This First Person column is written by Carissa Halton, who lives in Edmonton. For more information about First Person stories, see the FAQ.
As the tasselled caps flew like crows from the sea of spritzed updos, mullets and metalheads, I felt the second swell of emotion threaten to engulf me.
The first had come when the principal said to the room of grads and guardians packed into the 1960s-era school theatre, “From those first days of rocking you, to reading you books, your guardians have planted seeds of hope.”
“Seriously, what is wrong with me?” I thought.
But the memories of my first-born daughter’s super soft skin, the round invitation of those darling cheeks, surfaced from a deep place that I haven’t had much time to mine in the past 18 years.
Those days of rocking her. I get attachment theory, but I did it mostly because it soothed her crying. Also, she’d smile in that milk-drunk way and, even as I drowned in the boredom of early parenthood, that smile made me feel delight.
And those days of reading to her? Those books brought such sun to our days by drawing us into worlds where dinosaurs were vegetarians, invisibility was just a permanent marker away and trees felt love and loss.The joy we found in those stories.
Looking back, those moments magically brought our chaotic world into the still and quiet centre of a hurricane. For a time, we could sit on that old couch I reclaimed from the alley and be contentedly nowhere else.
Of course, there were plenty of seeds of hope planted by folks beyond us as parents. Grandparents who hosted sleepovers and bake-offs, aunties with listening ears, friends with better food and neighbours with friendly dogs.
Graduations — along with their shockingly short-lived fashions and rituals of gowns, caps, stages, speeches and dances — are ostensibly for the graduates. My daughter’s name was the one on the leather-bound certificate, but in that theatre on a rainy June afternoon, I realized this ritual is also for us parents, too.
I know I shouldn’t make everything about me, but perhaps we should host another awards ceremony so us parents can have a minute to contemplate the wild thing we’ve just done and that may have once felt impossible: we raised humans.
It’s happened subtly over the years: I don’t do her laundry. I don’t buy her hair product. I don’t make her lunch nor do I regularly get her to school. I can’t help her in math because polynomials are definitely memories too deeply buried. I haven’t cleaned up her spilled milk in years.
And — oh my God, I am weeping here — I don’t read to her anymore.
Our job is not done, but it is different. I hope I will never be too nostalgic or oblivious to allow the scope and tone of my role to change with my kid. Happy grad, parents of grad 2024.
And to the grads of class 2024: I’m so proud of you and can’t wait for the wonderful ways your wisdom and passions will shape my world.
