Ulysses

My Great Auntie Marie blowing out the candles on her 90th birthday cake.

Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" in his dramatic monolgue, Ulysses, which tells the story of Ulysses after he is back at home in Ithaca, and is bored with staying at home all the time ruling, when all he really wants to do is go on adventures and learn new things.  My Great Auntie Marie went back to high school so she could graduate at the age of ninety!  To me, she is the epitamy of Tennyson's message to people to keep trying new things and "to follow knowledge".  My Auntie Marie had never finished high school when she was younger as women back then got married and started families at quite a young age, but she always wanted to go back, and so she did!  And she didn't just go back and write the tests and exams, she actually attended classes with the high school students and studied alongside teenagers, which I think is extrememly amazing!  I think Ulysses would be proud and impressed with what my Auntie Marie accomplished in her life, even into her elderly years!