Independence

The graduation tent will go up soon. The first time I saw it, I thought it looked a little bit like a giant airport hangar. Once the stage appears, the chairs — nearly one thousand — and flowers arrive, the tent is transformed into a gateway that welcomes our guests and ushers our graduates into the future. During graduation rehearsal a couple of years ago, I watched a group of kindergarten students parading to PE class. The seniors who were having trouble focusing on the task at hand could have learned something from our kindergartners about walking in line. At 6, their “what’s next?” was obvious: PE. For the 18-year-olds, that question was a little more abstract.

Growing up in New England, predicting the last day of school was a bit tricky. The final day was on the calendar, but there was always a critical caveat … winter. We knew if the snowstorms fell on weekends or late enough in the afternoon for the days to “count,” the last day of school was the last day of school. However, if they did not, all bets were off. Those days after school was supposed to be out were never good. The teachers were done, the students were done, and our parents were done. I can still hear Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” blaring from the eight-track cassette decks after the final bell had rung.

Once school ended with blessed finality, we ditched our backpacks and fell into the gentle rhythm of summer. My family would head off to Orleans on Cape Cod, where we would reconnect with our summer friends. I don’t remember talking much about school with them. Instead, we embraced the moment and slipped seamlessly into our routine of swimming lessons, backyard baseball, and riding our bikes to the penny candy store in town. We were not really “free-range” kids, but other than our parents’ driving us to those dreaded swimming lessons, we walked, ran, or rode everywhere else on our own. “Be home for dinner,” “Keep an eye on your brother,” and “Look both ways” defined the parameters of our days. They were also essential messages, implicit and explicit, about family and responsibility.

In the coming days, we will celebrate promotions in fifth and eighth grades and graduation for our seniors. As these ceremonies wrap up, our students will have participated in an essential rite of passage marked by a new understanding of independence and responsibility. I know as a parent, it is not easy to let go of the routines that sustained our role in our children’s lives. Yet these open doorways are precisely what we had hoped for and designed. “Be home for dinner.” “Keep an eye on your brother.” “Look both ways.” We are proud of you.

JWB