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Graduation time

It’s that time of year again — graduation ceremonies are being held all over the country. As I observe the excitement and pride of the graduates and their parents, I can’t help but reflect on some of the graduations of the past.

I remember my own high school graduation and the feeling of accomplishment and a bit of relief of the ending of a period and the beginning of another. I also felt honor to have graduated in the top 10 of my class –there were nine of us. The party held at our farmhouse following the graduation was a typical Norwegian Lutheran affair with all the relatives attending. All the graduates had their own parties that same night, so we could not attend each other’s parties. After I had greeted all of the guests and directed them to the buffet of sandwiches, a variety of cookies, lefsa, and cake (all baked by my mother — no Hy-Vee catering in those days), I sat outside on the steps with my boyfriend and pondered the night sky. My parents gave me a full set of luggage (expensive and green), which I knew would be very useful as I went away to college, but the thought that “they want me to leave,” dominated. Worse yet, the first time I came back home my mother set out the guest towels.

My going off to college, three months later, presented a change in plans. All of my life my parents had told me that I would be attending St. Olaf College, the Norwegian Lutheran College in Northfield. But that summer my dad came to me and said that he had changed his mind — that he would be sending me to Augsburg College, a Swedish Lutheran College in Minneapolis. The reason? I was dating a boy who was a junior at St. Olaf and my father reasoned that if I went there I would go only two years and then get married. But he also added “Don’t you dare bring home a Swede.” Well, I showed my Dad, I brought home a “Heinz 57.”

When I fast-forward 20 years I recall the graduations of my four daughters. The graduation ceremonies were pretty much the same, but the “leavings” were different. The first daughter was very anxious to leave and start her own life. She hardly spoke to me that summer, since she felt that I didn’t know anything anyway. My elderly neighbor consoled me with the fact that teenagers often felt this way — “just wait, by Christmas she will want to come home and she will think that you really got smart in four months.” What actually happened was that she returned home for a visit, one week later, and I learned that my intelligence had undergone a speed-jump. When the second daughter left for college, I had to keep the windshield wipers on all the way as I drove her to Fargo-Moorhead — even though it was not raining. When I dropped my third daughter off at the same college her older sister attended she definitely seemed reluctant to have us leave. But I also observed that after a tearful “goodbye” she and her friend were jumping for joy and doing cart wheels as soon as they got on the other side of some pine trees. She was also the first daughter to be given a car while in college as she was taking classes in each of the three colleges in the area. After a couple of weeks of driving back and forth between classes, I received a frantic call from her saying that the car did not work — it wouldn’t even start. So I drove up all the way to Fargo-Moorhead (it is not the end of the earth — but you can see it from there). Before having the car towed to an auto repair station, I checked the car myself. The gas tank was empty. Probably the hardest departure was when the fourth daughter left for college — because now we were “empty nesters.” It was not difficult for her to leave home as she had a boyfriend (whom many years later became her husband) living in the cities. But now, as parents — what was left? Only memories.

And now, my grandchildren have graduated from not only high school but college, and my oldest grandson is graduating with his master’s degree. I will stand on the outskirts and observe the happy “boy” and his proud parents, and think, “here we go again — third generation down.”

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