graduations ….

It’s that time of the year again – graduation time.  Time to celebrate our young people as they prepare to write their final exams and head out into the big wide world.  Ready or not, their high school days are behind them, and we all wonder how did that happen so fast?

How did they go from the little faces sporting toothless grins in their kindergarten pictures to being these young women and men in formal gowns and tuxedos?  When people asked them at kindergarten grad what they were going to be the answers came easy: nurses, farmers, teachers, firemen, astronauts, race car drivers – the possibilities were endless.  Now that the real decisions are immanent confidence is harder to come by.  A few have made definite choices, some are wisely keeping their options open, and the rest recognise they are best to let the first part of furthering their education be finding a job while attending the School of Real Life.

‘Graduation’ is a word we have come to think of as just this: the end of a section of schooling.  Be it kindergarten, elementary, middle school or high school we call them all graduations and celebrate them as the completion of something, but if you think about it this meaning is distorted.   Another meaning for the word graduation – and even more suitable – is ‘a mark or set of marks to show steps or stages of measurement’.

Although we all acknowledge that graduation is the end of high school, I’ve never heard a valedictorian say “We’re done!” and stop there.   They speak of the friendships they have made, the bonding they have done, the experiences they have shared, but the main topic of the speech focusses on the future.  They may be all choosing different paths but they are all going the same direction – forward.

Think of the ruler you used in elementary school.  We old people remember that ours were a foot long and showed increments of inches but when we bought them for our kids they were marked off in centimeters.  It doesn’t matter what the spaces between the lines are called, though, it just matters that each line signifies a progression.  A move forward.  A graduation.

In the same way, this weekend’s graduation is a measurement that has been met.  The graduates stand on this significant mark on their measuring stick in their fine clothing and we congratulate them and wish them well.  While they savour this moment, we all know that their journey has only just begun – there will be so many more graduations to claim.  They are only at the beginning of their ruler.

Interestingly, this very same weekend there is a 60^th year class reunion going on. 

These are people who are closer to the other end of their rulers.  They have progressed through so many milestones: higher education, marriage, careers (possibly several), raising families, welcoming in-laws and then grandchildren, things that today’s graduates can barely fathom.  These older rulers also show scratches and other wounds: divorces, deaths, disabilities and other disappointments life deals out over that much time – again, things that today’s grads can barely fathom.  These are the grads of the early ‘60s.  They had their moment in the fancy-dresses-and-three-piece-suits spotlight complete with lofty speeches and grandiose dreams, but now they also have the wisdom one gains over a lifetime of regular living.

And that wisdom is what made it easy to say “yes” to an invitation to this party.  The days of competitiveness over marks in school or possessions afterwards are in the past.  The worries over social standing or getting ahead no longer hold any power.  Simple things like spending time with lifelong friends is pure gold.

No one knows how many graduations – either of the party type or the increment kind - we have on our personal rulers, life is kind of scary that way.

Maybe the most meaningful wish a person can offer is that your ruler is marked off in many many increments, and that each of them has a graduation story by the time you reach the end.

 

 

OUR BARD

In one of those unexplainable quirks of fate I told the story of my Gordon Lightfoot/Sundown memory in my last blog entry just hours before he passed away.  It’s one of my favourite memories for so many reasons and it had seemed like the perfect time to tell it.  I’m glad it happened in that order – the spontaneity of my thoughts seems to offer a truer tribute than if I had written it after I had heard he died.

As it was, it was a friend of mine who messaged me about his passing late that night and we spent some time in conversation about Gordon’s contribution to the Canadian identity.  I think it was his song The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald that showed me that Canadians were made of special stuff. That we have our own brand of ‘cool’.

That on the world stage we are unique. 

That we value things differently. 

That this is something to be proud of.

In the year 1976, when The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald spent 21 weeks on the billboard charts and peaked at #2, it was up against not only the hot new craze of disco boogie but also bands like Fleetwood Mac, ABBA, the Eagles, Paul Simon, and Queen.  The formula for a hit was a love song no more than three minutes long and here was this Canadian singer with his rich baritone voice singing of a real-life tragedy in a historically correct ballad more than double that length, and people couldn’t get enough of it.

At the sound of those first chords we all know what comes next … “The legend lives on, from the Chippewa on down, to the big lake they call Gitche Gumee …”

And by ‘we’ I mean people all over this planet.

In one of the many tributes I’ve read this past week someone used the word ‘bard’ and I instantly recognized this was the perfect title for Gordon.  Not the present day way that ‘bard’ is used in the English language which reduces its meaning to just an every day poet, but the original designation of traditional reciter of epic stories and oral history; a national poet, a minstrel.

Back in the days of castles and knights when the written language was only for nobles and priests, historical records were kept and told by bards in poetry accompanied by music.  A kingdom’s identity – their battles and victories, their sufferings and celebrations were carried from generation to generation in song and verse.  Gordon Lightfoot personifies the true meaning of ‘bard’.

His words, his music, his voice – they tell our tales.   

Facebook has been full of people paying homage to the man and his music.  The stories from his close friends and fellow artists offer a peak into the world of stardom and the passion they have for their art.  While they speak in admiration of Gordon’s talent, the warmth of friendship that comes through make their tributes special and genuine.

It’s the other tributes that resonate most with me though.  The ones from people who had never met him. The people like me who only know him through his music.  His everyday people.  They, too, say that losing Gordon feels like losing a close friend, a feeling that I share.  He is a piece of who I am – especially as a Canadian, but also deeper than that.  His music features prominently in the soundtrack of my life; its down-to-earth-ness echoes in my soul.

In this way he lives on.  We may have laid the creator of his music to rest but the songs ring on.  The words are written in indelible ink in our hearts and on our psyches.

“The legend lives on, from the Chippewa on down, to the big lake they call Gitche Gumee ….”