Go east, go west, young woman!

Jane enters the hemlock forest of Juneau as Gaby takes up the concrete jungle of NYC.

Jane is in Juneau, in training for her work starting next week. Juneau is three time zones from Wisconsin. At this time of the year sunset is around 10pm, with sunrise before 4am. Jane was diligent in finding an apartment to share right in the center of Juneau, with great access to the daily life of the city, while having a short trip north to the glacier, the cruise ship terminal and areas of most interest for outdoor activities.

Meanwhile, after posing for some graduation photos, including this one with Gabe McCarthy, Gaby takes possession of her New York apartment May 27, in Chelsea, on the lower west side of Manhattan, in a great neighborhood with access to stores and a useful subway station for both her and Emma. She discovered the LIRR link from JFK and now the use of ApplePay on the subway. This trip is prelude to a graduation ceremony and celebration in just over two weeks, ending her UCLA career at a Beverly Hills mansion with twenty of her best friends and their families.

When I think of all the graduations where I have been a part of or a parent, it is somewhat mind numbing. Gaby is graduating from UCLA in 2021. In 2018 Jane graduated from Marquette. In 2017, Gaby from Notre Dame. In 2016, we attended the Binghamton graduation with friend and guest of honor, Gary Levine. Jane graduated from Notre Dame in 2014 and from St Joseph in 2010. Threaded through there were a couple of Loyola graduations, although my attendance at those events declined sharply after 2005.

I have a slight recollection of my parents being in the stands for my Binghamton graduation in 1973, and believe I skipped my graduate degree commencements at both Binghamton in 1975 and Penn State in 1978. I attended maybe one or two Kansas graduations in the stadium, probably in 1981, when I was undergraduate director. Graduation attendance at Central Arkansas was mandatory, winter in spring, from 1992 to 1995. I attended perhaps three Marquette graduations, 1988-1991.

Personally I find these events to be more blasé than bittersweet, memorable or emotional. The run up to graduation requires a lot of last good-byes after four years of a lot of time together, a time that for most of those years seemed like it would never come. It was even less engaging as a faculty member or administrator. The events were mechanical, repetitive, lengthy and uninspiring, including the speeches by some supposedly famous celebrities, scholars or orators.

I didn't leave Binghamton after my undergraduate commencement yet it was not until I started graduate school the following August that I realized how much of a gap in my social milieu resulted from the departure of the Class of 1973, without me. By 1975, I was a bit burned out, had fewer friends to whom to say good-bye, and better reasons to look ahead. Only as soon as I started Penn State in 1975, with its vast numbers of students, massive campus structures, and expansive campus, I started to pine for the intimacy and memories of Binghamton. Yet a return to Binghamton in that first year at Penn State showed me just how much the university had moved on without me. The building were there, and the memories, but none of the people. A similar feeling emerged when I came back to Penn State in the fall after I graduated (in November). The place looked the same; none of the faces did. And returning to Binghamton or State College twenty years after graduation, even the place seemed remarkably physically different. Some of the old haunts were gone, and sterile, new buildings and features clashed with the college structures that held such importance to me, from the dinning hall, to the library, to the residence halls, to the quad at Binghamton.

I am trying to figure out at what age did my mind spend more time looking back in the rather than forward. It probably was not an abrupt shift, and it probably occurred more recently that at first one might suspect. I think it is tied more to empty-nesting events and retirement than to a mid-point in life, a middle-aged crisis, or an acceptance of growing old.

Yet looking back brings me great joy, few regrets.