Pomp & Circumstance

(Edward Elgar, 1905)

As soon as the first notes of "Pomp & Circumstance" are sounded my mom never fails to start getting weepy. So tonight, when the SMN band squeaked out those first couple of notes, I leaned forward to take a peek and sure enough, her eyes were looking a little misty. And, of course, then my eyes start to sting. I'm thinking to myself, "I'm gonna be a mess."

Ron and Kate had gone ahead to save us seats and got really good ones, right on the 50 yard line. It's pretty much impossible to tell the graduates apart since they all have on the same get up, but Ron said he spotted Tyler two rows in front of the 50 yard line. The awarding of diplomas went by pretty smoothly and almost no one paid attention to the repeated requests to remain quiet during the reading of the names . . . not to yell, or use whistles or air guns. "Ok, they're two rows a way from Tyler's row. We're good." Then, all of the sudden we hear "James Tyler Martin." My first thought is "They read his name out of order!" But no. They didn't make the mistake. We did. We totally missed seeing Tyler get his diploma. It was like blinking the exact second the Plaza Lights are turned on. By the time I finally located his red head, he was walking off the stage. We didn't get to yell, whistle or do anything else distracting. It was all SO anticlimactic. Poor guy. Fortunately, he had quite a few friends who yelled for him, so he didn't feel like an orphan.

But talk about a serious right hook into the parenting self esteem. I had been trying to mentally prepare myself for this event for over a year. I had given myself pep talks all last week and thought I had gotten all my tears out of the way. And then I miss the whole dang thing. Life is just too funny sometimes. Or not. We'll see if I'm laughing come August . . .