Congratulations, Graduate!

My daughter, college grad

Congratulations, Graduate!

Today, my oldest child graduated from college. As we headed into the event, I was all about the practicalities of it all: driving from home to campus, getting from campus to the hotel where we were staying (which as a crow flies is quite close by, but as traffic in this overpacked city demands, is an hour away), getting her packed and ready to go by noon tomorrow, the travel back home (four hours, the maps app teases; it’s two hours getting out of the city if you leave anywhere between noon and nine pm on a weekday, minimum, for a grand total of six to eight hours), the indignant “I don’t know” to questions about what’s next for her. She has spent four years at an institution that has taught her a lot, but not about how to stand in and say, “I’m gonna do this” because, she’s my daughter, an unfortunate realist, who knows while she may dream of doing this and that, the world doesn’t always for you, and your best guess is just a guess, so “I don’t know” is the obvious, if pat and terse and droning answer to “what’s next?”

This morning, as we entered the building where her graduation ceremony was taking place, it wasn’t the beauty of the building, but the weight of the event, the absolute conclusion of an incredible milestone, the completion of one more phase of her life, which began a little over twenty-one and a half years ago, the incredible reality of the fact of her: she is a being borne of my genes, who has become an adult, with whom I had an alcoholic beverage yesterday, who knows more about her field that I would ever care to know, who is sure of herself enough to know when she should not be sure of herself, who is careful and observant and still oblivious to the biggest things (“Oh, that’s where that is!” To a shop that’s been there the whole time she was living here). The reality that she is a college graduate. The second in my family: I was the first.

Her mother’s family is well-educated, both of her maternal grandparents spent time in post-graduate work. Her mother holds a doctorate. But, my family didn’t try college till my father, and my father had me and gave up the ghost of a college education. So, I was the first in my line to earn a Bachelor’s of anything. My brother didn’t even complete his B.x. (Though he may have earned a culinary degree; unclear to me and we haven’t talked in years.)

My daughter walked into this famed building in downtown Manhattan, having completed the work, and walked out of it conferred the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts. I stood there before taking my seat, the logo of the school on the backdrop of the stage, large yellow letters on a field of black, and it was all I could do to keep from weeping joy right then and there. And when I found her name in the program, with the italicized With Honors by her name, a distinction she never told us about, I fought the tears some more.

Pride runneth over. There was one more time, I can’t recall when, that I won the battle against tears and crying. I am a proud father today. She is a college graduate, my first.

And while there’s some dissonance over her returning home, I’m not actually unhappy about it. I haven’t gotten to know this person yet, and I’m looking forward to understanding her better, now that she’s a college grad. Now that she’s a grown-up.

Now that I’ll be competing with her for jobs in the job market. LOL