June 2, 2015

My youngest child graduates from high school this week. In a few days, I will sit on a crowded bleacher watching robed graduates receive diplomas. They’ll also receive words of wisdom via the obligatory commencement speeches about new chapters, rites of passages and journeys. Usually a poignant story is thrown in for good measure.
Students have spent years dreaming of this moment. Parents have spent years bracing for it.
Thus, I’d like to offer a commencement speech for parents. Mind you, very little of this speech is original. But this isn’t my first rodeo as a parent of a graduate, and I simply want to share some insight I’ve discovered along the way. I’ll also try to avoid the word “journey,” but no promises.
Here goes.
To the Parents of the Graduating Class of 2015 (and any other class), congratulations! You helped your child grow into a young adult. You navigated the rough waters of insecurity, angst, disappointment and rebellion. But enough about you.
Your child faced some pretty stiff challenges, too: high school testing, college entrance exams, social acceptance, dating, not dating, thinking about dating, more testing, Snapchat. It’s a lot for you both. You had to learn how to parent in a teen’s strange world of pervasive social media, and your child learned (hopefully) the virtue of patience while showing you multiple times how to save documents in a computer cloud.
But here’s the good news: You did it. And now for some advice.
First, get some rest. Take a post-graduation nap. You’ll need it. You’re not done parenting. If anything, you’ve just begun. Now comes the hard part — parenting a young adult ready to leave the nest and establish some independence from you.
Sometimes that space will feel like the distance between the earth and the moon. It can be gut-wrenching. Other days, the distance will narrow in scope and tone. Out of the blue, your son will call for advice. Your daughter will send you a text of gratitude, maybe even suggest a visit. It’s as if the universe is securely back on its axis. But it will shift again because that’s what growing up is all about, ebbing and flowing.
So rest up. Get healthy. You are ebbing and flowing, too.
Often we speak of life as anecdotal chapters of a book. But life is sometimes more realized in paragraph form. We change jobs, college majors, life partners, friendships, interests, passions. For some, the story is abbreviated. This time last year, I celebrated the graduation of a close friend’s high school graduate. Today, my friend – a dad in his 50s — is gone, passing unexpectedly this past winter.
So my next piece of advice is this: Work on your narrative today.
You’ve probably lived much of your life nurturing your child’s story that I bet yours got buried. Dig it up. Don’t wait. Don’t second guess either. Just as you have told your child that life has many twists and turns, so does yours. Go after something you’ve always wanted, even if you change direction down the road. No time like the present. I believe one of the best parent-adult child relationships are those in which parents have their own life stories, their own identities that naturally intertwine with family but are not entangled in it.
Oh, and this is really important: Have fun. Goodness knows, you’ve had plenty of worry and stress as a parent. To some degree, that never goes away, it just changes. Go out with friends you couldn’t see because the babysitter fell through. Join a book/dinner/anything club. Spend time with people you’ve always wanted to know better. Spend time with yourself also.
I think of Frances, a great-grandmother who decided to go to college when she was 78 years old. She took a Humanities course I taught. She not only set the grading curve, but also inspired her classmates — younger by decades — with her unbridled enthusiasm.
“I’m having a blast and that’s all that matters,” Frances once told me. “I decided I could either sit at home waiting for the grandkids to visit or go out and have some fun and sit in a college classroom.”
This is not to say that parenting doesn’t possess pure joy and fulfillment. It does. Big time. But you are now at a point you can create some of your own happiness in addition to and apart from that of your child’s. So get out there!
It is turtle hatchling season on our Florida beaches (cue the poignant story part of the speech). Their entry into our world amazes me. The mother turtle lays eggs in the deep soft beach sand then heads back into the ocean. The hatchlings break free from their shells. They are phototactic so they are guided by the brightest light, which is why they usually appear at night, drawn toward the moonlight. Local hotels put filters on their outdoor lights so the hatchlings aren’t misdirected and end up in swimming pools.
I must admit I’d be the mother turtle hiding in the dune waving the hatchlings toward the sea, yelling, “Look out! Turn the other way! Avoid danger! Pack a warm coat!” Yet that’s not how it works. The mother turtle has already done her part. Maybe she’s taking a long nap on a quiet reef.
Somehow, miraculously, many of the hatchlings make it safely to sea. They find their way. And we will, too.
Congratulations, parents of graduates. You’ve got your hatchlings this far. Well done and well wishes for the life in front of you.