After thirteen tenuous years of education, my youngest child graduated from high school in May. I would breathe a sigh of relief, but it’s not over yet. My daughter’s graduation open house is scheduled for tomorrow night.

As if the entire universe has felt her teen anguish, the entire world is rallying around her to help her celebrate this significant occasion. I have relatives flying in from out of the country. There’s stuff stacked in the garage waist high. I haven’t been involved in planning a shindig like this one for a few years. Back then, business was stellar and the cash flowed free and easy. I held office Christmas parties in nice hotels with open bars and karaoke contests where the loser’s prize was almost as nice as the winner’s.

Then the bottom dropped out. There’s not much to celebrate these days. I show my employee appreciation by handing out a holiday gas card. The party tomorrow feels like the last gasp of a brighter by-gone time.

Unlike my oldest child, who has been blessed with a photographic memory, excellent grades, and an amazing talent at the piano, my daughter has always struggled with school. Indeed, she’s always felt an unwilling participant in academics and music, whatever brightness of her own life constantly overtaken by the long shadows of her older brother. She is dyslexic and suffers from ADD. There were times when I felt that graduation wasn’t a given.

My son’s high school graduation party centered around his triumphant senior recital. He was moving on to conservatory training on the West Coast. My daughter’s party is planned as a jubilant “Yeah, baby!” She’s moving to the West Coast, too, but it feels more like deliverance from her current state of affairs.

As a parent of two distinctly different personalities, it’s sometimes awesome to watch these two, and oftentimes painful. As a modern parent observing the rites of graduation, I have to wonder when the receiving of a high school diploma came to mean so much.

I could bellyache the old mantra, “Back when I was a kid.” It would be the truth. Back when I was a kid, I wasn’t treated to a high school graduation party. I considered myself lucky to receive as my graduation gift the antique Remington typewriter my mother gleaned from a second hand store. (She knew I liked to write.) I didn’t get a dinner, a cake, or presents. I walked out of my parents’ front door with a simple “Hello adulthood” and “Goodbye childhood”.

Of course, it’s all different now.

We won’t spend as much as some parents have, but it’s enough to feel a pinch in the pocketbook. I can’t see the need for a full-scale blow out. If and when she gets out of college with a degree in hand, I will likely change my mind.

My daughter’s high school graduation party feels like the grand launching of a new era. She proudly proclaims her intentions of getting serious with college studies. She thinks being two-thousand miles from her friends and boyfriend will be a positive influence. In the back of my mind, I’m wondering if the close proximity to the ocean will have the exact opposite effect.

Meanwhile, her friends will get together, hang decorations, and accomplish final bonding before heading off to school next month. With every rite of passage comes the flush of success.

Tomorrow night, we’ll all smile politely and help her celebrate what will hopefully be the first of many momentous occasions.