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May is the month of graduations. Tassels, Sunday afternoon parties, and sudden thoughts of readiness for the next launching point. Relatives begin the bittersweet descent toward the event, envelopes in hand. Parents, grandparents, and a time for looking forward. And backward?

Indeed, yes. As an eighteen-year-old chomps at the bit to begin a four-year sojourn at the University of Kansas, plans are underway for an eightieth birthday party next month. My wife has spent months sifting through dusty Kodak slides  and converting them into digital format with the patient, slavish help of a technical contractor. The results were extraordinary.

The Polish in-laws from South Bend, Indiana gather around the DVD player, and my older son selects big band songs from his iPod as background music (what’s a twenty-year-old doing with that genre on his iPod?). The images, of course, are sublime. They show long ago smiles from celebrations, graduations, dating from the 1940’s through the 1970’s. Grandma in a pill-box hat next to a brand new Studebaker. Her daughter with long, rebellious locks in a college gown, the glint of three future babes in her eyes. My future bride celebrating her first birthday in the house where I first stole a kiss from her fifteen years later.

And my young high school graduate standing next to me, watching intently, realizing possibly that this weekend, while all his, is but one of a long line of graduations, all special, all unique, but ultimately tied to a long string of family celebrations that give the long decades meaning. A continuum of love that will stretch outward to his children and more, long after his graduation day is remembered in some technical format yet to be envisioned.

This entry was posted on May 27, 2012 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Family with tags alex, david, mcinerny, nancy, paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.