Have you ever had one of those items that you didn't really want, but it was given to you at some special occasion in your past, and you can't give it away because it would have no meaning to anyone else and they wouldn't want it? I have one of those items. It is a replica of Gamaliel Painter's cane.
Gamaliel Painter was one of the founders of my undergraduate alma mater, Middlebury College, in Middlebury, Vermont. Upon my graduation from this venerable Ivy League-wannabe institution in 1996 (yes, I really AM that old), the college gifted each of us with a replica of the walking cane that Gamaliel Painter used to walk around campus. My parents grumbled about how they spent lots of money (we won't define how much--they just finished paying off the loans a few years ago) for my college education, and what did I get? Not a job, but a cane.
This cane is not something that means a whole lot to me, but I really don't know what else to do with it. So, it has come along with me on all of my most recent moves. It is of such awkward size that it doesn't fit well in any spot. I seem to remember it coming crashing down from various spots in my jam-packed Subaru as I was going from hither to yon. I don't think it hit my dog in one of those falls as I drove up to Alaska, but it may have. When I get to various places and run across it as I'm unpacking, the cane gets stuck in a corner and quickly forgotten about.
This morning after I had packed up most of my apartment, I was using the Swiffer to sweep up all of the dust monsters (no, not dust bunnies--these things were too big to be bunnies) out of the empty apartment. As I went into the closet, I found, stuck in the back corner, the cane. I grumbled about this stupid cane that always turns up in the oddest places, that I had never wanted in the first place, and now I had to make one more trip down to the storage cage to stick it in there, because it was going to have to wait until I end up someplace permanently before I throw it in the car again.
But just now, as I'm writing this post, I'm thinking that maybe I can look at this silly cane as a symbol of an education that will always be with me, through whatever moves I make. Middlebury gave me a good education, including good writing skills that have helped me through graduate school, both at Concordia Seminary and at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. I made friends at Middlebury that I hope to keep with me through the rest of my life, both in person and via social media. Likewise, I've made friends at both seminaries that I hope to keep up with even as I continue the wandering that I and my family have become known for. And so, this silly cane replica will remind me of the constancy of education and of friends throughout my constantly changing life. Maybe I don't want to get rid of it after all.
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