Day 2, Act 1

It's difficult to tell whether it's best to write things down when the impressions are fresh or to wait until they start to coalesce. I'm probably going to opt for both here. This morning my older daughter graduated from high school. This was a predictable occurrence, but no less momentous for that. I'll replay it in pieces to avoid the post being too long.

The morning started with my alarm going off and screams from outside the bedroom door when my daughter realized she had overslept and had only 45 minutes to get ready. Now let me give you a dad's perspective on this sort of thing. First you go into emergency mode- you give a backrub to stop the hyperventilating. Then come in rapid succession the following thoughts:

• poor girl 
• poor me
• how do I get her through this?
• I need coffee
• she needs coffee
• this would be so different if we had a boy

And a whole bunch of not-quite-awake kinds of thoughts. What actually happened was that I stumbled downstairs shaking my head and figured that I should get coffee now instead of getting it on the way to the dropoff at school. I eat breakfast and walk the dog, then out to Starbucks. Get back and it's time to go. Order the daughter to keep the iced coffee away from her white dress at all costs. She mutters something about having a jacket so she could drink the coffee and I say, no, you are putting the coffee in the cup holder and leaning over to drink it.

On the way to school fending off all the "everything's gone wrong this morning and therefore everything else that happens today will go wrong" kinds of thoughts. This quickly morphed (it had to be quick, it's only a 12 minute drive) into "we're so late." My personal feeling on being late is that it is virtually impossible to be the last one to a group event and if you're not the last one you're not really late. There was also the fact that we weren't really late.

Then the street is blocked off and panic starts to set in again. "I'm going to miss everything. Everyone else will be there." By now, I'm thinking that there's no point in injecting reality into the situation. The scene has been classified as a disaster in her mind and there's no escaping that until-

we arrive at school and the kids are gathered on the porch. All 50 boys in the class is standing there, accompanied by, wait for it, 8 girls.

I head for the graduation site, which is downtown, with my heart lightened.