As I look at my daughter putting on her makeup and curling her hair, she beams with excitement and pride because all her hard work will be on display tonight as she marches down the aisle to pomp and circumstance. She puts on her white dress and fancy high heeled shoes and off we go. This is a day of excitement and dread for a mom and dad. It’s the first time you really realize that your little girl isn’t so little anymore.
Driving out the driveway, I look in the mirror to see her smiling and looking out the window in the back seat, probably dreaming of her next steps. I fight back the tears because what I see is my little baby girl in the rear-view mirror. I see her in the toddler seat with a big pink bow in her hair with a red popsicle stained mouth, splattered with a litlte dirt from the park where she just finished playing. That little girl was so happy and carefree. She didn’t have a clue the obstacles she’d face in her lifetime, and quite honestly, neither did I.
We arrive at the venue and are greeted by friends and family there to support her and take lots and lots of photos to commemorate the occassion. We talk with parents we haven’t seen in years and the kids are huddling up together to take group photos and laugh as they reminisce and tell stories of their elementary and middle school days. It’s almost time – they get herded into the line chaotically trying to find where they are supposed to be. Her dad and I must now go in and we fight back the tears knowing she’ll walk out of the building a true adult, who will be on her own after the summer’s end.
As she marches, she looks up into the crowd looking for her family and friends who’ve come to support her. She’s grinning from ear-to-ear and laughing nervously as she makes small comments back and forth with her walking mate. The ceremony begins. It is filled with inspirational messages from teachers, school administrators, and classmates. Sappy music is played to make all the parents cry. I watch my baby walk across that stage as her name is called out, she shakes the hands of the administrators and school board members, and returns to her seat. It seems like a pretty uneventful few minutes to most, but to her, it means the world. It’s where she feels that closure of her high school career and is noticed for the hard work and accomplishments she made.
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This is how it should have been. This is how I always imagined it being. This is how she dreamed it would be, too. But COVID-19 took that away from her, from all her classmates and many other Seniors all over the world.
On Monday, May 18th, it went more like this ~ I was scrambling to finish up a project for work in my new “home office” and then started to look through my closet for an outfit to wear. What do you wear to a drive by graduation ceremony, anyway? I know if we’d had the traditional ceremony I would have looked for weeks for that perfect, classic outfit. I go into my daughter’s room and see her curling her hair and putting on her makeup. Her energy was different than it likely would have been if she wasn’t dealing with a pandemic style graduation ceremony. I imagine she was thinking about all the missed opportunities to visit with family and friends before the ceremony and wondered if it would even feel special. I admit, I wondered the same thing and secretly wanted to just skip it, but knew this was important to her, even if it wasn’t ordinary. She puts on her white dress and she looks beautiful, just as I knew she would. We hop in the car and off we go. As we exit the driveway and she stares out the back window, I can see she is looking back in reflection and not with the excitement should would have had. She was thinking about all the things she lost over the last few weeks and wondered what it would’ve been like.
We pull into the back parking lot of the high school at our assigned time – 5:30 pm. We checked in at the back gate and drove around the school amid a line of cars. It felt more like I was in the school drop off or pick up line, not my daughter’s high school graduation. I tried to make it as exciting as possible for her by hyping her up and telling her to fix her cap and be sure to smile, much like I would have before she headed over to line up at a traditional cermony. We arrive at the front of the school and there’s all the teachers and staff with their robes on and face masks around a beautifully decorated outdoor stage. It was pretty amazing, really. The school went to a lot of trouble to make that stage look it’s best, and it did! As we approached the stage, a teacher came over to get her out of the car and I jump out, too, and headed to the front of the stage to snap a few pictures. Only one person was allowed to exit the car. Her daddy watched her from the driver’s seat as he slowly moved forward in the car to the other side of the stage for pick up. I snapped a few pictures and we jumped back into the car and drove through a procession of teachers lined up on each side cheering and waving at our car. We drove off and went on home. It was weird. No other word can describe it. It was special but in a different kind of way. Will there be another ceremony like that at Daviess County High School? Likely not. So, in that sense, it was special. It’ll be memorable. We will remember every part of the ceremony because it was short and sweet.
As I think about everything leading up to that day, it amazes me because it happened so fast and I never saw it coming.
It was the beginning of March. We’d searched for weeks for the perfect Senior prom dress and on March 14, we perfected the outfit by picking out the perfect shoe. Fresh flowers were picked out and ordered, hair and makeup appointment scheduled, and photographer booked. We were all set. All we had to do now was hurry up and wait. That following week took a drastic turn.
Monday, March 16, our office started discussing making the move to have the team work remotely from home. That very next day – March 17 – we were working from home and at the time I’m writing this, will return tomorrow, June 1. I never believed this would happen, even as I started to hear of all the colleges cancelling and sending students home, concerts and major sports seasons getting cancelled. It was just too much for me to wrap my head around. I wasn’t scared, but I was.
Even as things continued to get cancelled, I always held onto hope (and my daughter did, too) that there would be a Senior prom and a proper graduation ceremony. As the days went on, it was becoming more and more apparent that wasn’t going to happen. I watched her go through the 5 stages of grief – denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. It was hard to watch a milestone period of her life slip away, but I also saw a transformation in her. Through this time she learned to handle another disappointment in her life with grace and look for the brighter side in this. I believe in the end this will help her be more resilient and understanding when hard times hit her in life. And hard times will certainly come – it’s inevitable.
This also taught me a thing or two about handling disappointment because she is my only child and I’ll never experience this again either, so in a sense, we were in the same boat, having similar feelings from two different perspectives. I’ll always hold onto the dream I had for her graduation day, but know the way it ended was how it was supposed to be and appreciate the lessons I learned from it.
