It Was Important

You all know that last July Boy#2 officially became the kind of doctor who is not all that useful if you're trying to avoid a co-pay. He cannot tell you what that funny pain in your knee is, and whether you should block out a month this summer for a replacement or just slap a bag of frozen peas on it. No, he's the kind of doctor whose dissertation was filled with complicated mathematical formulas and diagrams of electrical...stuff that I don't even know what it was.

When Two successfully defended that dissertation in the final step of his doctoral studies Husband and I could not have been prouder. Two had come up against roadblock after roadblock and had persevered, and frankly, by the time he was finished he was not filled with patriotic pride toward the school where he'd spent six years. (Duke. It was Duke.)

So when he asked if it mattered to us if he went through the official pomp and circumstance that accompanies earning a Ph.D., we told him it was up to him. If he decided he wanted the official moment when the doctoral hood settled on his shoulders he could be sure we'd be there to witness it and shriek with joy, but since he'd already settled into his new job in Boston, and with the Wedding of the Century Part Deux* coming up in October, it made a lot of sense to save the money and vacation days for that event. We assumed he'd tell us he was giving the ceremony a hard pass.

But then, his Lovely Girl (who actually is the kind of doctor who can tell you what that knee pain is and had received her own hood a year earlier) reminded Two that he has one shot at this. If he decided to forego the ceremony, there would be no do-over.

So on Saturday, our second-born went through the university's graduation ceremonies, while his Lovely Girl, Boy#1, Husband, and I applauded until our hands hurt.

When it was over he was not one bit more qualified or educated or smart than he had been 10 minutes earlier, in the moments before his adviser climbed onto the step-stool to put the ceremonial sash over our 6'4" son's head. Something, though, had changed with the visual, audible, tactile marking of this moment.

Maybe these ceremonies are important to me because I'm from a generation during which ceremonies were, well, important. We did not graduate from kindergarten in tiny mortarboards and gowns, we rode the bus home on the last day and began our summers. There were no organized children's athletic teams before junior high, so no soccer participation trophies for everyone. An invitation to prom was a hallway "Want to go to prom with me?" instead of an elaborately choreographed production. Today, though, with all of these (plus gender reveals), ceremonies have become devalued.

By contrast, this ceremony that recognized persistence and pushing through as much as it recognized brilliance, was important and exclusive and I thought about that as I was trying to perfect my surreptitious tear-blotting moves. We had waited for for this imprimatur for decades, and it did not disappoint.

Later I asked Lovely Girl if Two was glad he had gone through the ceremony. She only hesitated for a moment to formulate her answer.

"He's glad because he thinks you're happy," she told me.

He was absolutely right.




*No, not the one that's Saturday. The real one, that's not until October.