Well, he finally made it. After fifteen years of school, the past three being spent in active anticipation for life after high school, Matthew finally graduated. The actual ceremony only lasted two hours despite the fact that there were 900 graduates in his class, and Kevin and I arrived on time despite the absolutely insane slowdowns that had us wondering if we were, in fact going to make it. Seriously, we are so, so very tired of all the road construction in our neck of the woods. There is literally no good way to get out of our corner of the valley right now. Everywhere we turn there are more traffic cones. Add 900 students’ worth of family all heading the same direction and you will have an idea of the traffic snarl we ended up navigating. But like I said, we made it, actually found a parking spot and two seats together, and felt like we lucked out a bit with the relative brevity of the event.
Matthew has been very involved in school activities pretty much ever since he hit 8th grade. Seventh grade happened during the covid shutdown, or I expect he would have been heavily involved that year as well. He has been in a concert type band and jazz band since 7th grade and added marching band once he hit high school. He jumped into the world of stage crew as an 8th grader and became the lighting lead at both his middle school and high school by the time he was done. And as a senior he added choir to his rolodex of activities. Add in three private trumpet students, involvement in the theater department from time to time, and a healthy dose of social activities, and we honestly haven’t seen Matthew in about five years. 😂
The band didn’t play for graduation, but the choir students sang the school hymn (not the school song, our high school has two separate anthems) so Matthew got to sit right up front with all the madrigals which was exactly what he wanted. These are the kids who have been his social group all year, the ones who welcomed a band kid into the world of choir. Some of these kids are ones he has known since elementary school, and one of them was even in his preschool class. Along those lines, Matthew’s 6th grade teacher was at graduation. Matthew’s sixth grade class was his very first class, so he attended the graduation to basically commemorate his first year of teaching and celebrate those kids who were in his first class. Matthew met up with his little crew from that year and they were able to take a minute to celebrate this milestone in their lives. There were five of them that were in that class that are still friends. And several of them were in vocal jazz with Matthew his year. Thinking back on those days when they were small, it seems like time has gone very quickly.
As I’ve mentioned, Matthew is glad he is finally done. Over the past year, he has become increasingly more frustrated with some of the foibles of some of the teachers he has worked closely with. He is totally over all the high school social drama, although luckily, he has been able to ride mostly on the periphery of most of it. He is ready to be out on his own, to be his own boss, and to be able to take more control of his life. And for the most part, I think he is ready. Like all young adults, jumping into the real world can be kind of a shock, but we have tried to prepare him and teach him some of those necessary skills that being an independent adult requires. So hopefully he will transition fairly easily, because he will be leaving the safety of home pretty darn quickly.
I think today was one of those reality check days for me. Although we have known for months that Matthew would be going on a mission, we have all been in the mind set of “we can think about that after graduation.” Well, with graduation officially over, we have hit that “after” we have been talking about for months. And we don’t actually have all that long to get him ready to go. I guess life never actually slows down. It just changes direction once in a while. And it looks like it’s time for me to switch back into mission mom mode.
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