Jun
9
Dylan’s high school graduation was last Saturday evening. Like Riley’s, it was held at our local performing arts theater, a large downtown venue that I am grateful is inside and has better-than-folding-chairs seating. I had learned from experience with Riley’s graduating class that it’s best to get there plenty early and then I added some padding to that to allow myself time for 1) parking, 2) walking there in a pair of comfortable but still mobility-limiting heels, and 3) worming my way to the front for an unobstructed view. Plus 15 extra minutes just in case and 10 more minutes to be on the super safe side. You know, air travel math: fuck it, I’m heading there now, yeah I know the airport is 7 miles away and the flight is tomorrow afternoon.
I was so close to the stage and during the long procession I recognized several kids I hadn’t seen since elementary or middle school. In the midst of this coming of age moment, the shutter-flash of faces that jumped before my very eyes from soft baby cheeks to young adults. Everyone so grown now, so tall in their emerald gowns, bearing such tender fading traces of childhood.
As for the event itself, it felt like the perfect amount of pomp. A short intro from the principal, a couple of student performances and speeches, then right to commencement. In the video I captured of Dylan walking for his diploma the focus briefly blurs, an effect of the camera momentarily zeroing in on a closer object but in replay it seems like my own vision blinking back tears.
Oh, I didn’t cry that much. There was the welling up that happened during the processional as all the kids filed in, I’m not made of STONE. And when the caps went flying at the end (seems to me that a few beach balls also manifested out of thin air), there’s just something so pure and giddy about that moment. A full-bodied sense of relief and celebration and wild glee.
This was not a shared experience for me and that held some weight, to walk in there alone and sit by myself. But I did not feel like I thought I might: self-conscious, distracted. Instead I felt complete and content in my purpose. Distilled. Nothing mattered but this milestone and the fact that I was there to see it.
Hugging him afterwards, I could swear he was even taller. A whole-ass legal adult person, my god, and Riley was there too, my two littles-turned-bigs. I could remember talking about them graduating high school, back when it seemed an inconceivable, impossible distance from ever really happening.
And now Dylan is off to college in the fall. It’s all unfolding in the best kinds of ways — curiosity, motivation, independence — and that is the whammy of parenting, that the ideal outcomes are still going to crush your heart. Go off into the world is the goal, even as you wish they never, ever would.
Still, I’m so grateful for every bit of it. Everything hard, everything easy, everything that I wish I could re-savor and everything I wish I had done differently. It all led to here, to me bursting with bittersweet pride on graduation night, seeing with my own eyes that no matter what, I have two incredible kids who have forged their own individual bright paths.
Another ending, another beginning. A part of me, apart from me. How lucky I am to have had it all.
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