Before I jump into the subject of today’s posting, a few words about the process of getting this thing out every week. Recently I was in a group that included folks involved in a variety of creative endeavors. The group leader asked us to comment on our “process.” Years ago, I posed a similar question to a number of eminent scientists and mathematicians. You will not be surprised to hear that the responses were diverse to say the least, ranging from very organized and systematic to haphazard and spontaneous.
I didn’t get a chance to weigh in at the group discussion, but here’s what I would have said. Sometime mid-week I begin to scroll through my activities of the past week searching for things that stood out in some way – something I read, a notable experience I had, some public/political event that I had a strong reaction to, a tribute to a particular person. Sometimes the pickings are slim, and the quality of the product reflects the anemia of its origins. Other times I’m overwhelmed by choices. and I hope, as a result, that the result has more muscle. I’m often disappointed by either the language and style of my offering or by its lack of clarity of thought. But there’s a deadline (self-imposed) to meet, so the posting enters the world in a rawer form than my readers deserve. I guess you’d say, harking back to those scientists, that my process has elements of both system and spontaneity.
This week it’s taken me to Wednesday to realize that my topic was staring me in the face. My Facebook pages are filled with pictures of gowned and capped graduates at every conceivable level. Last night we attended the high school graduation of one of our favorite young people, whose wonderful parents thought to save two of her six precious graduation tickets for us. The venue was a huge arena large enough to contain the 1100 graduates from Illinois’s largest high school and their guests. Sitting through that lengthy parade of what is clearly a fake process of granting degrees (take this leather container which is really empty. We’ll get you the real contents later.) there was lots of time to reflect on my own graduation history and to feel really sad about the fact that we won’t be able to attend our own granddaughter’s middle school graduation in a week or so because it backs up on the date of our departure for a trip planned many months ago without any knowledge of Dalia’s graduation date.
Here’s a blow-by- blow account of what I do and don’t remember about my graduations. I invite you to try this exercise for yourself.
Elementary School – My graduation from PS. 189 in Brooklyn took place in our school auditorium, familiar from seven years of weekly assemblies. When I reached the sixth and final grade, I proudly carried the flag, wearing my scout uniform and feeling important as hell. Seeing the color guard in last night’s ceremony triggered that memory and reminded me of how our reactions to that flag have changed over the course of close to 75 years.
My most searing memory of that day came during what should have been my proudest moment, the granting of awards. I had won a history contest (sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revolution!) but when the principal announced my name it was Marian Hoffman, not Marvin. A girl! What could be more shameful for a boy approaching puberty? I still have that medal. Just looking at it can evoke that moment of embarrassment 75 years later.
Junior High School – Winthrop JHS, P.S. 232. How can it be that I remember NOTHING! Not the location, not the ceremony. Young readers, be aware that this may be your fate too. These moments that seem so fraught with meaning may leave no trace on the neurons whose job it is to immortalize them or at least they’re so buried that only hypnosis will surface them.
I do have a strong memory that graduation year wassuffused with the explosion of sexual longings that left little room for any other thoughts. Nonetheless early in the year, during the preparations for the publication of our class’s Yearbook, I was suddenly overwhelmed with anxiety at the thought I was about to pass through this school leaving not a trace. The only remedy was to write something that would be printed in the Yearbook. Years later my classmates, browsing through its glossy pages, would be forced to remember me. I don’t recall what immortal words I penned but they have left as little mark as the words of all the speakers to whom graduates have been subjected as they eagerly awaited the end of these boring proceedings.
High School– Brooklyn Technical High School. The reason attending our young friend’s graduation from Lane Tech evoked so many memories and ruminations about graduation is that our schools were cut from the same cloth. Both were the largest in their city and state – Lane at 4,500, Brooklyn Tech at 6,000. Those are industrial -scale numbers which demand impersonal procedures that preclude any humanizing touches. The fact that BTHS was still an all-boys school when I attended left even less room for any mitigating softness. We graduated from our own vast triple balconied auditorium which was at least more familiar than Lane’s borrowed university arena. Nonetheless, I remember nothing about the speakers or crossing the stage. I believe there was a mass conferring of degrees, with no attempt to call the 13-1400 names of the graduates.
City College of New York – There’s a complicated story behind this one. Up to the 11th hour I was refusing to attend this graduation. I was mad at the school because it had almost expelled me for participating in a demonstration so obscure now that it’s almost impossible to describe – something to do with opposing nuclear attack drills which, we argued, fanned Cold War flames. A Dean confiscated our IDs at the demonstration and held the threat of expulsion over our heads for much longer than the college needed to, but in the end I took pity on my poor parents, donned the robe over my defiant “hanging out” clothes, as my granddaughter calls them, and marched with my classmates into Lewisohn Stadium, a vast outdoor concert venue on campus.
Harvard – This is a quickie. I completed my Ph.D. requirements mid-year and Rosellen and I immediately headed off to start our “real” life in Mississippi. By the time of what would have been my class’s convocation in June, Harvard was a distant star light years away. Later, I did get my chance at a Harvard graduation when Elana got her Master’s Degree. I remember the rush of delight watching her in her robe passing almost close enough to touch. Her second Master’s ceremony took place in George Mason University’s basketball arena, a much more plebeian setting than Harvard Yard, but probably more representative of the experience of most graduates that year.
Earlier Elana’s undergraduate graduation from the University of Michigan took place in The Big House, the school’s famed 100,000+ football stadium. She and her roommates, anticipating that their parents would not be able to pick them out at such a great distance, wore colorful feather boas over their gowns. It worked.
Adina’s graduation from Wesleyan, which took place on their lovely ivy-ish campus, stands out from all the previous events for one reason. I can name the commencement speaker, who was our friend Marian Wright Edelman, the iconic civil rights lawyer who even came by to picnic with us briefly after the ceremony.
Finally, when I became the director of a Chicago charter school, I presided over the commencement of our first graduating class which we were determined to make memorable. We succeeded more than we realized at the time because we recruited as our speaker then state senator Barack Obama. Michelle filled that slot the following year. My mentor, Sara Spurlark, a veteran school principal, cautioned me on two points. First, start exactly on time. Otherwise, people will come late for every future graduation. Second, no balloons. They diminish the integrity of the event.
Garrison Keeler once described commencement speeches as “so many empty box cars rolling by.” That is all too true for the most part, but this year I will be following the reports of what speakers on college campuses have to say at this moment when the very institutions at which they’ll be speaking are in mortal danger of being silenced. This time the messages from those commencement pulpits need to be more than empty boxcars.
To all who are graduating or celebrating the graduations of others, congratulations. Be excited about what lies ahead. And it’s okay to admit to being a little scared too.
