Our girl graduated

Our daughter graduated from Cornell this weekend, a glorious, physically exhausting and emotionally fraught three days. It was blinding hot in Ithaca, and there were three, count them, three separate graduation ceremonies—convocation outdoors on Saturday with speaker James Franco (I confess I thought him a lightweight choice at first, but he was actually very good and spoke for the perfect length of time), the whole school commencement on Sunday morning, again outdoors, and finally the calling of names and handshake on stage with the dean right after, this ceremony moved mercifully indoors.

I cried more than once. At certain moments I could barely contain the utter beauty and perfection of everything. At others, I wished deeply for a do-over. Our girl was radiant with her high beam smile, she and her friends fresh from a week of nonstop celebrating, with white water rafting and wine tours and messy nights at their usual late night haunts. Her final report card in the bank, she posted all As, she was determined to make the most of these last days with friends before the melancholy of packing up and saying goodbyes to a charmed moment in time that will never again be.

Her cheering section consisted of her dad and me, her brother and cousin, and two of our heart children. We didn't invite anyone else, because the hotel situation in town was impossible, and price gouging was in full effect. As we sweltered in the hundred degree day in the bleachers of the football arena, I was glad it was just us. My friend Leslie, whose son was graduating from Bard College the same day, texted me that his grandmother fainted and had to be rushed to the hospital and an aunt was suffering from heat stroke. It was crazy hot like that where we were too, with EMTs walking through the crowd handing out water bottles. I could only imagine how the poor graduates in their black robes over business formal wear must have been feeling. Everyone prayed for the ominous looking clouds in the distance to roll over the sun, and bring some relief.

Then, in the middle of the ceremony the sky opened up, and rain poured down. And this wasn't some dainty little sprinkle, it was deluge, the kind you just surrender to and allow yourself to be soaked.

I did get some lovely photos of my girl marching into the stadium with her class, before the rain, her and her three main hotelie cohorts (she was a student at Cornell's Hotel School). I call them the hotelie dream team, there for each other from day one. I loved seeing them march in together, ending as they began.

And later, there were photo ops with our girl and her boyfriend, who also graduated this past weekend, he from the engineering school, a brainiac with a gentle heart, who looks out for my girl, as she looks out for him. There was something very sweet about them going through this rite of passage together, as their families looked on, beaming, proud.

My daughter and her housemates hosted a graduation barbecue on Saturday, which went of well, thanks in part to the DJ, who had promised two nights before, when they were all at a bar, to spin for free, and who remembered nothing of his promise a day later, but agreed to be bound by it anyway, so of course, they paid him, and he was worth it. All day Friday the parents of the housemates ran errands around Ithaca, transporting tables and chairs, getting barbecue supplies, and some of the mothers (not me) cooked, and instead of cooking we supplied drinks and ice and coolers and desserts, and picked up an enormous cake with a long list of names of graduates in red icing, and somehow it all came together.

Then on Sunday night after the rain-soaked commencement, our family and our daughter's boyfriend's family went to dinner at Taverna Banfi, the fine dining Tuscan restaurant where my girl worked as student chef freshman year, and decided that she didn't, after all, want to do restaurant work, though she still loves food and beverage as a creative endeavor. There were thirteen of us at the table, and the food was excellent, and then the young folks went off on their own to check out some of the Collegetown bars one last time. They were rather deserted, I heard later, as most graduates were off somewhere with their families, or packing, or already gone.

Monday morning, the troops were joined by a couple of my daughter's friends, and we went for breakfast at Collegetown Bagels, which is an Ithaca institution. After, we went back to our girl's house and began packing in earnest. It was all very bittersweet, and then it was back to the city, back home, to begin the next chapter called "real life."

My house is now a mess of course. College paraphernalia is everywhere, but on the good side my son and daughter, along with a friend of my daughter's who just arrived home from college at Oberlin, are in the kitchen right this moment cooking quinoa, cajun shrimp and a kale and avocado salad for dinner, and then my daughter and her friend are heading out into the night to meet up with all their other friends who are newly home from college, and so here we are. Another ending. A new beginning.

I realize this is a lot of detail that probably only matters to me, so if you made it to this point, thanks for that act of friendship. I guess I'll just end the record here. Except to say, I am so very proud of our girl.