“And so, congratulations to the class of 2012!”
In a moment, the audience rose to its feet. Under a great white tent on an unusually cool June day, brothers and sisters of the graduating seniors shot up, relieved to be able to move again after some three hours of speeches and awards.
Parents rose a little more slowly, beaming and clapping, but taking care not to knock over each other’s folding chairs. Slowest of all were the grandparents, who for obvious reasons needed a bit more time to unfold, but who were frankly less conspicuous for the hesitancy of their movements than the radiance of their pride.
If it is a joy to see one’s almost-adult child accepting her diploma — and I am here to report that it is — it’s apparently something close to rapture to see a grandchild up on the platform.
“Look at her! Look at her!” marveled an elderly woman who had clambered to her feet a few seats away from our family. Earlier, when it had been her granddaughter’s turn to rise and glide across the stage, she’d been in transports — half-rising from her seat and half-calling out the girl’s name as the school headmaster described the young woman’s accomplishments and attributes.
“Shh,” the girl’s parents had said gently, smiling.
On the stage, 116 young people sat in various states of exultation, exhaustion and calm recognition at their new status as graduates. For a week they’d been feted and honored, as the school marked the annual miracle with athletic and academic awards ceremonies, and families observed it with parties and lunches and dinners. Teachers had drilled the students for hours and hours so they could carry off the pageantry of the big day without stumbling.
And suddenly — or so it seemed — it was over! They were done!
The applause intensified as the graduates rose and performed their final, dignified (albeit broadly grinning) passage down a red Astroturf carpet through the tent and out into the sunshine.
As families poured after them, mothers and sisters in their gay summer dresses and fathers and brothers in jackets and ties, something seemed to be missing.
We’d all just gone through one of life’s great milestones. We’d tapped almost every key on the emotional octave. Here were young people on the brink of leaving their childhoods behind, saying goodbye to their homes and families for the great world; here were families walking away from the ceremony that has come more than any other to mark an American child’s passage into semiadulthood.
And no one was crying! There was not a wet eye to be seen. In all that great crowd of proud relatives and relieved graduates, I couldn’t spot a single person blubbing. Even I wasn’t crying, and I cry at everything — newspaper stories, TV ads, maudlin old-time radio shows. At one point, I actually patted around my own eyes, as if to ask them: Well, what about it?
I expected high school graduation to be more poignant than happy, a time when our and other families would enter a kind of mourning for the years that had gone. To my surprise, it turned out to be a day of utter good cheer.
Grandparents were beaming. Parents were beaming. The young people were beaming. Maybe this was because everyone was so busy smiling for the camera, after the ceremony.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at mgurdon@ washingtonexaminer.com.
