graduation day

I woke up troubled again. Dreams I can't quite remember when I wake up, but dark whatever they are and I'm longing for the desert in a way I haven't in awhile.

The ride up on the subway was peaceful, the L did its usual "we're not going to stop at your stop" but today the difference was there was another train within five minutes or so, so it could have been worse. I ended up at a 116th Street off the 1 feeling kind of disoriented, I don't get uptown often and it's this whole other New York I'm usually only vaguely aware of. Today though it was beautiful. The color was just right, a kind of bright gray that suited Columbia and Barnard perfectly and I went to Riverside to see my kids graduate during this day of supressed sunlight.

I graduated fifteen years ago, I thought about that while I walked up to the church at 120th and Riverside. A lot's happened but in the end, regardless, it's fifteen years. I remember we had ours in the gym and it was hot, airless, and I could have cared less about being there. My father felt weak with the heat, Dennis Park gave a speech and I felt like I wished Lemke had given the speech, at least it wouldn't have been a cliche, but those things feel doomed to be cliches.

Really what I think about when I think about my graduation is the night before. There'd been a big group of people hanging out, maybe by Adam's, anyway, afterwards, Terhune and I were driving around, and as happens when driving around aimlessly for a couple hours, talk turned to the bigger issues. We kept coming back to the idea that life was about to get better, after all, high school sucked unbelievably, it really did, especially the hours. Some morons, you can tell, talk in warm, oaky tones about the glow of those old high school days - oh yeah! Overwhelming fear of rejection, rejection, hours of homework, getting up at 6:30 (or more like 6:58) so I could be out the door by 7:10, pep rallies to cheer our tormentors, fear of zits, zits, minimum wage jobs that ate up the weekends as if they were hyperactive children with pez dispensers (us) and an all-pervading fear of failing to measure up. Good times! And I left so much out...

But the most amazing friends. And Terhune and I driving around talking about what was next, often Terhune would register his amazement that God hadn't taken him out for sport, and then we were making fun of the bastards and looking to turn right on Kensington near where later Terhune would prop up the headless roadkill, the light had turned green but for whatever reason I checked to my left and seemingly out of nowhere an 18-wheeler looking like 30 was going 70 and whooshed right by, the Malibu shuddering, the Jimi Hendrix Experience singing "Red House" on the 8-track and we'd almost bought the farm. To me that was the end of high school.

But today was the end for many of my students and they were beautiful. I knew this kid when I was in high school, he was the kind of kid you wanted to be like, he wasn't popular, he was admired. I was never really his friend, I was too messed up for that, he was one of those together kids who awed me with their early onset of competence, meanwhile I was getting detention for forgetting to bring in forms, or I was looking longingly at all these girls who couldn't remember me now if they tried and couldn't then either. Once, somebody I know ran into one of those girls at a charity golf outing that my friend was helping run. Cameron Jenkins, the aforesaid one of the "one of these girls" was asked if she remembered me. "Yes," she said absolutely blankly, "I think I do." We didn't know the first thing about these girls but would often construct ideas on them based on the flimsiest overseen pretexts and observations. Anyway, one of my students really reminded me of Stan Steck but it took until today to realize it. Raul. What an amazing person. Another kid, it took an extra year, Luther, I taught in my first year, I think he'll be the last one from my first year to graduate. I was sitting way in the back but I could see his smile from there. Then there was Iris, with the kindest heart and Roseline who made me laugh all the time and Rafael who wears his talent so casually that I often wonder how he'll harness all of it. There was Carla, who tore me up once when taking one of my tests, she was so frustrated she left the room in tears, she always never once appeared to think another kid was beneath her taking notice, something you notice if you've been the other kid, and then Jodi who, like all geniuses, is insatiably curious and kept taking my books and returning them without me noticing either way for the better part of a year. Some of these kids I'll never see again.

It's a bit like a crash in that it's a sudden stop. It's everyday and than it isn't.

Leaving graduation, there's a lot of pictures. For these kids, unlike for me, it wasn't necessarily expected or even particularly encouraged they'd end up even this far. The school graduates about half of the students who enter in any given year, it's been that way for awhile, walking back to the subway I thought about the other kids, who had been off doing other things today.