look how much
I scan the bustling auditorium for Riley and Adam and immediately find them, my two opposite kids, naturally sitting on opposite sides of the room. Adam looks back at me from a lonely spot on the second row and grins, his gaze both an acknowledgment and an assessment. He’s good, but do I need anything? I’ve been celebrating this lately, that he’s becoming less focused on himself.
“Do you want to sit with us?” I ask him, calling out, gesturing along the row Kevin and Zoe and I have claimed. It’s end-of-the-year awards day, and by way of greeting, a favorite teacher had mentioned the kids could sit with us or with their friends. Most of the students occupy the rows on the other side, and that’s where Riley sits, in a knot of teenagers and young adults, clutching her boyfriend’s hand. She sees us and waves, turning back to her friends, flushed with the heady certainty of belonging.
“No,” Adam says. I can’t hear him, but I see his lips move distinctly. He tucks the bag he uses for diabetic supplies against his shoulder and looks away. Sitting alone, this is his way to grow up a little. I shrug, and some friends in a row behind Adam laugh with us over the distance he’s keeping. I smile deeper over the fact that he feels comfortable out from under my wing.
I think of something innocent a friend said just the other day, something parents say, especially now, as we mamas sweep our hair back in ponytails and blot our Summer cheeks, as we attend graduations and graduation parties and our kids collect end-of-the-school-year awards and start new jobs. “Look at how much our kids have grown–they’re graduating and getting jobs; they’re getting married and having babies.” Riley, with her decidedly different perspective, writes those words on birthday cards for the old as well as the young. “Look how much you’ve grown,” she carefully scribes, even in a birthday card to Kevin’s 95-year-old grandma. “You’re growing up so fast.” This makes us smile, but what, I wonder, makes us expect to grow any less as we get older? Around my sun-touched face, silver hairs glint. In middle age, I have no need for embellishment; I have natural fairy hair. And these are the things I talk about with my friends, groaning without even thinking as we stand to go, this measurement of life by milestones, until the stones spread farther and farther apart and eventually fall away, steps, then leaps, then journeys across mythical rivers.
One of the earliest awards of the day goes to a student who is afraid to walk up on the stage, but he’ll come if he can carry Expo markers in his hands. The teacher giving the award talks about how she used to bribe him by holding out the markers, but the student has grown so much, now he brings his own markers for days like this. It takes a while; we hear a murmuring conversation from the back, where the student sits with his parents. We clap over the teacher’s remarks, celebrating progress, clap so loud I can’t hear the specific award the student has received, only here I know it will be different than other awards, not the best grade or the perfect project, but something about how he’s been brave and uniquely wonderful, because we are all uniquely wonderful, and living teaches us to be brave, and celebration is for every kind of growth, even a walk across the stage when you’re scared. When at last the student makes it to the stage, he’s not alone. A young woman, probably a sister or an assistant or some kind, walks with him. She wraps her arms about his waist; it’s like a moving hug all the way up. You can do this, her body says. I’m with you. He walks freely as long as she embraces him, and as soon as the rest of the students see him at the front of the room, they begin to whoop, calling his name.
I think of Moses telling God, If you don’t go, don’t make us go (Exodus 33:15).
One of our favorite teachers steps up to the microphone and addresses her students, “I just love how you clap for your friends,” she says, and I can’t help but nod, agreeing. These kids, they’ve helped me grow; they’ve taught me to encourage.
After the awards today, they’ll have graduation, but they won’t talk about where the members of the graduating class will go next or what they’ll do, because it takes a while to know and there are wildly different directions to go. The comments would be long and full of the word might. Next steps are incremental; we’re used to taking our time; we’ve learned to celebrate in centimeters. Sometimes I hear Riley praying, and instead of asking questions, she just tells God all the things she doesn’t know, like she’s putting all the milestones in his hands one-by-one for safe keeping.
On the way to school, anticipating the awards ceremony and the end of the school year, Riley and her friend talked about what comes next.
“Next year we graduate,” Riley’s friend said, “and I don’t know how I’ll feel in a cap and gown. I think the teachers will be emotional; I might be emotional, you never know.” She went on, streaming all her thoughts, her guesses, about the future, which for our kids is often wobbly and circuitous, like their lives have always been. Riley’s friend wondered aloud about whether or not she’ll get a job and what that could possibly be.
Riley nodded, said, “I don’t know yet what I’ll do, but I guess I’ll need a job too; my parents will have to help me find a job.” I’ll cross that stage, but I’m not afraid; Mom and Dad will come with me, their arms wrapped around my waist.
“But what do you want to do?” Friend asked.
“Ummm…” Riley shrugged, staring out the window at the blur of trees and cars as I drove down the road. She’s at peace about not knowing until some notion of “what’s supposed to be” exposes all the blind curves. I can’t help but think about the old days, when I felt God yank my “typical expectations” right out of my hands; when I threw away all the what should be happening now books; when I realized God meant to teach me a whole new way to measure forward progress.
My parents will have to help me, Riley said. I looked at her face and could see that she doesn’t mind; in her world, it’s okay to need help. She already knows what it took years for me to receive: She is loved; she isn’t doing this alone.
I smile again, sitting back against the auditorium seat, clapping as another child–most energetic–flits across the stage like a bumble bee, weaving in and out of teachers, popping up on her feet until her mom appears at the base of the stage and takes her hand. The children roar and cheer and call her name and she stops in the middle of the stage, looks out across the audience, pushes her glasses up on her nose and smiles. She retrieves her hand from mom, lifts her arms, extending them toward the room, and then she claps, wild with contagious joy. She’s new to the school this year. I had heard that what she wanted most of all was friends.
Her arms, spread as wide as her smile, say to us all, Look how much. And in reply, our explosive applause shouts, Yay! You’ve grown!
