Cap and Gown

They are very excited to graduate.

When the diplomas have been distributed, they will step out onto the sidewalk that stretches far enough to accommodate the audiences that typically pour out of the downtown theater where, once a year, Joseph Silberman High School has their graduation. The sidewalk has seen the tuxedo crowd turn into the shorts-and-a-t-shirt crowd after tours headlined by stars from Broadway became non-equity three-show stays. The sidewalk had opinions about theater, but we have no need to interrogate a sidewalk.

We have a graduation to review.

This was the class of 2002. A class made up of a hundred and thirty-eight students. When they started as freshman, this class had over a hundred and fifty students in it. The expectation was that some would not make it to their senior year, and this assumption was--and always is--correct. Some were expelled for various infractions. A few moved and went to other schools in other districts. None died, and that was a wonderful thing. The teachers at the graduation remembered other years when students were in car accidents or drowned in the ocean over summer break or went to sleep and didn’t wake up because even young people sometimes go to sleep and don’t wake up.

That didn’t happen with this class, and for that, the teachers were grateful. It was always difficult at graduation when names had to be read of young people who never got to stand onstage and shake the hand of a principal. Wave to their parents. Move the tassel on their cap from one side to the other. A graduation is a solemn occasion, but it must avoid being somber at all costs. Much like any ceremony, it carries with it a kind of grief no matter what. Death can easily dip it into a kind of overwhelming breathlessness. Parents have passed out during graduations. Grandparents have had heart attacks. An uncle once had an existential crisis as the valedictorian was comparing college to a warren of rabbits. A bad analogy can create an inner spiral, this is true. When mortality must be addressed at graduation, the graduation can deflate like a souffle. There was no death needing to be addressed this time.

This was lucky.

A year later, the first member of the class of 2002 from Silberman High would die after going on a ski trip in northern Vermont. They would not die of skiing, but rather, of getting drunk and wandering out of the beautiful cabin they were renting with their girlfriend. The girlfriend made a comment about the man working at the ski rental place, and an argument ensued. The graduate from Silberman High stormed out wearing nothing but basketball shorts, a Red Sox jersey, and a pair of red sneakers. When a hunter found his body the next day, the only thing he had left on were his sneakers. Sometimes when people are freezing to death, they think they’re burning up and they take off all their clothes. The body and the mind go to war against each other. A year is a long time. A year is nothing. People graduate and they get a year to enjoy being a graduate of something. They go camping over the summer. Then, they go to college. They decide they don’t like it. They drop out. They go skiing. They never come back.

One graduate was in the top one percent of the class. They could have possibly come in first, second, or third, if not for the fact that the top three students in the class were all trying to get into Harvard and Harvard won’t take more than one student from a school no matter how much smarter those students are than other students at other schools all over the country. Harvard takes one. The number one student is doing fine. She got into Harvard. She’s a lawyer. No surprise there. She’s happily married, but she’s never having kids, and that’s fine. The number two went to Columbia and now they’re a weatherman, which is respectable, but we’re not sure how that happened. That wasn’t the trajectory. The number three we never kept up with, but we’re sure he’s fine. Then there’s the graduate who was in the top one percent, but drank too much at their very first college party, wound up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning, and was not allowed to come back to school. Their parents installed them at their empty house in Jefferson while they were living at their new place in Florida, and the graduate sat in a house that wasn’t theirs anymore, but would be until someone bought it, and they drank and went on dating apps, and invited people over, and tried to get them to spend the night, but only one or two did.

One got married and then divorced and married to the same person and then divorced again all before they were twenty-six, but they were also named one of Vogue’s Hottest Young Designers and so they were content with their life--love shambles and all. They never talked about high school or where they were from, and in all the profiles done on them (and there were many) they would simply say that they grew up in New England and their childhood was happy and there wasn’t much to talk about beyond that. None of it was a lie, but one time, in high school, they got the solo in the school chorus and it was the first time people looked at them with any kind of admiration, and it set the course for the rest of their life, but they didn’t want to tell anyone that, let alone have it documented in print, because it sounds crazy to say that you became a famous fashion designer, because a chorus teacher let you sing a verse of “Make Our Garden Grow” all by yourself.

Two of the graduates married each other even though their parents demanded that they go to different colleges. They stayed in touch, and when both graduated from separate universities, they reconnected on the West Coast and immediately became engaged. They take photos of their vacations. They go on vacation endlessly. One always wishes they could just stay home and the other would give anything to never go home. It’s not about liking home or not liking home. It’s about a kind of restlessness that lives within some and not in others. One of them was the editor of the school newspaper, and that was the last time they felt important.

It’s all right to spend some time in the future, but the graduates are spilling out onto the elongated sidewalk in their caps and gowns. It dawns on them as they hug their family members and each other that this is the last goodbye in what has been a series of goodbyes. Yearbook parties, prom, an honors society dinner, a dinner for athletics, an arts soiree, a spring production of Our Town, and a senior trip to Six Flags.

They have cried and made promises destined to break and laughed and reminisced and confessed crushes and apologized for unkind words and rumors. Now, they have nothing left to say and not much time even if they had another word or two worth sharing. They tried to memorize each other’s faces. There were reminders about graduation parties over the summer. Graduates scheduled to attend the same colleges were already forming deeper connections by virtue of their next chapters coinciding. Those who were not going to be at the same parties or arriving at the same institutions of higher learning in the fall or set to meet again somewhere down the path tried to find a way to honor this ending. Two had lockers side-by-side for all four years of high school, and now they’d never see each other again. Actually, in ten years, they’ll be in the same aisle at the supermarket (cereal and rice) and they won’t recognize each other. That might sound sad, but it’s not. It’s just a story.

And there are so many stories.

At midnight, the sidewalk is deserted. Most of the graduates are still out at parties, or even, in some cases, downtown bars. Caps have been left in backseats of beaten-up cars that suit first-time drivers. Gowns are already hung up in closets or hung on hooks on the back of bedroom doors leading into bedrooms that will soon be vacated. The mother of one graduate can’t sleep. Her daughter is out at a bowling party, and the lane has agreed to stay open late in honor of that night’s graduation. The daughter won’t be home until close to one, but that’s still thirty or forty minutes away.

The mother takes the gown off the hook on the back of the bedroom door and lays it down on the bed. Then, she lays down next to the gown and brings it to her chest. When her daughter had her wisdom teeth out in the tenth grade, there would be moments throughout the following two days where her daughter would wake up, her pain medication worn off, and she’d cry until she could swallow another pill to dull the ache. When that happened, her mother would get into bed with her and cradle her and try with all her might to absorb her daughter’s pain. On this night, she simply wanted to absorb her daughter’s potential. Not to steal it from her, but to spur it on. To expand it. To turn the tassel.

She is very excited for her daughter.

After all, who wouldn’t be?