that were important to her because they allowed her to communicate with newer members of the city we grew up in.
As my family cheered her on from the stands, I had a realization:
I had never seen my mother so happy.
So, Mom, I miss you every day. Every time I’m encouraging a friend my age, or people at the encore stage of life generally, I tell your story. You inspired me, and I hope I can inspire others.
Happy Mother’s Day.
© Janine Vanderburg, 2024
