Senior Picture Day!

Today was senior picture day at school.  Just another reminder for students, parents, and teachers that the high school experience is about to end and kids will enter the proverbial “real world.”  Many kids came in dress shirts and ties and the girls had their hair teased (is this a throwback to the sixties?) and their eyeliner was perfect.  It created a little melancholy to see them all decked about, expectant about the future and excited to be headed on the mysterious path to adulthood.

One of the things that always strikes me about teaching high schoolers is that there is such a strong sense of beginning and ending in high school.  Every new school year is a beginning.  A chance to start anew and make new friends or reinvent yourself in some way.  And every spring is an ending.  A completion of another grade level with the anticipation of looking forward to a new year in a few short months.  Being a senior in high school is, perhaps, one of the most poignant endings. 

I often ask my seniors to think back to their first day of public school—kindergarten.  They were probably five or six at the time and most of them arrived to the very first day of school in new clothes and a tear in their eye.  I remember bringing my daughter Bri to kindergarten.  I still have a photo of her in a homemade jumper, her shoes shiny and new.  She has a smile on her face that suggests that she is not quite sure about this new adventure and I remember watching the Care Bears lunch box beat against her leg as she walked, alone, to her class for the first time.  It was difficult to see her go.  Difficult to realize that my full time presence in her life was over. 

It must be difficult for the parents of my high school kids to see the children prepare to go as well.  When our children go to kindergarten, we have some comfort in knowing what lies in store for them.  Not so when they graduate from high school.  It’s a big world out there and there is a part of our hearts that always realizes that we have very little control over what happens to our children once they leave our homes.

We cannot control what happens to them in college, the choices they make, who they fall in love with, whether this new love affair will last if it morphs into a marriage, or what kind of passion and satisfaction they will get from the career they choose.  There is so much that is outside our realm of control that it is tempting to want to clutch these gangly semi-adults to our breasts and beg them to (in the words of Jackson Browne), “Stay… just a little bit longer.”

It should give us comfort that if we raised our children well they will make good choices and find joy in their lives.  And it does to some extent.  But there is also an overwhelming sadness in knowing our job is coming to a close and that the small children who we encouraged on their first day of kindergarten will soon be completely functioning adults. 

I watched as the seniors got their pictures taken.   When the photographer told them to sit up straight, tilt their head and smile, they did.  And I felt a little bit sad at the realization that this snapshot will forever chronicle the end of an era for these children.  I am hopeful the world will invite them to live in joy and to be courageous in finding the life they dream of today.

Look right here and smile…