Vickroy: My daughter was a frequent flyer in the school nurse's office. Now she's getting a nursing degree, of course.

Our daughter graduates Sunday with a degree in nursing.

My husband and I couldn’t be prouder.

Nursing school is tough. There’s complex terminology to memorize, complicated application scenarios to untangle, tests made up of only hypothetical word problems and all those clinical hours.

But she studied hard and never missed a day of class or clinical. Not for snowstorms, family crises, friends’ celebrations, car accidents, flat tires, exhaustion, financial hardships or sickness — real or faked.

At the same time, she held a part-time job that sometimes bordered on full-time hours as a student nurse at a local hospital.

Those of you who knew this butterfly when she was a caterpillar struggling to find the strength to get through a full day of grammar school may be wondering, “Whoa, who is this person?”

To answer that we need to go back to the beginning.

One morning a few weeks into kindergarten, our free-spirited second-born announced she was done with school.

“I’m staying home,” she said.

An hour later, I delivered her to the teacher on the playground and said my goodbyes.

I’m not sure why but on this particular day, I lingered long after the bell rang, sitting in our Dodge caravan balancing the checkbook. I was about to put the vehicle in gear and head to work when the flash of a blue dress caught my eye.

It was my 5-year-old bolting down the street.

That infraction put her permanently in the sites of the teacher.

But not long after she revealed a new method of escape.

“My school has a nurse,” she announced at dinner. “You can rest there when you don’t feel good.”

I could see where this was going.

By the time she turned 18, our daughter had transitioned through four different schools and gotten cozy with each of their kind, compassionate nurses.

Hardly a week would pass that I didn’t get a call at work.

“She thinks she’s getting a headache.”

“She said she might throw up some time today.”

“She thought she had a fever but her temperature is normal.”

My husband and I wondered, first, if she was physically OK and, second, if she would ever graduate, considering so much of her school day was spent outside the classroom.

We explained the nurse’s office should not be abused. The nurse had enough work to do without a perfectly well child taking up her time. We told her the story of the boy who cried wolf.

That came back to bite us when she was in third grade.

Just after lunch, a substitute nurse called, introduced herself and said, “Your daughter thinks she may have broken her arm during a fall on the playground.”

It was a new complaint, but it was also a substitute nurse.

“Is she crying?”

“No.”

“Does it look broken?”

“Not really.”

“Send her back to class. If she comes back, call me.”

You know how this ends.

When I picked her up at the end of the day, she was holding the arm and near tears. We drove straight to the Emergency Room and emerged several hours later with a purple cast.

To say the years that followed were painful for us parents is an understatement.

Every “almost” headache, every “sort of” stomachache, every visit to the nurse had to be taken seriously. In her version of Aesop’s fable, the boy wins.

We came to know a lot about each nurse’s personal life, too. Our daughter would regale us with news about a nurse’s haircut, her new shoes or where she and her family went on summer vacation.

By the time the child reached high school, my husband and I began to consider college alternatives. Clearly, school was not her thing.

We pictured her floundering into adulthood, feigning illness to get out of everyday tasks and never finding her calling.

As someone who’s been privileged to work in a field that also was my passion, I understand the difference between work and a job. And I understand that without education, opportunities can be few and far between.

I wanted both of my kids to be able to choose how they were going to contribute to the world. But, the fact is, each of us has to find our own path and then do the work required to travel it.

She did graduate and was accepted to a state college, where she majored in communications. She did well but the entire time I never sensed that she was owning the experience.

For me, college had been the ultimate opportunity. I was the first in my extended family to attend. Sure, I never had enough money. I never had a TV or a car or a spring break in Florida. I always had student loans and at least one part-time job.

But I embraced the freedom to live among my peers, to choose my major and many of my classes. And I loved working for the school newspaper.

Her experience was much more subdued.

Just weeks after she graduated, while she was sending out resumes, she announced she didn’t want to work in communications after all.

“Well, what are you going to do with your life,” I asked.

“I really want to be a nurse,” she replied.

Why didn’t she do that in the first place? It’s odd but my husband and I always thought that when she faked illness, she was running away from school. It didn’t dawn on us that maybe she was running toward nursing.

Regardless, nursing would require an enormous commitment. We knew she had the compassion but did she have the discipline and the drive to handle such a demanding course of study?

And, truth be told, we were upset. We’d seen the previous four years and thousands of dollars as a waste.

“Fine,” I said. “Go into nursing school. But YOU do the research. YOU get the transcripts. YOU fill out the paperwork. And YOU pay for it.”

She said she would.

And, she did. Well, we helped in the finance department but not initially. She had to prove this was something she truly could and would embrace.

She was on her own. Completely. And she flourished.

The combination of maturity and being “cut loose” seemed to bring out the best in our daughter. Suddenly she became all the things she’d never been: dedicated, determined, book smart.

She’d pass up invitations to go out with friends because she had homework. She joined study groups and read ahead in her textbooks. And when she landed a student nursing job, she did whatever they asked, whenever, wherever and for whomever.

Most important, she loved it. Truly.

That was reflected in her grades. She became somewhat of an authority on all kinds of health topics. We’d have lively conversations around the dinner table about diabetes, mental illness and heart disease.

She’d take our blood pressure, monitor our pulse, explain the difference between ibuprofen and acetaminophen. And she raved about the clinical experience she spent with a school nurse.

It’s a parent’s duty to work themselves out of a job, to raise children who can cope, think, plan and find happiness in this crazy, unpredictable world.

So much of happiness, I believe, comes from feeling fulfilled, from knowing our life has meaning and purpose. So finding a purpose is essential.

My husband and I now laugh about this child’s circuitous, full-circle path and wonder if we could or should have done things differently.

But I guess you can’t force metamorphosis. Just ask the butterfly.

dvickroy@tribpub.com

Twitter @dvickroy

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