The Graduates

Aaron and Ezra, May 4, 2025, outside Crisler Center, Ann Arbor

The moment it hit me was at the start of Aaron's Nursing School graduation at Johns Hopkins. The ceremony started promptly at 9am at the school's lacrosse field, with Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" being piped over the loudspeakers. The last graduation. After more than a quarter century of pre-schools, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges and, finally, this post-graduate degree, this would be -- to the best of my knowledge -- the last one.

Earlier this month, Ezra went through the graduation ceremony at The University of Michigan. While the two suites of ceremonies were vastly different, they both provided closure. One child struggled mightily during the COVID-19 pandemic and arguably because of the pandemic, ultimately withdrawing entirely from two full semesters and nearly a third semester before finding a path back to completion of two majors. The other thrived in the isolation, adding a 2nd major and then a 3rd, graduating cum laude and then, after taking a hiatus for an internship and odd jobs, finding his calling and going back to school to pursue it.

The Michigan graduation had more events for us than most weddings: The Penny Stamps School of Art and Design on Friday, May 2, in the same room where Ezra had gone to Portfolio Day as a High School Senior back in 2018. Then the main event at Michigan Stadium on May 3rd, in which Derek Jeter gave  a forgettable keynote address and the University President Santa Ono said a few words before resigning his position the next day. Finally, the Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience (BCN) ceremony, at Crisler Center. The events always seemed one small step away from logistical disaster, from Ezra initially not having Academic Attire, to not having procured tickets for us to the Stadium, to confusing Chrysler Center (a location near the Art School) with Crisler Center (the basketball arena), and somehow it all worked out.

 

(the links are to the live streams, including their parts)

Johns Hopkins had no such stress for us beyond getting there in the first place: We decided to drive, and it's 500 miles. At the ceremony, we got a commencement speaker whose name I don't remember, but who managed to say a few things I actually did remember. Aaron won an award, and when I gave him a bit of a hard time for not telling us in advance that he'd won it, he confessed that he hadn't known he got an award either, and didn't really know why he'd won it. That seemed... fitting.

The future starts now.