Remembering…..

I am feeling sentimental today. . . sentimental in advance. I tend to do that. This Friday my son will have his “make-up graduation ceremony”. What do I mean by that? I will tell you! He completed his coursework for his BA in Business Communications in December of 2010. His school holds commencement in the spring. So he was scheduled to graduate  spring of 2010. Family and friends had been invited, and some were scheduled to fly in the day of commencement. Unfortunately, he developed a skin infection the morning of graduation, and was admitted to the ICU for 5 days. I blogged about it here: https://believeanyway.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/a-true-blue-miracle/ .

He had his diploma, but didn’t “walk” in the ceremony. So this Friday, God willing, he will at long last, walk across that stage in this spring’s commencement ceremony~and they will shake his hand.. We will beam with pride. I, of course, will weep tears of joy. The slide show of his life will zoom through my mind on fast forward. Does that happen to you? I will look back fondly.

I still remember taking him to the shore the day before his first day of kindergarten. We had a perfect day. We jumped into the waves over and over.  We fed the seagulls. We rode our boogie boards. We tossed shells into the ocean. We laughed and talked. We ate ice cream bars at sunset. Each time that day that I felt weepy, we would leap into the waves. I didn’t want him to worry about me feeling weepy at the pending transition. I wanted nothing to interfere with his excitement and joy at beginning kindergarten. The years we lived out east, that became our day before the first day of school tradition. 

When we lived in the midwest, we altered the tradition somewhat, but we always had a marvelous day the day before school began.

Before each college term, we would go out for coffee and talk about his excitement at the new crop of classes. He and I do love our traditions~actually all three of us do…This, though will be a BIG deal for us. You see, I always envisioned this day. The day he would receive his bachelor’s degree. When I say always, I literally mean from the time he was a baby. I hoped it for him, if that was where he was led.

Who knows whether the actual moment will feel like an over-the-top-thrill or ant
i-climactic; I do know that I will remember the boy he was and see the man he is now. And I say “Son, you did us, yourself, and God, proud”.  I am thrilled the day is coming. And, as a friend of mine said last year “you didn’t get the ceremony, but you have his life”….Friday night, we will have both.