Graduations

I’m just back from spending the weekend in California, helping our friends celebrate the graduation of their eldest daughter from high school. It was one of those wildly bittersweet moments that reminds you just how quickly time can pass, and often it does so without warning. I can still remember pushing said daughter around in a stroller at Disneyland, so watching her stride across the stage to receive her diploma was a bona fide tear jerker. My wife and I have had the privilege to watch her grow into an amazing young woman, one who I know will do great things in the world.

In some ways, I came away from the weekend with a touch of melancholy; with my nephew living in Maine, I’ve not really had much of an occasion to play the doting Uncle more than a handful of times during my trips back home. Time and distance have worked against me more than I would have liked in that regard, the price I paid for allowing my career to dictate where I landed. This age of nearly-instant communication has ameliorated some of that guilt, but there again it’s not entirely the same as spending a long weekend traipsing the wide sandy beach together (or wandering down Main Street U.S.A. wondering what the wait time is for Space Mountain).

One of the first stories I actually published was for my nephew. After spending the afternoon with him a number of years ago now, I returned to Arizona with all of the fantastical stories he had told me about an imaginary place where good pirates sailed magical seas. Wanting to do something special for his next birthday, I crafted a unique tale that fit into his little universe and then pulled out my box of crayons to add some illustrations. I’m the first to admit my artistic skills run toward the written word, but on the whole, I thought the sketches kind of worked. I only printed a few copies of the book in a paperback format, and sent one to him; I pulled my copy from the shelf after getting back from California this weekend and smiled a little nostalgically at how much has changed — and how grown up the kids in my life have become.

It’s rather sobering.