It's the end of the school year, the time for graduations, ceremonies, last things. It's the last grand hurrah for the 8th graders at school. They will attend Saul and Capa, St. Joe's Prep, Mt. St. Joseph. Friends I began seminary with graduated last week, diplomas the size of my lap. Our internship ended, the weekly meetings and supervisions have wound down. And tomorrow, I will counsel there for the last time.
This is the same time last year when Maggie bought us matching hankies from Hob Nob for Calliope and Una's graduation from nursery school. Calliope processed down the aisle wearing a spectator veil and I wept with a bursting heart. Next week, she will have a ceremony to mark the end of kindergarten. Why does it feel, every year, like we have arrived at this impossible moment, that once felt like it could never happen? When I got the acceptance letter from CCEF last June, I jumped up and down and screamed in the second floor hallway until my voice hurt. Tomorrow, I will descend the stairs from my bright but cozy garrett-office. There will be the professional silence there always is, I will hear my footfall. And that will be that.
In September, Calliope said that she didn't like school, that this school was not for her. I told her she needed to make it through Christmas time and then we could revisit the question. Now, though, she can finish her friends' sentences, writes with punctuation and will be reading the Responsorial Psalm for her graduation Mass.
This time of year tends to feel like we have come to a precipice, an uncomfortable, disquieting sense of finality and peril. The end of the academic year leaves me raw and fragile. I don't know why that is. Why can't I see it as more of an uphill journey around the same mountain? The circular, season-driven, climb up a mountain, though steep, is mine. When I was leaving for college, I felt a similar numbness and disbelief. Days flowed into each other and then I saw that I was rolling forward with a certain momentum. And when I told my Mom that basically I was just sad to leave her, I was comforted when she said, "I have had 18 years to prepare for this. And I knew it was coming."
I want to have that sense, a composed preparedness for what is coming.
