Walking through the hall to the Auditorium entrance we had to pass by Meghan’s group. Remembering how as a teenager, my daughter was highly embarrassed by everything her mother did, I didn’t have the courage to approach Meghan and her friends. Suddenly I heard: “Gramma, Gramma: hi.” My heart almost burst with delight. She was stunning. Her hair piled up on her head, make-up professionally applied, jewelry glittering, she and her three girlfriends looked frighteningly older than their fourteen years. All were beautiful. Just yesterday it seemed, these girls had been walking home from school in their high top runners, carrying back packs and lunch bags. Overnight, they’d been transformed into beautiful young women.
As the rest of the family trickled in, we made our way to the Auditorium and our seats. Our family filled an entire row close enough to the stage and centre aisle that we would have a great view of the graduates’ entrance and procession down the aisle, up the stairs and onto the stage. My husband, my 83 year old mother, and I got seated first. Meghan’s parents – Sandee and Mike – and her younger siblings, Maia & Jordan, followed and filled the row. Sandee sat beside me with Maia and Jordan sandwiched between herself and Mike so their behaviour could be monitored. Nothing was to mar Meghan’s graduation ceremony. As students filed in to the Auditorium, the audience stood to honour them as they walked in procession to the stage. We were filled with joy and pride.
The graduating class and teachers would be seated on a raised stage, facing the attendees. The students were to walk down the centre aisle from the back of the Auditorium and take their places on the stage. The principal and three teachers were already on stage waiting to greet them. Solemnly and silently these young people began making their way down the aisle and up the stairs to their seats on the stage. Parents and grandparents hurried to snap photos as their loved ones passed by their rows. First a group of ten or twelve boys and girls filed up the stairs and took their seats in the back row. The middle row was similarly filled and with great delight we saw that Meghan and her friends, at the end of the procession, would be sitting in the front row! We would have a clear and unobstructed view of her throughout the entire ceremony.
As she walked past our row, she smiled nervously at all of us. Her father, in the aisle seat, stole a photo as she walked by. Holding themselves up straight and tall, she and her girlfriends approached the stairs. With their backs to the audience, only a parent or grandparent would have noticed the tugging up of their strapless bodices; and probably only a female relative would have noticed the cautious maneuvering of their feet up the steps in unwieldy shoes. But there they were: they had made it onto the stage without incident. We beamed with pride as Meghan, then her three beautiful girlfriends took their seats in the front row.
All three, as in a synchronized dance, planted their feet, swivelled at the hips and gracefully sat down. Smoothing their skirts and finally able to relax, they took a collective deep breath, relaxed their shoulders, exhaled and to a one, splayed their knees out wide in a gesture that said whew, we made it. Meghan’s mother beside me, gasped.
“Crap: I forgot to tell her how to sit in a dress!”
This is a story I plan to tell someday at Meghan’s wedding.
