Graduations big and small

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Another shooting.  I have nothing left to say.  Every week there is something in the news.  Every week someone has a gun or a knife and a wound to avenge.  I will focus on the good.  I could easily get bogged down by this. I could watch hours of footage where analysts try to find motive and industries blame each other.  I could read every news posting and try to figure it out for myself.  Or I could focus on my kids.  The ones I raise at home and those I help to raise at school. 

This evening I will watch my daughter, in a new dress and pink shoes “graduate” from pre-school.  She will sing God Bless America and two other songs and will get a “prize” at the end, and she will move on to kindergarten, and she will not know the extent of this occasion.  She will love the limelight (she creates her own wherever she goes), and she will adore the stage and the cheering from her biggest fans, but she will not understand the meaning of it all. 

Abigail will bound into kindergarten and will not know that there was ever a school shooting in an elementary school in our state.  She will dance through her classes, pretending to be in tap shoes, and will not know that 2 twelve year olds stabbed a classmate or that a 16 year old stabbed his crush.  I will not tell her. 

I will let her enjoy school as long as she can.  She will see the new tests she has to take in kindergarten as contests and games.  She will drive herself to win and she will laugh.  I will watch her swing and run and play.  And no matter what, I will keep what I know about the world to myself.  She will figure it all out soon enough. 

On Tuesday of next week, I will watch my high schoolers graduate.  I will send them off with hugs and messages of hope and huge smiles.  I will tell them in their yearbooks to be smart, to have fun, and to take care of each other.  I will tell them to come back to school to see us.  Most of them will follow some of my advice.  All of them will walk away with at least one teacher worrying about them and the choices they will make.  Unlike my daughter, these young men and women believe they know what this next step means for them.  I hope they are right and that they can feel us in their shadows, holding our collective breath. 

Most of these young adults have the same sense of innocence and excitement for this next phase as my Abigail does.  They do not think that unemployment will affect them or that there is anything possible besides success.  I hope they do not learn the truth too quickly.  But even if they do, I hope they find the strength they need to remember when they too were four and ½, dancing through the world in imaginary tap shoes.  I hope, like Abigail, they carry their own limelight with them wherever those tap shoes take them.