What a day! As I predicted yesterday, today we had a long, good day. I spent the entire day preparing for, driving to, and participating in various celebrations associated with my daughter Michal’s graduation from college today. Up and at ’em at 6 a.m. and on the roady by 7, at her apartment at 8 and on campus at 8:15 for the ceremony which started at 9 a.m. Joined by her father and our friend Patrick, we stood (there were waaaaaay more people than seats at the place so we couldn’t sit anywhere near the stage) in various places catching pieces of the two and a half hour ceremony and I managed to catch a glimpse of the graduate as her name was called and suddenly she was on her way back to her seat. We went back and hung out in the quad area, waiting for things to conclude and for her to reappear in the flesh, having commenced, flipped her rainbow tassel from right to left, and readying herself to head off to celebrate.
I am grateful for being present at today’s event and to bear witness to the culmination of her four years of hard work, triumphs and tragedies, heartbreaks and headaches, friendships and mentorships, interesting classes and dull ones, good professors and awful ones, etc. It is gratifying to watch this person whom I brought into the world and helped shape and mold (as well as periodically mess up) truly grow and blossom and come into her own during her time in college. I am very proud of her. Like me, she has had to persevere through some fairly significant challenges over the past couple of years, and in spite of it all not only finished her undergraduate degree, but finished it strong. Unlike me, she has a pretty clear path to her “what’s next,” and will head off to graduate school near the end of the summer.
Mother and Daughter at Graduation, May 12, 2012
It is definitely an exciting time, yet also a little bittersweet. Commencement is about beginnings, and there’s no doubt that my daughter is off on a new adventure. I have no sense of being left behind by any means; my daughter and I are very close and will no doubt talk often and remain deeply connected as mothers and daughters often are. But we will no longer enjoy the physical proximity of being an hour’s drive away as we do now. We will adjust in the same way that we did when Michal first went away to college a whole hour away from home.
Commencement is a transition time. I noted a lot of side conversations as I passed graduates and their families–some students still seeking employment, talk about repaying student loans, worries about having to move back home while they figure out what’s next. For our little family of three–Jared, Michal, and me–it does mean some shifts in our family configuration as each of us takes steps, some tentative and uncertain, others confident and excited, toward our individual “what’s next.” As a single parent, I am swiftly headed toward “empty nest” syndrome. That will be an interesting transition point for me as well. Though it isn’t quite here yet, it’s a whole lot closer than it was a few months ago.
I am grateful for spending this day celebrating my daughter. She deserves to be celebrated. In a few short months, she and I will pack up her car and I will drive with her up to Seattle to settle her into her apartment and her new life as a graduate student beginning work on her masters degree. I find myself thinking about the eagles whose nest I’ve been watching over the past several weeks. The pair of bald eagles and their three eaglet offspring provide an interesting distraction as I check in on them at least once per day. The creator seems to be whispering to me that my time of brooding over, guarding, feeding, and caring for my “children” is winding down. I look at the pictures of the lovely young woman who is my daughter and smile, “Time to fly, little eagle.”
