By: Lora Wimsatt
As the daughter of the best mother in the world, I had always harbored a little bit of guilt when Mother’s Day rolled around.
I compared myself to my own mother, and came up woefully short, and certainly undeserving of the praise and tributes my children heaped on me on that special day.
Hadn’t my children noticed that the three little words I said most often were not “I love you,” but “Clean your room!”?
Didn’t they remember how many times they had tugged at my sleeve to tell me “something ’portant” and I brushed them away withFor both students and their parents, this is one of those vague, faraway occasions that seem to hover somewhere in the distance, off on the horizon, the finish line of a race that seems to last forever.
And then all of a sudden, ready or not, there it is, right in front of you.
You settle into your seat – grateful for a chairback and not the bench seats – and shuffle through the program. There may be hundreds of names listed, but only one matters.
You hope someone behind the scenes has extra safety pins and bobby pins, you hope the speeches will be short this year, and you hope your strategic parking place pays off when this is over and everyone tries to leave at once.
You hope nobody brought an air horn, and if so, you hope at least that they don’t sit anywhere near you, and you really, truly, fervently hope their kid is not right before your kid because you want to hear your kid’s name and not some loud, rude and annoying “Haawwwwnnnnk!”
The music starts – “Pomp and Circumstance” – everyone knows the title although nobody knows what it really means – and you see a flutter of banners in the doorway, a hesitation, an adult hand waving “yes, yes, go, go now,” and here they come – the class of 2013.
It’s an unending procession of caps and gowns.
Your husband leans over and whispers, not very quietly, “How many kids are there, anyway?”
You don’t answer, not taking your eyes off the students as they shuffle in, one after another, identical in their caps and gowns.
But you know the tilt of his head or the bounce in her walk, and your heart leaps a little as you see … your child.
How could this be? Who could this be?
Could this poised young adult possibly be the shrieking, laughing child who tilted crazily down the sidewalk with training wheels just yesterday?
You blink back unexpected tears. Your heart swells with pride as your child steps confidently into place, staring straight ahead, dignified and solemn.
And grown.
But then you see the tassel sway as your child turns to peek into the stands – confident your eyes are watching – and you see a flash of a smile, a quick wave of the hand and a silent “Hi, Mom.”
Everything else melts away – all the years that came before this moment, and all the years that will come after – and you know:
This is your child, always.