Clap Out

We are quickly approaching graduation in our house. It is just over three weeks out, and I still have no idea how many tickets I will actually land. I have yet to order the tacos (because of course tacos) or purchase decorations. I’ve been to more than my share of graduations. In addition to all my own, I taught high school for 18 years. Often I’d volunteer to be a line leader and I’d walk on stage and sit with hundreds of graduates nervously pulling on their tassels or knee socks, praying not to trip as they walk across the stage or trying to blow up a beach ball without me noticing.

Each year I listened to speech after speech encouraging them to move on. To go forth. To make a difference. To do something. The speeches were generally cliche but always earnest. Each time I listened and I remembered my own high school graduation, sitting in their seats in G. Rollie White Coliseum trying to spot my friends and family in that giant crowd. Then, I also worried about not tripping across the stage. How my hair looked. Where I was going afterwards. As in the after graduation party, not my future.  It would be another few months before I packed up my Grand Am and drove it 7 hours north and west to an empty dorm with a potluck roommate.  This life where I knew no one. My bulletin boards, tiny closet and my now empty gas tank, all waiting to be filled up with something new. My dad showed the RAs card tricks while I died from humiliation and hoped that this new girl that I was going to share a closet with would like me ok. Or at least tolerate my James Dean posters and superior musical tastes. And not tell anyone that I occasionally snore. At my own graduation I did not listen to the speakers, or if I did I can't remember what was said. I did not listen then, so I try to listen as an adult. Year after year of quotes and jokes and cliches that no longer apply. I can barely remember the girl I was. Sitting in the second to the last row. But I am sure that someone stood on the stage and tried to tell her to go forth and make something of herself.  That was almost 25 years ago, and I’m still working on the “making something of myself” part but I did go. And it has been one of the best decisions I ever made. It feels very different, however, to think of my own son going.

Graduates are not the only ones that get attention at the end of the year. My district celebrities fourth graders with a clap out as they leave elementary school and move on up to an intermediate campus. All the students line the halls and the fourth graders take one last lap around the building. Many of them wear an elementary shirt signed by their classmates and they feel big and special as they parade past the younger grades and prepare for things like switching classes and figuring out how to open a locker. At least three elementary schools filter into one intermediate school and these kids will be mixed up with new classmates, choose electives and hopefully start wearing deodorant. 

Last week the seniors in my district were all invited back to one of their 24 elementary campuses. Instead of youth sized t-shirts, this time they donned their college or military shirt under graduation robes. There is breakfast, slideshows, mascots and old elementary yearbooks. It is no small thing, 100 people filled the gym including their old teachers, counselors and principals. Even ones that have moved on to other campuses or cities. They recreate class photos and eat all the donuts and chickfila they possibly can before heading back to 2nd period. I watched seniors who needed to shave, shelving picture books while waiting in the library. I saw surprise bloom on their faces as their elementary teachers remembered them.  I saw students awkwardly find each other again. They’d grown apart over the years but in the same gym as so many hoedowns and dodgeball games they were reminded of their common history. Instead of upcoming AP exams they talked about Cheetah bucks, lunch tables and field days. Eventually all the parents lined up and the almost graduates zipped up their robes and straightened their caps. They ran the halls one last time. This time they were really as big as they had thought they had been in the fourth grade. This time was really the last. This time they are really moving on, across the country and not just to the school a few miles down the street. This time their minds were on majors and deployments instead of combination lockers. 

These next few weeks are full of senior events: awards, prom, senior night at church and eventually my son will put on his robe again and walk the aisle during Pomp & Circumstance. This time I will not be on stage, I will only be a spectator. Cheering wildly. This is the goal and the hope, but there is still a knot of loss in more than just my son’s tassel. Graduation seems like the cumulation and the bigger event, and maybe it will be. However, when I look at pictures from clap out, my heart feels like it is happening all at once. Like I should still be waiting in the pick up line or trying to remember to sign his reading log. Graduation is the opportunity to celebrate an ending and an opportunity to look forward to what is next.  Clap out, however, provides the rare opportunity to also remember exactly where he had been. I volunteered to help set up breakfast and  was one of the first ones there. I saw each “kid” walk in and they all said almost the exact same thing. “I remember this gym being so much bigger.” The room didn’t change, but they did. The gym didn’t shrink, they grew. 

Sometimes we need to go back to where we started to see the difference. 

It is a long journey. It goes on forever and is over in a blink.