I Approve

Today has been "Faculty Approval Interview Day" on my calendar for weeks now, but I just took a walk that changed that.

I'm beginning down the approval road, which is the last leg of the candidacy journey. For three years we've been writing essays and interviewing with representatives from our home synods. They're checking in with our academic, spiritual, psychological and vocational standing and marking the journey with club jargon like "entrance", "endorsement", "approval", "application for restriction" and "assignment". It's exciting and strange. Let the madness begin (or continue).

So today I met with two members of the faculty to talk about my most recent and final essay for the candidacy process. Before we gathered, I re-read my work from five weeks ago. There were things I wished to change and others that should have been highlighted further, but the damage was done. This first interview of the year was a pleasant capstone to my relationship with my advisor and a new faculty member. We wandered back through my time at Luther and puzzled about things to come. It was casual and supportive after so much build up!

The weather is beautiful today and a weekend of rain looms, so I skipped the gym and the library after our meeting and headed home. I changed into my favorite lounging around clothes and put on my trusty flip flops. It would take almost two hours, but I was determined to run all my errands on Grand Avenue on foot in honor of the warm breeze.

I wandered in and out of stores finding what I needed: prescriptions, food, stamps and ideas for wedding invitations. The leaves are perfect - most rattle in the wind from their branches but they are falling and crunching under foot as well. My hands were full when I smelled a familiar scent from high school.

THE GRAND OLE CREAMERY. Mmmm. I hadn't been inside in years (a date in college?), but nothing had changed. I creeped up to the counter and ordered the old standard: peppermint bon bon in a sugar cone. That will be three-forty.

My father's voice (three forty for that little ice cream cone??) was muffled by my instant gratification and the sound of five boys shuffling in for sodas. They looked like they were in sixth grade, so they're probably in eighth - that wonderful year when most boys' voices quiver and crack before officially dropping. I stood watching them pay for their drinks and then, like little men, discussing which girls at school had already fallen for them. Studs.

And then I walked home by the shops and traffic and runners and friends and couples canoodling at tables outside coffee shops. I walked by the law school and students hustling about, then the convent and nuns raking leaves. And before I put my key in the door, I apologized to my flip flops. They have seen warm air and my feet for almost 18 months straight now. Soon they'll disappear under my bed or in a closet away from Grand Avenue.

Today was "Faculty Approval Interview Day". But now its either "Flip Flop Appreciation Day" or "God Bless Peppermint Bon Bon Day". Or maybe all of the above.