When I woke in the morning, 6am, I thought, It’s a free-for-all. It’ll never work. This is the year it all implodes. Maybe I think it every year, the tiny pieces impossible to hold all at once. How many platters of cheese? Are the programs on the seats? Do the medals go on the podium or a table to the side? Will there be parking? Will we overflow? Will no one show? So many things to go wrong that I forget what can go right. Here are 21 graduates on the stage: black gowns, mortarboards, red tassel hanging to one side. Here are the people who came out to cheer them. Here are music and applause and a hand to help us up the stairs. Here are speeches and congratulations. Here pride. Here accomplishment. Here such joy. Really, such joy.

May 18, 2015