The Graduate
I hardly noticed them before. Huge white lettering at the end of driveways in the early summer. A name, a year. Another group of kids finishing high school. The high school band commencement practice wafting into passing traffic. Without a graduate of my own, it was just another marking of the start of summer.
Who paints those names at the end of the driveway anyway? Names from '19 and '20 veiled now beneath the fresh crop. Could this be the 10th plague? You know, the marked doorposts that the angel of death skipped over as Pharaoh went back on his word for the last time?
When my son's name found it's way to the end of our drive last week, everything changed. No passing over in this house. And yes, a death of sorts. That child I once knew is gone.
Hold that thought. Is it OK to make this about me, just for a few minutes perhaps? To savior the bitter taste of completion. When you’ve given all you could, stayed on task for 2 decades, become inseparably attached to your identity as The Dad, forgotten who you ever were without him, is it OK to mourn this child you loved into being, before welcoming in the man?
I carried him on my back, then he hopped off and held my hand as we gained altitude along the path, I pushed him up larger boulders and cleared brambles in our way, he never strayed beyond my shadow, finally we found the path widening to walk side by side to this summit. Drivers license, a car, a girlfriend, a summer job, a bank account, a diploma, dorm rooms, a scholarship, he is on his way, without me this time, and as the sunrise screams into day, it is hard to breath up here: He, radiant, innocent, alive, skipping onto the path along a ridge that I cannot travel. Me, here now, alone, before I leap down into the scree, to find my way again.
I know this sounds a little dramatic considering that there are 3 more breathtaking children in my life that still cozy up under my umbrella. Yet somehow the first to bound out proudly into the rain and shine shakes me up. Could it be that the first born is the scissor screw, the divine hope of a marriage, engraved in ones heart, no matter how that story unfolds?
Yes, my son just graduated. Bittersweet I know. I miss him even while he is still here, at our dinner table, pasta with vegetarian sauce, in my embrace after a long day, behind his gaming screen, listening to This American Life together, jostling with his siblings, cuddling the cat. Our days have passed in real time, but our years just flipped along unnoticed,19 times.
That white lettering at the end of the drive. I want it to last. I hear cries of my mother, my father, every mother, every father, our fingers grasping at the stream.
And the water must flow.
