Somebody else's graduation

I've never been a fan of graduation ceremonies. I attended my high school graduation under protest. I skipped both my undergraduate and graduate ceremonies. I've attended a few for friends in the intervening years, but none of them has particularly worked for me.

This morning, I went to the graduation at my kids' school. I attended because both my kids were involved, though not graduating: Sarah acting as a junior marshall, and Scott playing in the orchestra.

In the same way that last night's movie had a lot going for it, this ceremony had a ton going against it:

* It started at 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday, so I had less than four hours of sleep and walked onto the field already pissed at losing the benefits of my best sleep night.

* It was outdoors. Though overcast and cooler than most end of May days, the weather still verged on hot and was often muggy.

* My back is still sore and far from fully healed, and I had to sit in lousy chairs or the bleachers. (We went for the bleachers, and with a hurt back it sucked about as much as you'd expect. At least I got to sit on the ground level, so I could periodically get up and walk around.)

* Neither of my kids was graduating, so I had no family stake in the outcome.

Despite all that, I found the event far better than I had expected. Several moments were downright touching, the speakers were decent or better, and the fact that one of the seniors is one of Sarah's very best friends gave me someone to cheer for.

I actually quite enjoyed the address of Dr. Benjamin Bernard Dunlap, the President of Wofford College and the main speaker. He was erudite, funny, had enough of value to say that those listening might get real value from his speech, and he kept it reasonably short. Even the two student speakers did good jobs.

The most moving moment, though, was a part of the ceremony that may sound trite: each senior took a rose and presented it to his or her mother. Seeing all these young men and women hug their moms, watching the expressions on the faces of the moms and their kids, and having a clue from Rana's countless hours doing school-related things for the kids about how much moms make schools work gave me a stronger than ever understanding of what so many of these women have sacrificed for their kids. (Yes, I find it vaguely annoying that there's no corresponding event for the dads, but as Chris Rock observed, we get the big piece of chicken and that's about it.) I know that no single moment can ever repay eighteen years of work and sacrifice, but these moments do count. They do help. The moms deserve them, and this one was lovely.

The rose ceremony even made me wish someone at my high school had made me give a rose to my mom. Most of my eighteen-year-old self would have hated it, but I like to think that some small part of me would have realized even then just how much she gave up to get me to that point in life. I sure realize it now.