Graduation--A Time To Remember

I'm back home after almost a week away.  It was hard to get a new post written during those days on the road and spending time with a lot of people in Dallas while we celebrated my oldest granddaughter's high school graduation. I managed to sneak in a short one on Monday of this week but working on my tablet left it with a few typos that I hated to see.

Graduation is a time of saying good-bye to one section of life and catapulting into the next stage, whether it is moving on to college or vocational training or entering the workforce on a full time basis. Whichever one of those the graduate has chosen, the new world they enter will be vastly different than the high school days they've put behind.

Our granddaughter, Alexis, will be attending Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She made Ken and me proud grandparents with all she accomplished in high school and we're looking forward to following her college years.

For many of us, graduation is an event that happened ever so long ago. At the time, it was center stage in our life but looking back, it is only one of dozens of milestones in our lives. An important one, to be sure, but not nearly as huge as it seems when it is happening.

We watched 921 seniors walk across the stage to receive a diploma. Some had special honors of various kinds shown as additons to their maroon robes and with symbols next to their name in the booklet given to those attending. We heard great cheers for some, polite applause for others and respectful silence for still more. I'd like to think it was respectful silence rather than no one being there for the student. Perhaps it was some of both.

The audience was made up of families and friends of the graduates--a diverse groupin bothf race and national heritage. Even so, they all had one thing in common--pride in their graduate along with the joy that comes with this educational accomplishment. The students and audience members also came from different economic circumstances but were united in love for a child wearing the marron cap and gown of Lewisville High School on this special night. There had to be diversity in the political parties these audience members follow, too. On this night, nothing mattered except the fact that we were all there to celebrate a true occasion, to support a young student and to launch them into the next part of their life.

I had several flashbacks of things Alexis has said and done in the 18 years we have had the pleasure of having her in our lives. At the big  family party on Saturday, many stories were told about her baby years, toddler times and school days. With each story I heard, I realized how very much this young woman is loved. And so shall it be when our other three grandchildren reach graduation day. Every family in the audience of a few thousand probably had flashbacks of their student, too. Thousands of family stories which I hope will someday get recorded in a Family Memories book. Maybe not all of them will do it, but let's hope many do so.

Tomorrow, we'll get back to tips and encouragement for writers which is the aim of this blog, that and to share some of my world with you.