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Graduation Week

It's Graduation Week in the Lyke household.

Years of planning, plotting, wondering, and worrying are about to culminate in a full weekend of events that is to a family what the All-Star Game is now to the NBA. No longer do you just have the game itself, but you have all of the events leading up to it – The 3-Point Contest, The Slam Dunk Contest, The Skills Challenge, The Rookie Challenge, etc. In our case, the main festivities start today with The Last Day of School, soon to be followed by The Invasion of the Relatives, The Senior Recital, The Graduation Party, and the Commencement Exercises. Of course, this was preceded by The Senior Photos, The College Visits, The College Auditions, The Big Wait, The Big Decision, The Scholarship Applications, The Planning of The Party, The Creation of The Photo Wall, The Browning of 50 Pounds of Ground Beef, The Thorough Cleaning of the House and many other milestones. Always hanging around throughout the process was The Big Drama.

The latest installment in The Big Drama involves the weather for this weekend. For Corinne's graduation party Saturday, the current weather forecast calls for an incredibly humid 88 degrees with a chance of thunderstorms. So much for having our party in the wondrous outdoors of Camp Wakonda; we may end up learning the origin of the term “sweat lodge.” Then for the actual graduation ceremony Sunday, there is again a chance of showers with a less hot but still muggy 79.

If the rain holds off, the ceremony will be held outdoors on the football field at Milton High. If not, then it gets moved into the gymnasium. Due to space limitations, each senior gets only three tickets to the indoor graduation, which makes for an interesting dilemma. Mom and Dad get to go along with...which grandma? Do we have the grandmas arm wrestle for it?

Graduation Week started with the annual banquet for the MHS Show Choir. After a potluck dinner in the high school cafeteria, everyone moved into the auditorium for the annual parents show. It is now tradition at MHS that the parents of the seniors in the show choir put together their own stage show, to be performed as part of the banquet. This usually involves some segments where the parents parody or laughingly recreate the actual musical numbers from this year's show, along with various other skits or attempts at humor. Since I have a reputation as a “theater guy,” guess who was given the honor of organizing the show?

Putting me in charge had the potential of proving The Peter Principle correct. But in the end, it all worked out, everyone seemed to have fun and enjoy themselves, and it was a fitting tribute to retiring show choir director Bill Schrank. I could fill an entire blog about my experience with this event...and at some point, I will.

But for now, I have to make it through the next three days. After all of the preparation – particularly on the part of my wife, who has invested countless hours on this – I am betting it will go by in the blink of an eye.

People have asked me how I feel about seeing my first child graduate – sad, old, melancholy, or what. I guess all I can really say is that even though this moment has been first and foremost on our radar for over a year, it hasn't really hit me yet.

But when I see my daughter at the podium Sunday, wearing the same red gown I wore in 1980, maybe it will.