On a bone-cold day at the end of 1998, I headed to the Twin Cities campus to drop off my application for the M.F.A. in Creative Writing program. I’d been working as a journalist for a decade; the idea of spending three fully funded years immersed in creativity and craft was a luxury I could hardly imagine. I didn’t want to risk the package getting lost in the mail, so I slipped my writing sample into a manila envelope to hand-deliver it.

I was walking up the steps to Johnston Hall when I paused and looked across the grand expanse of Northrop Mall. I had attended college in New York City and even though I was from Minneapolis, before this I had spent very little time on campus. However, my father was a proud Gopher and I’d grown up surrounded by his college friends swapping (mostly off-color) stories about their time together. It may sound corny, but even though I was shivering from the wind charging up the steps, I felt a sudden sentimental connection to the place that meant so much to him.

My dad was the child of a single mother, who emigrated from Scotland when she was 16. College was a luxury for him, and he worked multiple jobs to scrape together enough money for tuition. He loved to tell my sisters and me about how, on a fall day in 1951, he had borrowed a green suit, which he paired with white socks and loafers, and hit University Avenue to navigate his way through pledge week. Every fraternity he approached told him the party was full. Eventually, he got to Delta Tau Delta.

The guy who answered the door sized up the scrawny guy in the goofy outfit.

“You might as well come in,” he said. “Because no one else is here.”

The rest is family lore and a preview of my father’s life as a self-made entrepreneur. The way he told it, the Delt House underwent a Cinderella transformation, rising in popularity and prestige.

I hoped that the U of M could be a launching ground for me in the way it had been for my dad. At the time, I didn’t know that he technically didn’t graduate—that he’d been in a serious car accident and had to choose between medical bills and tuition. Nor did I know that he didn’t let a bureaucratic detail such as enrollment status prevent him from living at the Delt House for six years.

When I learned that, I was surprised, but it also made perfect sense. My father was an unconventional man. Maybe it was his spirit of reinvention I was channeling on the steps of Johnston Hall that day. I started graduate school at 35 and gave birth twice during my studies. My second child, Henrik, was born two weeks before I graduated. He is now a U of M senior. His Gopher legacy also includes my husband, who went to the U of M to start a second career as an educator, and my mother-in-law, who earned a midlife Ph.D. and then, decades later, an M.F.A.

Life takes you down paths you can’t see until you are standing in a clearing. The trick is to always believe that you can keep walking. This is the U of M legacy I hope my son inherits.

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