Of High School Graduation

My oldest daughter has graduated from high school.

It’s taken me a while to wrap my mind around that statement of fact. In what I thought was a particularly introspective moment, one of her best friends told me how he felt about graduating from high school. In his own incredibly well-mannered way, he answered honestly, “I really don’t know. I don’t think it’s completely soaked in yet.”

Indeed. The problem is it happened so freaking fast. When Parker was born 18 years ago, we were told by many well-meaning old people (you know the ones – people in their mid-40s!) to “cherish” these early years because they will fly by so quickly. Yeah, sure. Those years of sleepless nights, spit-up, diaper changes, teething, colds, and ear infections could not go by fast enough. Or so I thought.

Now, I turn around and I hear my daughter’s name being called out as a graduate of the 2012 Class of Mountain Brook High School. It was a truly surreal moment. But, no, it was really happening. I know it happened because I have pictures of her in all of her robed glory along with 300+ other friends.

She had asked me more than once leading up to the pomp and circumstance whether I would cry. As she knows, I don’t cry often but there are quintessential fatherly or parental moments that do move me to be more emotional than normal. And, let’s face it, the prospect of seeing your child taking her first steps into a new and exciting chapter of her life, would definitely qualify as one of those moments.

But, no. I didn’t get emotional. Sure, there was a lot of hugging. Proud back-slapping. I thought I would literally explode with pride. But, no. No crying. I’m not sure why. What I’ve told people is that we (the immediate family, the in-laws and the out-laws) were so caught up in the joyousness of the moment, that there simply was no time for tears. No room for them. The tears were evaporated by joy.

I looked around the auditorium and saw many, many friends whose faces were just like mine – completely aglow with pride in the knowledge that we had done it. And I use the royal “we” purposefully here. Over the years, Parker has had to overcome more than one challenge to make it to that stage, and she did it in one of the toughest school systems in the state.

By her own admission, she would say that she wasn’t the smartest kid in her class but, by God, I would put her work ethic up against anyone’s. That kid will out-study and out-work anyone. Then layer onto that a commitment from her mom that the she would do whatever necessary to ensure Parker received whatever help she needed – at home or at school or from others who became extended family (God Bless You, Sandy Naramore).

All of that hard work paid off on Thursday, May 24, sometime between 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. when the name Virginia Parker Pippen was called and my beautiful girl walked across that stage to proudly accept her high school diploma.

All that said and it took an 18-year-old young man to adquately explain my feelings at this moment: “I really don’t know how I feel at this moment. I don’t think it’s soaked in yet.”