The Last Day
May 25, 2001
7:20 a.m.
Today is Brigid's formal graduation from elementary school. Yes, she had her program a couple weeks ago in front of the entire school, but today is the real graduation--the graduate's luncheon where the kids get roasted, and the younger kids put on a play to send them off by. Brigid is looking forward to it and so am I--though probably not in the same fashions. So much of who Brigid is comes attached to something about this school. It's a small school with something under a hundred kids total. Her graduating class is twelve--which is large for this school. Her friends are there. Her guitar teacher is an instructor there. Her love of reading comes complete with a teacher with perhaps the perfect disposition for dealing with elementary school kids. School plays. Science projects. Capture the Flag. Success. Failure. It's all tied up here in this school. When I ask her how she fells about finishing this school, she's pretty noncommittal, so I'm sure I'm more nostalgic than she is. [grin] But she lets on here and there, and I like that. I want her to be cognizant that she's going through a success gate, you know? I want her to associate pleasure and satisfaction with the school. I want her to be glad she went there. But mostly I want her to be tiny again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Dangit. I can't help it though. Last night Brigid had a phone call from a friend. She started talking and it became obvious that she couldn't say much with her parents around (things like "I'll tell you tomorrow at school" were our first tips). Then she slipped away with the cordless and curled up in the living room by herself to continue the conversation. I really didn't care about that. I figured it was fine--kids need some amount of privacy. But I did want to check my e-mail--which was impossible while she was on the phone. "We need an always on connection," I said with exasperation. (Not that I would need a big push to get Lisa to accept the idea of a broadband connection. She would be a pushover for it. But the expression made for a bit of down-homey, "been through the wars together" parental humor that you won't really appreciate unless you've been there.) "It's starting," Lisa replied. I'm pretty sure Brigid and her friend talked about boys at sometime in their conversation, but I've promised myself I'm not going to think about that because ... well ... just because. Eeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!! Oops. Sorry. I thought about it. Never mind. So, you see, we're in transition here in the Collins household. I'm working on a novel that I think may change my career. Lisa's got her own little bits going on. And Brigid is in the process of becoming an adult. It's a very busy time. But today Lisa and I are going to go to school and we're going to have lunch. We'll sit in the open gymnasium with its gray and black tile floor and the hoops at both ends of the floor. Brigid's classmates will get roasted. The teachers will smile. The parents will applaud, and some of them will probably cry--it's just that kind of school, you know? I'll watch my lithe daughter with her fragile beauty live out what is essentially her last day as a sixth grader, and I'll do my best to not see her as the child she has been here. I'll do my best not to remember when she and her friends were barely taller than the desktops--when they had to tip-toe to peer into the fish tank, when their book bags almost drug on the ground even when they were slung properly on their shoulders. I'll try not to remember when none of them had braces. I'll do all this because I know Brigid wants to be accepted as the adult she almost is. But, in the end, I'll also hope that Brigid will forgive me when I somehow manage to fail at these tasks. Because we all know that I will. For better or worse, we are everything that has happened to us. To store these things fully away on this day will be impossible. Anne Lamott once wrote that there is ecstasy in paying attention. I like that. Today, I'm going to be ecstatic.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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