Graduation Season

The movie in my mind began to play again the other day as my daughter graduated high school. After 14 years we finally bid good-bye to familiar roads and corridoors, and faces. Notice that I said we. Because after more than a decade of shuttling her to and from school in her yellow, checkered uniform, it felt like I had graduated too.

Watching her walk up the stage to receive her diploma I thought about how my mother felt 27 years ago. Perhaps back then, she had felt the same way I did. Mom had driven me faithfully in my green and white uniform, to and from the sprawling green campus on Katipunan and on rainy days, she would waded through flood to pick up up, totally oblivious of her celebrity status. In school in the 70s and 80s. I was always known as the girl who wore Pocahontas pigtails, and the one whose artista mom drove her to and from school each day. My high school diploma was as much my mothers as it was mine.

Fast forward almost three decades later, in that spanking new gym-auditorium somewhere in Ortigas last week, all of us sat in full force – father, mother, younger brother, grandmothers on both sides of the family and one trusted yaya. How different it was for me when back in 1983 when I had only my mother and brother to cheer me on. The summer before graduation I had lost my father to a heart attack and on graduation day in 1982, I missed him terribly. For my daughter on her graduation day, there was mostly joy though I’m pretty sure that the day did not pass without her remembering her own loss too, many many years ago.

Graduation season always makes us both wistful and hopeful. Time flew by too fast I kept telling my close friends. I am grateful that for most of those 14 years, I was pretty much hands-on in raising my daughter. Looking back now, I would do it all over. Being there constantly and watching her evolve through the years from a shy child in Kindergarten , to an awkward grade school student, to finally coming ito her own in high school is a huge privilege that I am very grateful for. Our children are truly our greatest blessings.

Commencement exercises also marks the beginning of a new chapter in her life as she moves into familiar grounds in June and I must slowly learn to let go. The circle of life goes on as our daughter finds herself on the very same campus that her father and I once found ourselves in. But unlike me, 27 years ago, she enters college definite about the path she wishes to take. I always like to say that children nowadays are luckier in the sense that a greater majority of them are given much leeway by their parents to choose their own path and to harness that gift or talent which sets them apart from the rest. After all, in time, they live their own lives, and not that of their parents.

This morning my daughter and I walked through her new campus as she began making preparations for new life come June. I eagerly walked her through the many corridoors that were once so familiar to me. Though much has changed, a lot of things remain the same. I thought it was uncanny that she opted to wear a yellow Ninoy Aquino shirt with the classic Ninoy image and “Ninoy lives in my heart” written on it. The very same shirt was in vogue when I was a Freshman in college on the year that Ninoy was assasinated.

And so the memories of the years spent on campus – both happy and sad, came flooding back. Passing by the bookshop I could not help but purchase a blue and white shirt that resonated with me that morning. The shirt, emblazoned with a quote from the school’s most famous alumni (Dr. Jose Rizal) on his thoughts about our school called out to me – “I spent many happy years there.” Though high school was fun, I found the college years to be even better. I pray that it will be the same for my daughter and for the many other graduates who leave their comfort zones this month. The world lies waiting for you…sieze it with faith, kindness, diligence and compassion. Congratulations!