There Ya Go
My daughter, Olivia, was a member of the Tracy Area High School “Covid Class” in the spring of 2020. That means she missed out on walking up and down the aisle with a classmate to the high school band’s rendition of “Pomp and Circumstance” — a tune that inspires as many tears among the crowd as a love song does after you get dumped by your girlfriend or boyfriend.
She missed walking across the stage, having her tassel turned by a beloved TAHS staff member, shaking hands with the superintendent, and school board members and missed tossing her cap into the air at the end of the graduation ceremony.
What she and her Covid classmates got was chauffeured up to a card table to grab their diploma, which was sealed in a Ziplock bag and pushed across a card table. Oh, and they all had to keep their masks on the whole time.
Hats off to the high school for putting something considered “legal” together, but it just wasn’t the same. A traditional graduation was just one thing those seniors missed out on.
In a matter of a little more than a week, however, she will have her moment in time when she graduates from Dakota State University with a degree in early childhood education and special ed.
I am greatly looking forward to watching her be handed her diploma in a true traditional setting, and I might even shed a tear that day. But who am I crying for? Her or good ol’ dad?
I’m super proud of my daughter. She will be the first one to admit she didn’t really try that hard in high school. She was kind of a lazy student, and looked at high school as a reason to be together with friends and as a time when she could play sports. She got that from me. Believe it or not, I was a B student during a good quarter, but was mostly average. I had neither the desire, study habits nor God-given smarts to be a fixture on the A honor roll. I just wanted to pass my classes (except any class taught by a Landman — those were the ones that came easy to me and I needed them to keep my head above water). And Jesse James’ classes, as he was one of the few teachers I really liked.
That being said, I didn’t know how she would do at the next academic level. Thankfully, she grew up and quickly realized that doing well in college was a pretty big deal. She even made the President’s list once.
Olivia has come a very long way since she was a high school student skating by in the tougher classes. She earned her degree while playing four years of softball. It took her a little over four years to do it, but she did it and has already landed a full-time teaching job in the Watertown School District, teaching special needs kids, a position that will require more patience than she will ever have to demonstrate.
So, the tears could come with that parent pride.
Or, they may fall because this is just one more step in breaking away from dad. Am I glad she is relying less and less on me? Hell, yah — she’ll even have her own insurance in a few months. But what graduation from a university also reminds me of is she is a full-fledged grown-up. I can still remember helping her learn how to ride a bike, how to swim and how to clean around the house, something she never mastered as a teenager but now does every time she comes home for a visit.
Once a parent, always a parent, I understand that, but having a 22-yearold daughter living in her boyfriend’s parents’ house almost two hours away is different than having a 15-year-old residing two rooms down the hallway.
There might be more life-changing events to come that will make me feel like I’m “losing” her — an engagement, a wedding, a grandchild — and I’ll be there every step of the way because I am proud. I’m just not sure how I’ll handle them.
