Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
My daughter's eighth-grade graduation is a ritual like none I've ever experienced.
Jun 17, 1999 | I'm into eighth-grade graduation for more than $200 already, praying the end is in sight and that I don't start crying until she actually walks across the stage. Will she walk across the stage? I don't know. I don't know much of anything, except that this is one of our few rituals, and I'm sadly lacking in experience.
I graduated from eighth grade in 1971, on a warm, clear day, in a white cotton dress with blue flowers on it that I'd sewed myself, rather badly. The sun shone through and outlined my legs. We stood on rickety bleachers in a hot gymnasium, and sang the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." ("White lace and proooommmisses, a kiss for luck and we're oooonnnnn our wwwaaayyy ...") Did I walk across the stage? I don't know; by then, I was already looking beyond, to high school.
I didn't graduate from high school. I quit after two years, leaving both it and home, no one very sorry to see me go. I went to college instead, an outwardly sour, inwardly yearning 16-year-old, with no idea what was in store but racing ahead as fast as I could.
I didn't graduate from college for 10 years -- life had intervened that decade -- and then it was from the third school I attended. I wore a black robe and was one of about a thousand graduates. My 4-year-old son sat in the audience, bored stiff, and my mother, secretly sure I'd been on the road to ruin since kindergarten, took my photograph with obvious relief.
That son didn't graduate from eighth grade or high school. In fact, he got kicked out of two preschools and Head Start before entering school in the first place; later he was kicked out of fifth grade, spent several years at what we might euphemistically call a "special" program for troubled young people, and then spent two productively delinquent years in high school before dropping out. He quickly earned his GED, but it doesn't usually come with an official ceremony.
I did go to one high school graduation, when my adopted son, who is older, but younger, if you catch my drift, finished his senior year. He is deaf and learning-disabled and spent his high school years at a boarding school for the deaf about 40 miles away, coming home on the weekends, when he slept until mid-afternoon. He graduated from high school at 19. He wore a brilliant purple robe and cried most of the evening; I cried, too, when another boy earnestly sang/signed R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly," with all the heart I'd put into the Carpenters' anthem. He received what is called a "modified" diploma to go with all the report cards full of comments like "A for effort" and "could pay more attention." After graduation, he stayed at the school for another two years, learning "independent living skills." Disabled children are guaranteed public school up to the age of 21. He managed to get kicked out three weeks before his birthday.
Do you see why I have little experience at this particular thing?
Today, another graduation. My daughter is a year older and a head shorter than her classmates, because her own medically challenged infancy and childhood left her behind her peers. Graduation, what to wear? A note came home from school: "Formal wear and limousines are not appropriate." Neither option had occurred to me. My daughter's gorgeous figure is usually hidden behind big T-shirts, and she hasn't worn a dress outside theatrical performances within memory. What to wear? I didn't know, she didn't know, but I assumed it wouldn't be a problem because it had never been a problem before.
I am a clueless adult, a fashion victim, old. (Watching a couple kiss in a movie last week, my daughter said, "You used to do that, didn't you?") I'm past prime, that's for sure, and I don't know beans about graduation, which is not the point, but only the prelude. "You're not coming!" she said in shock, when I mentioned that I'd be dressing up a little myself. It turned out she meant to the party and dance that follows the ceremony. I can go to graduation, but no further.
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