Actually, fifth grade graduations might be the best graduations

On celebrating in public, together

This will be blessedly short, because my mom is in town. She’s downstairs right now, playing a Yukon-themed dice game with my son. He, in turn, is home because he graduated fifth grade yesterday and is therefore getting to experience his first taste of Last Day Senior Privilege. They’re laughing together, grandmother and grandson. It’s a lovely day.

Yesterday was a lovely day too. At one point— after the gaggle of eleven-year-olds processed, recessed, pomped, circumstanced, wiggled a bit but not too much in their chairs, before finally receiving official handshakes and Certificates of Completion— I had a conversation with a good friend, another fifth grade Dad. He said something about how he never knows how big a deal to make out of these interstitial ceremonies (the kindergarten and fifth grade and eight grade graduations), but that this had been really nice. I nodded and agreed. The ceremony had been quite pleasant. I cried a bit hearing the not-quite-pubescent voices sing in chorus. I smiled seeing big kids whom I remember as very tiny kids look down at their notes as they rushed through speeches. “I was so, so nervous,” one girl told me after. “Could you tell?” I loved hearing families whoot and holler in two different languages and many more accents for their graduate.

I loved it all in the moment, but I fell more and more in love with it later in the day, as I processed what I had seen and heard. I thought about the principal’s message, which wasn’t about achievement but about who these fifth graders were to one another. “You all shared this space together, from when you were very tiny, VERY energetic four-year-olds, until now.” She shared a story about attending a high school graduation ceremony that previous weekend, for an alumna of our elementary school. The teen hadn’t attended high school with her grade school friends, but more than a few of them were there in the crowd. That was the principal’s one wish for the graduates: That they would do their best to stay friends.

I thought about the kids who addressed the crowd. I don’t remember any of their words. What I remember is that in this space where some kids speak Spanish at home and others speak English at home and everybody learns both languages at school, the Spanish dominant kids delivered addresses in English and the English dominant kids did theirs in Spanish. That’s the only message they needed to deliver. We did this together. We are not the same as we would have been had we done it without each other.

I watched as the gathered friends— kids who, as I’ve noted before, have been alternatingly deeply beautiful and imperfectly human to one another— collapsed into a joyful mass after the ceremony, posing for what I hope will be just the first in a long series of post-graduation-huddle-of-buddies pictures. Arms draped around each other. Smiling in spite of the sun in their eyes. Posing in front of a new mural they helped create. Running up to their parents to make sure that we had each other’s numbers, that arrangements could be made for kids who once played together but who have graduated to “hanging out.”

I hugged and shook hands with other parents and grandparents. Felicidades and congratulations were exchanged. “Can you believe how big they are?” we said. No, we couldn’t. “I used to help your son get his snowsuit off in the morning, hahahaha, and now he’s nearly as tall as me.”

Our school population is much more working class than it is middle and upper class. It is Blacker and Browner than it is White. It is in a district that is much maligned, sometimes unfairly, sometimes fairly. The week of graduation, there has been a scandal brewing in the central office. People who should have done a diligent job— particularly on the financial reporting and paperwork side— have been revealed to be doing an absolutely terrible job. But also, they were understaffed. Their jobs were cut to save teachers jobs. It’s a complicated story. We are not all perfect. Our teachers in this building are not infallible. But damnit they loved these kids.

My daughter’s first grade teacher asked a paraprofessional to watch her room so she could come out for the ceremony. These fifth graders were her Covid class. She visited their homes when the world shut down, then chose to loop with them in that weird virtual year. Her class is and always will be the bumble bees. I watched as she gathered together a jumble of her former students for a group picture. They shouted in unison, in two languages. “ABEJAS ALWAYS!”

I watched parents and kids exchange hugs. For the families who have been here less than a year, this is their first time celebrating a milestone in the U.S. For others, this will be a rare moment when an American institution unabashedly, without question, loves their kids. And for some of us, it will be one of the few times when we are asked to celebrate something other than our own children’s competitive march through the world.

I am both a parent and an essayist, two identity markers that make me prone to recency bias. You are welcome to roll your eyes at all this, to remind me, listen, when your kid graduates from high school you’ll say that’s your favorite graduation, and then if they go to college you’ll amend your assertion again…” And you know what, maybe I will do that.

But today I’ll say, I don’t just tolerate fifth grade graduations. I’m not just relieved when they are passable simulacra of Real Graduations Still To Come. Fifth grade graduations are, at this moment in time, my absolute favorite graduations. Because these ceremonies, for once, aren’t about winning a race. They aren’t about passing a bar whose very existence implies that others didn’t get there with you. They’re about a group of friends who shared a space for far more than half of their lives look each other in the eyes and say that this was ours, together. Some of us were better athletes and some of us were better dancers and singers and some of us memorized more digits of Pi and read thicker books, but it would not have been the same if we were not all here. We were friends, in the most complicated, transcendent form of the word. And if we are lucky, that is what we will still be, years from now.

It is not easy to be friends. It is not easy to be together. But sometimes we pull it off, and goodness if that isn’t worth celebrating.

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End notes (also short!)

• More movie series coming later this week! Cruel Intentions! What a weird film!

• I didn’t always value community rather than individual competition, and it took way more than just saying “I value community now” to get there. Want to read more about that journey? I think you’ll like my book, The Right Kind of White!

• Speaking of reflections on fatherhood (and movies!), I was on the absolutely incredible

  The Mother of it All
  podcast this week talking about Mamma Mia. It was so much fun and I got to coin the phrase “Schroedinger’s dads.” Please listen!

• My spring book tour is mostly done, but I am actively scheming with community groups coast to coast for fall dates. Want to be part of the fun? Let’s talk! Toss me a email! But before then: I’ve got one final early summer virtual event: Residents of Washington State! Or people who care about residents of Washington State! Did you know that there is a grassroots campaign to get y’all actual universal healthcare? It’s true. It’s called WHOLE WASHINGTON and I’m leading a public, virtual organizing training for them on June 19TH at 6:00 PM PT. RSVP here.

• Song of the week: This is the one that made me cry, belted out in unison by beautifully squeaky voices.