A Mother’s Musing : The closing of the ‘Bank of Dad’ is cause for celebration
Posted on Wednesday, May 7, 2008
We have the ultimate graduation picture, taken during exercises for the Rogers High School class of 2003. It was taken in the big auditorium at University of Arkansas with my brand new digital camera. I had stepped up closer to the railing in an attempt to get a picture of my own graduate sitting with her friends among the rows of Mounties Blue. When I turned back to return to my seats, I snapped a picture of her father and her little brother sound asleep in their seats.
Really, I think they were faking. Although the soothing sound of hundreds of names being read, would make anyone a little drowsy; I think the "sleeping"was more for comic effect.
Graduation exercises gave me the satisfaction of pointing out to the rest of the family that if the kids used my last name, instead of their father's, we would have been out of the auditorium in record time. We had long ago made the decision to go with tradition and used his name as the family name, in spite of its alphabetical weakness.
Two years later, we were back in the same auditorium with the little brother dressed in blue and the older sister pretending to sleep in the seats.
This year will be different. This year we may still be going to the University, but it's not a Rogers High School graduation. It'll be our first college graduation.
That's actually kind of strange, because my husband and I are both college graduates. It's just that neither one of us attended our own graduation ceremony. There was some doubt whether the oldest daughter would "walk"or not, but I made her promise to get her cap and gown so I could take the pictures either way.
It's the pictures that will mean the most in future years, not the ceremony. I have a picture of my own high school graduation where I posed, dressed in my white cap and gown, with my best friend, Lisa. The two of us had been friends the whole way through school and still are. I love that picture.
The picture of my uncle's college graduation is the only surviving picture of my father's side of the family, complete with Great Aunt Alma who helped raise them. On my husband's side, it's his sister's college graduation picture we blew up and hung because it shows his brother, his mother and his grandmother. There aren't many pictures of his whole family.
I don't know who the speaker will be at this weekend's U of A graduation, but I'm not optimistic. While graduating from college is a huge accomplishment - an exciting time of life - graduation speakers can't really do it justice. You have to feel the excitement, not just talk about it.
When it's over we'll go back to the house for a graduation party which will give us the chance to take even more pictures. Maybe those will be the ones she'll treasure when she's getting ready for her own children's graduation.
I've hosted a lot of parties in my life. We've celebrated births and birthdays, anniversaries and holidays, but I don't know that I've ever had a better reason to throw a party. My firstborn child, the one who kept us up nights, both as an infant and later - as a teenager - is graduating from college. This is the celebration of her finally becoming an adult, in spite of the fact that she's been living on her own for four years.
Even if her dad keeps joking about celebrating "the closing of the Bank of Dad," the truth is we're thrilled to throw a party because we want to show her off. We're very proud of our first college graduate.
Reporter Lynn Atkins can be contacted by e-mail at lynna @ nwanews. com.
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