The Passage of Time

It goes on and on. This weekend has been a reminder of that. It's graduation weekend. That means one thing: graduation parties. I don't remember much about my graduation party. I remember that I had it at the church and that some of my extended family made the trip. I also remember that the youth minister showed up (I think kind of by default, since I had the party at the church; I don't think he would have come had it been elsewhere) and he "gave" me a "gift" -- one of the church's butter knives. Nice, huh?

I didn't think of it as much of a celebration - I was still in a short-sighted selfish mode and I didn't understand that this party wasn't just for me, that it was for my friends and family, especially including my parents. I, of course, had a girlfriend and I wanted to hang out with her...

Having gone to grad parties every year for five years now, most of them are pretty much the same. There is a table (or a board) with pictures from the last 18 years: sports pictures, family pictures, school pictures. There are also various honors and medals displayed there, and maybe a video or a scrapbook. There's a lot of food, (always too much food, and usually the same stuff), and a couple of groups milling around. There are the teenagers and there are the adults. The grad usually does a good job of talking to the adults, but mostly the adults talk to adults and kids to kids. It's a passage from one state to another, but it doesn't seem like it. It's hard to believe that (as a grad) you're never going back to high school. It's hard to believe (as a parent) that your baby has grown up.

And time keeps on going and going and going and going...