Commencement

Robert graduated from college this past weekend. Jim and I, along with Robert’s godmother, Gerry, attended the commencement ceremonies at the University of Texas down in Austin. What a weekend! Robert’s college had its ceremony Friday afternoon at the enormous Frank Erwin Center on the UT campus. Afterward we had a cookout at his apartment complex with several of his Grapevine friends who have been together since elementary school. Saturday night was the campus-wide ceremony at the foot of the famous UT tower, with all the colleges represented. The tower was lit for Robert one last time, with the year ’09. Immediately afterward the school put on a spectacular fire works show for the grads and their families.

There were several moments when I had to fight back a few tears, and I had anticipated I would cry more than I did. There were times when I had a lump in my throat and tears threatened just behind my eyes. Of course I was as proud as a parent can be, but then Robert has always made Jim and me proud and joyful parents. The oddest sensation I experienced was sadness at the realization of the end of all our little traditions and habits we’ve established during Robert’s four years in Austin.

We’ve stayed at the same hotels, eaten at the same restaurants, and shopped at the same stores for four years. I suppose the familiarity of those habits helped to keep that old empty nest thing in check. We drove down for parents’ weekends (only the first two, I swear), Mother’s Days, and award ceremonies. Robert even volunteered us to act as judges at the business fair in which he participated. We’ve become rabid Longhorn football fans, even turning our backs on our beloved Michigan and Illinois teams.

While I won’t miss the college tuition bills and the dorm and apartment expenses, I will miss the rituals and traditions we built. The weekend was also a commencement for Jim and me. The folks at Webster say that commence means “to have or make a beginning; to begin to be or act as;” thus, commencement is “the act or time of beginning.” There are plenty of old saws about the irony of calling the end of school by the term for “the beginning,” so I won’t go on about that. I suppose it must be time for me to “begin to be or act as” the parent of an independent, grown-up young man. Ouch. Now I’ve got that lump in my throat and those tears threatening again.

Donna