Passages (Real Time)

To live is to be in motion. Even when we are still, we are clinging to a rock that is tumbling and hurtling through space.

Each human culture defines the major passages in its own ways, but birth, graduation, marriage, professional awards, retirement, and death mark some of the major moments in any life.

Today, watching my son and his classmates as they graduated from middle school was one such passage. These kids have grown up so quickly that they sometimes seem to be stretching -- physically, mentally, emotionally -- right before our eyes.

The role of a parent at such times is to stay still and try not to embarrass your child. Knowing it would be impossible for me not to cry, I wore very dark sunglasses.

Mostly, I just bore witness.

All of these kids are remarkable, each in his or her own way. Their school is better than any I've experienced at recognizing a child's true uniqueness. Others claim to do this, and some do, but none does it better than this school.

It helps that we are in San Francisco, where diversity is a positive value broadly celebrated throughout the community. It helps that it is a school established over a quarter century ago by teachers who love to teach.

It helps that the teachers and staff embody racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity; that sexual orientation for students is a safe topic due to the diversity of orientation among teachers and parents.

It helps also that families of all types are represented.

These are not idle truths. These are the cornerstones of a safe, just society.

Watching the children in Golden Gate Park today as, one by one, they stood in front of the gathering to listen as a teacher celebrated them for being who they actually are was life affirming.

We all endure transitions; some are, like today's, sweet and happy. Others are ineffably sad. It's a reminder on the happy occasions that all of it -- all the love and nurturing and caring and dreaming is also a sign of our collective fragility.

I wasn't crying out of strength, nor was it strictly out of happiness for my beautiful son and the lovely words his teacher spoke about him, nor about the deep empathy that defines his character for all who truly know him.

No, mine were the tears of a fragile man, all too aware that, as a parent, there is only so much I can do. We raise our children and then we give them to society, with all of its imperfections, dangers, temptations, and opportunities -- both good and bad.

Some of my tears, frankly, were selfish, the bittersweet feelings of seeing my boy's loss of innocence, of my own shrinking importance in his world. But mostly they were about how quickly we are speeding through our time, all of us together, and how utterly inadequate, as a person and a writer, I will ever be at getting it right.

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