The Peaks, the Pomp and the Circumstance

On High School Graduations

My son graduated from high school last Saturday.

I have an older daughter, so in the weeks leading up to graduation, many parents considered me experienced. They asked me — how many guests do we get at the Baccalaureate? Do parents go to the awards ceremony? How long does graduation really go?

I didn’t know any of the answers. My older daughter didn’t get these things. She graduated in 2020 and lost all her rights to these rites of passage. Senior skip day? Skipped. Senior assassins? DOA. Guest limit for her graduation? Seven, the number of seats in our Suburban.

All pomp ruined by circumstances.

So I was new to all of this — all of these events marking this big deal. And I, as the cliche states, had not known what I was missing. When everything got canceled in that 2020 spring, I had taken the whole milestone as a loss, a giant write-down, not understanding the value of half of the line items I’d slashed.

I see the full value now. I see that there is so much sweet to cut the bitter of this kind of ending. That this time and its ceremonies and traditions are privileges, and that every event builds to a proper and necessary goodbye.

And watching my son in these last few weeks has made me realize: high school graduation is the first really iconic thing any one of us does, where, equipped with a readily-banking memory and a requisite number of years under our belts, we both have an archetypal experience and have the ability to absorb, understand and process it.

Most people remember this time in their lives. And most people have an opinion as to how this time, this experience will rank in your life. Will high school remain one of the best times of your life, or will it get demoted over and over again as you do more and more? Some people will say this depends on when you do your peaking. Most people will agree that it’s best not to do this too soon.

I see the elements of my son’s high school iconography, the swatches of this time getting stitched into his mind. These past few weeks of rolling late nights with his same friends in their favorite spots. A heightened considering of the people and the places that have shaped him in these last four pivotal years.

And a heightened awareness of the big change coming.

That change that sits on a parent’s radar from the get-go, a dot blipping distantly and then moving ever closer. Until: a direct hit.

Until: the monumental shift from this person, your person, living in the hub of your family to living beyond it.

This after all you’ve done and been through. After getting to this place together with your kid. A high school graduation feels shared. Not the academics of it — I cannot even understand the dashboard that lists my high schoolers’ assignments, never mind the actual course work. But all that driving and feeding and pep talking and overall tending it takes to bring a barely-teen to the doorstep of adulthood. And somehow, though you were there THE WHOLE TIME, not just watching but participating in all of it, there’s no accounting for the whereabouts of the past eighteen years.

You held this person before they knew or could do much of anything, back when the idea of a high school graduation seemed fantastical for a being so incapable. And time had often c-r-a-w-l-e-d slower than a baby itself as this person learned to do more — a signature kind of elapsing, a fact of raising humans.

And then: the science fairs and the sick days and the thud-factor homework and the endless practices and the big games and the exciting wins and the hard losses and the great teachers and the tough coaches and the dinners in cars all collapse and condense until suddenly some young adult masquerading as your five-year-old walks across a stage to get a piece of paper saying that that part, the part you were a major part of, is over, and signaling that the next part, the part you’ll be less a part of, is due to begin.

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During the week leading up to graduation, I hear on the radio that the astronauts on the International Space Station circle the earth every 90 minutes, witness a sunrise or sunset every 45. I conclude this is what’s happened: I’m in outer space. That’s why days are going by as they are. That’s why my world as I knew it feels further and further away. That’s why the gravity of my house no longer holds, all my small bodies floating into space seeking their own orbits.

Excuse me, but does the Space Station have a stick shift somewhere? Could I put this thing in R? Get it to go backwards? Flip back through the rush of all these days and years. Visit all the little people my son was along the way.

Maybe those little people are out there in some other dimension, just waiting for my tourism.

The baby who pushed against the boundaries of my stomach when he was in utero, something pointy — a heel, I always thought — popping out and distorting the sphere, a foreshadowing — that forever I’d feel it as he stretched himself.

The toddler, whose heel would drop to my waist level when I held him, and, fitted exactly into my palm, would feel soothing to cradle, a talisman to rub, a sure sign of my good luck.

The kid whose heels hit the ground running, and only ever went faster; how we started lockstep, he in those funny, soft shoes that looked like colorful leather pea pods; but how soon, he needed shoes with soles and he wore them everywhere, finding more and more hallways and classrooms and fields that we less and less walked together.

The cleats meant to house those heels which were not always right in the bag where he’d left them. Getting to a far flung tournament with only one or zero cleats had bothered me, worried me, made me mad. But now I can think of that chapter of missing gear and feel none of those feelings. I’d forgive it all to go back and forget again.

The foot fall of my son’s heels on the floor above me when he’s upstairs and I’m downstairs. Like a comforting bass in a song that reminds me of home. Soothing, grounding, a gesture of his here-ness.

The here-ness which won’t keep. Because this is what most kids do. They get their feet under them and find their paths and take them.

I did this.

I walked out my parents’ door, saying a Big Goodbye. The sad college departure when I would never live at home again. Until I did that summer. The sad college graduation when I would never live at home again. Until I did for the first year I worked, commuting to Boston every day, and hanging out with my younger sister every night. The sad post grad school chapter when I would never live at home again. Until I did, moving home from Chicago and sleeping in my canopy bed right up until I walked down the aisle to marry my husband.

Thoughts like this float me for a bit. See, graduation is not an end! It’s just a change! Something exciting. Something new. And kids come back. I mean look: my older daughter is sitting beside me as I write this. No use flogging myself with sadness about what I can’t get back and what I don’t know is ahead.

Truly, living is the most unpredictable thing I’ve ever done.

But I cycle, only floating for a bit, and then dipping; reverting back to where did this time, my time, with my son go?

I feel the bargaining stage come on: are we absolutely certain this high school career and living at home thing needs to end? Is there a governing body I could reach out to? The Department of Extending Good Things? Should I find the 800 number right now and just keep shouting AGENT until I get someone on the line who can help? Can you Karen your way to keeping a kid home?

Or should I be aiming for broader institutional change? Wouldn’t a better system be — and I’m just spitballing here — to send toddlers or tweens to college?? Skip some of those um, challenging years and then reconvene, allowing us to keep these young adults who are funny and fun to be with at home right as they turn out too good to give up?

And then, I get rational again. I know: this is how it is supposed to be. That my son, heels and all, was made for this world. That this is always the parental dream — to make people who stretch beyond us; to turn out a person whom we’re proud of and love deeply, and then to be generous enough to share them willingly.

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Sitting at the Baccalaureate mass last Thursday night, it all hits me. Any time a choir takes a pop song, slows it down and sings it in a sacred place, I’m going to cry. If the same pop song came on the radio while I was driving, I’d probably switch the station. But sitting there at that ceremony, hearing young and strong and beautiful voices guiding the same tune out into the world, the song is new and impactful. Hey, I think, Imagine Dragons are right: these kids are on top of the world!

Look at them, in these gowns that make them look like they could catch a wind on some high peak and fly.

And yes: these kids have been waiting to smile. The pandemic took a chunk out of their high school careers. Endless, isolated days on screens when they should’ve been on campus with classmates. But to look at this group, you wouldn’t think they’d missed much. They took all the pieces they were handed and they made something whole.

I look back at my daughters who are not in our row due to crowding, something we, over the course of the weekend, will not hear the end of from either of them. My older daughter might be seeing ghosts, whispers of this ceremony she didn’t get. But she’s no longer haunted. High school was then, college is now and it’s full and it’s more. Besides, she’s not close to peaking. She’s got crampons on. She’s still summiting.

My younger daughter sits beside her, maybe seeing ghosts of what’s to come. She’d taken her last sophomore year final earlier that day, making her halfway done with high school. I know how time kaleidoscopes. I’ll be back in this church with her in 730 days. It won’t feel like that.

My younger son is not sitting with us or with them. He’s at home with our nanny, about to take meds and a bath and dream about the happy stuff that’s in his head. Some day he’ll sit at his own high school graduation, but he won’t be about to fly out of our nest. I used to think this was sad. But now I understand it to be a grant from the Department of Extending Good Things.

The choir continues and I think how I had not previously given Imagine Dragons enough lyrical credit:

Take you with me if I can.

Ah, there’s the snag. Here come the tears. Because these smiling, big dreaming graduates can’t take us with them this time. I mean, of course: they can take all the lessons we’ve taught them and all the love we’ve filled them with, but they cannot take us.

There’s a panic. Did I teach my son enough? Honestly, did I even teach him anything? I can’t remember any of it right now. Can he? All these years together, but maybe now we should be cramming. Pull some monumental all-nighter to be sure he’s ready for the world’s many tests.

Should I grab a sharpie and the 1,342 unused index cards this house holds and make flash cards:

Don’t forget who you are.

Don’t forget what you came from.

Don’t forget to drink water.

Don’t forget our 6,500 plus nights sleeping under the same roof, you dreaming up a bunch of the stuff you now need to leave to do.

Don’t forget you can’t eat food that was left out overnight, especially rice. Never eat that rice.

Don’t forget that first impressions are dumb and people make bad or untrue ones when they’re feeling uneven. Don’t forget everyone’s going to feel uneven in the beginning. So go with your ninth or tenth impression if you have to. There is no real rush here.

Don’t forget that you pulling into the driveway after practice was one of the best parts of the day. Actually maybe I’ve never told you this before. But now I am, so remember it. Remember that I’ll always love that view of you, coming up the back stairs in a baseball uniform, dirty and scruffy, looking like you slid too much at practice, holding a day’s worth of compost from your car snacks, leaning your head out to be kissed.

Don’t forget to always lean your head out like this. The world will love you.

And don’t forget your cleats.

Jen.