Back in the days when they were young and could still hit high notes without their voices cracking, the Beach Boys sang of “Graduation Day,” and turned a happy occasion into a poignant, almost mournful elegy.
“We’ll remember always,” sang the five, with Brian Wilson’s falsetto as pure as the driven snow, “graduation day.”
This past spring, I had the privilege of attending six high school graduations — Bishop Fenwick, Lynn Tech, Lynn English, Swampscott, Saugus and Revere. They were, by and large, happy occasions. Yet they are always tinged with the sadness that comes with knowing that this will possibly be the last time your class will ever assemble in total unity. There will be reunions, of course, but you never get complete representation at those.
The truth is that there are always people, regardless of how tight you think your class is, that want no part of “dear old alma mater” once they get that diploma handed to them.
This year, though, things might have been a little different. This was the class that went — in some cases — almost one complete calendar year sitting at home learning calculus in their robes and slippers thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the shutdowns that followed. Not just three months, the way last year’s seniors did. A whole year. They missed plays, rallies, proms and sporting events.
Lynn English was robbed of defending its state basketball title on the floor (it was declared co-winner) in March of 2020 and didn’t get to compete for it this year either. Both Swampscott and St. John’s Prep never got to defend Super Bowl football championships.
There were virtual drama festivals and concerts. Some schools, once again, did without proms (though Swampscott High had a “night under the stars” in the school parking lot that quickly became dubbed a “parking-lot prom”).
In the last three weeks, we got to hear from these kids as represented by their valedictorians, class presidents and other representatives. What we heard was not surprising in some cases, and very revealing in others. The central theme in all six of the ceremonies I attended (and undoubtedly in all the others, too) was resiliency.
This class had to learn how to pivot, as they say in modern-day corporate lingo — to turn on a dime from one form of learning to another. Either they went entirely remote, or had some kind of hybrid system that saw them in school on some days, at home on others. It sort of reminded you of the movie “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium.”
After a year of this, the graduates of 2021 were uniformly grateful to just have a graduation ceremony where they could get their diplomas handed to them in a somewhat traditional manner. I say “somewhat traditional” because, much of the time, these ceremonies take place indoors, either in the auditorium or gym, whereas they were all held outdoors this year (last vestiges of COVID).
By some miracle of miracles, the weather held for all of the graduations I went to, despite some ominous forecasts. Sunday, at Blocksidge Field in Swampscott, the weather couldn’t have been more perfect — blue skies, puffy clouds and a gentle intermittent breeze blowing in from the beach. That has to be a testament to the notion that karma isn’t always a you-know-what. Sometimes, it can be very forgiving.
In every graduation I attended, speakers talked about how their classes bonded more by being away than they ever did while they were together. They learned to appreciate little things that might otherwise be overlooked in more normal times. Time and time again, they came back to kindness, humor and how badly they missed the odd laugh at the odd moment — and how badly they missed simple human contact. They were all perceptive enough to understand that, by being forced to do without all these life essentials, they learned to appreciate them more going forward.
I guess there’s always a blessing. This was an extraordinary, unprecedented year in the lives of students and educators. They missed so much. Yet, at the end of it all, they were able to stand up, talk of how they survived it and even thrived in a lot of cases. And after all is said and done, it just might be true that the hundreds of thousands of high-school seniors everywhere learned some valuable lessons they’d have never learned if they’d been confined to the classroom for the last year.
