Boyd Babes: Graduations

Graduations have a way of giving me that 'ball' feeling in my throat. I get the same way at baptisms, funerals and weddings. I kinda get the churchy stuff, but graduation? Preschool graduation?

Really Heidi?

I don't know what it is, but hormone highs and lows certainly don't help. Having my baby 'graduate' from preschool certainly doesn't help. The graduation music certainly doesn't help. Apparently I've becoming a ball of mush. However, I'm excellent at biting the inside of my cheek whenever that ball inflates in the center of my throat. I've got a pretty strong bite and can usually distract my emotions with self-inflicked pain. We all have our talents.

I was perfectly fine until I read the letter (obviously a Pinterest find, but still). It was printed on pink card stock next to an awkwardly smiling Molly.

Dear Parents,

I give you back your child, the same child you confidently entrusted to my care last fall. I give her back pounds heavier, inches taller, months wiser, more responsible, and more mature than she was then.

Although she would have attained her growth in spite of me, it has been my pleasure and privilege to watch her personally unfold day by day and marvel at this splendid miracle of development.

I give her back reluctantly, for having spend nine months together in the narrow confines of a crowded classroom, we have grown close, have become part of each other, and we shall always retain a little of each other.

Ten years from now if we meet on the street, your child and I, a light will shine to our eyes, a smile to our lips, and we shall feel the bond of understanding once more, this bond we feel today.

We have lived, loved, laughed, played, studied, learned, and enriched our lives together this year. I wish it could go on indefinitely, but give her back I must. Take care of her, for she is precious. Remember that I shall always be interested in your child and her destiny, wherever she goes, whatever she does, whoever she becomes. Her joys and sorrows, I'll be happy to share.

I shall always be her friend.

I KNOW! This was total ugly cry ammo. Thank heavens I didn't read it until AFTER the ceremony.

Most of the students dressed up for the occasion. Molly came home with her spare change of clothes from the year and decided she would wear the outgrown jeggings and a Girl Scout Daisy shirt which sat in her cubby all year for the graduation. Whatever.