Last month, I was opening a cardboard box full of graduation robes. It was a normal service day of mothers helping out for the upcoming event. The room was filled with women making sure life goes as planned.
And then there was me, suddenly drenched in sweat as I tried to rip open the plastic bag where one of the robes was encased. I found myself in this bizarre experience; I knew I was there to get the graduation robes out and hang them on the clothing racks. But my body suddenly shut down. I burst out crying.
I wanted to run, but I was trapped between women pulling name tags off sticker sheets, young children laughing, fluorescent lights peering down at me, and my own daughter, the inevitable graduate, sitting down the hall waiting for me to finish.
In that moment, it finally hit me: my daughter is graduating from high school. My body was warning me that the home I had built with my children was about to crumble.
Being a mother to my children was what I always wanted
When I left the building, I took a walk and thought about my daughter. I often spoke about her graduating. But the “when” of her graduating was what I was in complete and utter denial about.
In my mind, this event was somewhere in a distant future — maybe even another lifetime.
Just as I opened the door of my apartment, it hit me. I had no vision for my family, beyond smallhood. Becoming a mother has always been my goal. As a kid, I dreamed of the day I could raise children of my own with love and care.
When I finally had them, I sat with them. I listened with my heart. I encouraged them to be their true selves. At all times, I looked at them only with love and was grateful for their gift of presence.
I have loved every moment with my children: the conversations, the laughter, the quiet moments with their heads resting on my lap, the patter of their feet. Even as they became teenagers, I loved hearing their walk to the refrigerator, the door creaking, and then the pickle jar opening.
Throughout the years, as they got older, I spent more time at night scrolling through their pictures, marveling at our life together, their beauty, how small they were, and how big they were getting, trying somehow to hold time in place.
My grief shifted to pride at graduation
I stood in our small pew at graduation, waiting for something to calm my beating heart. Then the music began, and the graduates entered in procession. Each one, now big, but only a moment ago a small, precious 5-year-old beginning the journey, and my heart burst open, tears streaming down. We had made it.
My daughter took her place as the class speaker. She spoke about the terrifying and beautiful uncertainty of becoming. She shared how she had lost her certainty about life, only to discover that what truly carries us forward is connection, resilience, and the people who love us along the way.
My proud heart swelled as I looked at her beautiful baby-like face on the body of an adult.
“To graduate,” she said, “is to finish. I am commencing moving onto the next.”
I’m proud of the family I’ve raised and all that we achieved
In that moment, I realized that I, too, was graduating from the extraordinary journey of raising this incredible child.
I wept because I had done well. The little girl who always knew she wanted to be a great mother has finally achieved her goal. My kids were loved, safe, and cared for.
Now all of us could commence on a new journey, one not from lack but from the certainty that life would be uncertain. Still, we will always be there to love, honor, and support each other.
