It’s May!

For me, May has always been the most hopeful month of the year.  Okay, so I am celebrating its arrival one day early, but who’s counting?  The weather starts to look up here in Buffalo, sometimes.  We celebrate Mother’s Day, Memorial Day and my birthday.  Communions, commencements, and college reunions make for memories and milestones that last a lifetime.  And as we celebrate, we look forward to the sunny summer months when we refresh ourselves from the long winter.

This year I am lucky to have many memory making events to look forward to.  But one in particular merits a blog post.  Four years ago, my niece Danielle entered her freshman year at Brandeis University.  She had grown up on Long island which was closer to Buffalo, but moved to Phoenix when she was 10 years old.  I hadn’t seen her as much when she was in the southwest, but I remember as a young child, both her stubbornness as well as her creativity.

It was not until she was ready to go to college that I really became re-acquainted with Danielle.  She needed help with choosing her school and making her applications.  I was surprised and honored that she came to me.  Choosing Brandeis University was Danielle’s doing; she visited it once and from the moment she walked onto the campus that was her school.  So we worked on an early acceptance application.

Acceptance to a top-tier school like Brandeis is not an easy task.  Especially if you haven’t spent your whole high school career planning for it.  Danielle met me on the Vineyard (that is, Martha’s Vineyard where I explained in a previous post, long ago, is where some of the most important things happen in my life) the summer before her senior year to visit and to plan her strategy and begin the process of making her application.  Don’t get me wrong, the raw material was great, but fashioning it into a competitive application was our challenge.

She showed her tremendous determination with intense studying for taking and re-taking her SATs.  Her untapped creative energy, which had bloomed in the desserts of Arizona, emerged on her application essay (revised at least 25 times) about a photographic self-portrait.   And her excellent scholastic record coupled with her extra-curricular activities (competitive volleyball being her favorite), she earned an acceptance as an early decision applicant.

Danielle became an art major with a business minor.  She has kept a blog for most of her four years, where her growth as an artist and a young woman ready to take on the world is apparent.  She spent one summer in Mexico to pursue her painting and photography.  Last summer she was awarded a fellowship and spent the summer at the Chautauqua Institute just south of Buffalo, where we were able to visit and see her progress.

And now she is ready to graduate.  And we are really proud.  I can’t wait to travel to Boston in two weeks to see her senior show, the culmination of all her work presented to the community for display during the month of May.  And to see her receive her degree.

And, and to top it all off, she knows what her future holds for her. Well, at least her immediate future, which for too many graduating from college this year is no small thing.  She has been awarded the Mortimer Hays Art Travel Fellowship from Brandeis University.  She will be funded to spend the next year in Mexico painting and learning and exploring.  (Hopefully the swine flu will have come and gone by the time she is ready to travel).

We ended April with the outrage of the lack of equal pay for women.  And we were successful in starting to unite and to raise up many voices at once.  We are doing this for ourselves and for the future generations of women who have a dream to live and just want to have a fair chance at living it well.

I have no doubt that Danielle is one of those women who will make things happen in this world.  I hope that all of you have someone special to celebrate in this month of May.