Tales Out of School

I remember once when I drove my sister-in-law to the airport, she got flummoxed with the overhead signs as we were coming in and thought we should get in the “Arriving” instead of the “Departing” lane. When I resisted, she laughed and said, “But I’m arriving for my flight!’

This is kind of the way it is with graduation ceremonies, isn’t it?  “Commencements” are, of course, beginnings— or arrivals. And yet the whole experience always feels much more like, indeed is in fact, leave-taking. I wonder, in this season thick with these heart-wrenching events, whether there’s really any difference between coming and going, starting and finishing, introducing and concluding, packing and unpacking?

Over the past year, my husband and I have been practically swimming in schools. These would be schools our kids go to, schools our kids used to go to, schools our kids are about to go to, schools we used to go to, schools we work with, schools we work for. Oh, and this is not to mention the schools that are actually nearby. In the old days, in a different town, when our kids set off with their backpacks from the house, the local schools would be far and away the most important ones in our daily lives. That’s changed, and it feels kind of strange.

For me anyway, the school gymnasium (in my elementary school, it was called the“all-purpose room”) has always been the place where you can feel time passing. The thing is, though, the big room stays pretty constant: same slippery floor, same stage with the few steps going up on either side, same basketball hoops bent up when not in use, same long tables that come out for lunch, same–well, maybe not–custodian fulfilling his duties. Once, though, your child was tearing around with the other kids, riding on a scooter maybe, or playing in a concert; then, all of a sudden, he’s miles away, walking calmly across some campus. When some event brings you back to that same gymnasium, you think about what it means to move on.. and check with yourself to see that you are doing your own kind of moving on, too.  You know for certain that there has been loss, feel the pangs of it; you know what’s missing has been swallowed up like so many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches packed for lunch. Usually, it takes a little more effort to identify the gain too; but then – behold—there it is! When you (and your child) were in the cocoon, you didn’t really even have any idea of the butterflies, albeit different species of butterflies, you could both become. Nothing against the cocoon, of course; indeed, the more you take flight afterwards, the more you are apt to look back and discern what you both got in that place that was good.

Let’s face it–most of the emotion that comes out at commencements has way more to do with relationships than with academics.  Last week, our younger son had to bid farewell to the middle school community on a hill that had meant so much to him over the past three years. The most remarkable part of the graduation proceedings, I think all of the parents would agree, was the ball of boys that formed after the formal part of the ceremony was over. They greeted their teachers, who were all in a line, and then they just kind of collapsed into one another— for a good twenty minutes. In their blue blazers and ties, they looked like a swarm of bees, constantly circulating among themselves and having no interest in anyone else. Contrary to what some people might have expected from teenagers of this gender, they emoted plenty. Probably I shouldn’t say a whole lot about that.  It was mighty fine, though, to see the mothers and fathers waiting with their cameras.…and the graduates paying them no mind as they sought only to make contact with one another, realizing with a wallop that this was really the end.

And the beginning too, let’s not forget. Their beginnings would be elsewhere, though, and also would be separate. They clung to their collective ending not because every moment they had spent together had been perfect, but mostly because it was deeply collective—enough of a virtue in a world full of loneliness, really. Furthermore, the future was – as it always must be—uncertain.

Now, diving into one more commencement weekend, I’m hoping mostly just to stay afloat, not be overwhelmed by the throngs of people or the splashing of sentiments all around.  Of course I’ll have my own sentiments to deal with, too. One of the main ones will be, I already know, that just about every moment harkens back to a previous one – or more accurately, millions of them—just as it opens a way for the millions of moments still ahead. King Lear gets it right when he says, “Ripeness is all.”  Arrivals and departures—they do require two different lanes, in a way, and the emotions they bring forth are not one and the same; but darned if those lanes don’t come awfully close to one another at about this time of year. So close, in fact, that you can almost see where you were at the very same time that you are landing somewhere else. Begin, by all means, but don’t forget, either.