High School Graduation: Death of the Turkey Sandwich
A teardrop lands on a turkey sandwich as I prepare my youngest son’s lunch for school. This is my last year of parenting two boys through public school. There are 39 lunches to go.
Self-appointed sages said it would pass so quickly, and I dismissed their warnings. What are they talking about? The end is that vague horizon line way out there. It’s so far away, unreachable.
Until it wasn’t.
Now time is a blur. Slow down! First it was autumn of his senior year and college applications, then it was winter holidays, then it was the new year and financial aid deadlines, then spring break, and now, here we are. That formerly unreachable horizon is now a distinct edge, menacingly close, in a flat world.
Seventeen years, two sons, four years apart. Seventeen years, monitoring, participating, preparing, a divorce here, a pandemic there. Seventeen years, Monday through Friday, ten months a year, preparing two sandwiches, then one.
If ever there’s a scene straight out of the film, Groundhog Day, it’s school-day mornings: silence the 6:30 am alarm, roll out of bed, remember how to stand, pee, drink water, pull on running clothes, remember how to balance on one leg, straggle into kitchen, prepare espresso and sip, remember how to think, awaken son, make healthy smoothie — he’s a picky eater, so it’s the only chance I get to throw in some fruits and vegetables disguised by chocolate milk and peanut butter — deliver smoothie, make lunch, place in lunch box, fill water bottle, place both beside son’s backpack, prepare my breakfast, wish son a great day, tell him I love him, run. Rinse. Repeat.
Now it feels like death, as I stoop over my half sandwich — that’s all this picky eater can tolerate, and even that comes home only partially eaten. Death to two sons under my protective arms. I felt a twinge of it when I watched the youngest drive away for the first time, no longer needing me to drive him to school.
But that’s nothing compared to what will happen in 40 days, when I watch my youngest, in cap and gown, receive his high school diploma. This will be my first formal graduation ceremony. The other one, that wasn’t, took place, or didn’t, during the pandemic. I was actually relieved when it was cancelled, like somehow I had dodged death. But I hadn’t, not really.
We had a mini-graduation in my back yard. Via Zoom, family sat in the front row. Blue and white helium balloons — the school’s colors — hugged a “Class of 2020” banner. My oldest son processed in his cap and gown, as did my youngest — he was graduating from middle school — past empty chairs to an Apple-music-found Pomp and Circumstance. I delivered the keynote address, entitled “To the Covid Class of 2020.” My oldest son delivered the valedictorian speech which he made up on the spot. My youngest son provided a musical interlude on his guitar. And then it was over. Now that wasn’t so bad, not too much sadness, hardly any. Probably because we were all numbed by the horrifying daily statistics of Covid deaths. We celebrated with a quiet lunch of fried chicken and mac and cheese.
The following academic year, as the stay-at-home mandate continued, my youngest son attended a one-room schoolhouse, aka a detached, converted garage in our back yard. He repurposed it into a boy-cave: video game set-up with beat-up faux leather sofa and flatscreen TV, a desk with computer and screen, and a makeshift sound studio with recording equipment and guitar, lessons on hiatus. With great dedication, he decorated the 400 square foot space with a turquoise and pale pink color scheme, including hand-painted lamps, framed soothing prints and a cubbyhole bookcase with album cover reprints fitted into each square.
He never saw a single friend that year, not in person. His only human contact was via Zoom. And he did it without complaint.
I did not make half turkey sandwiches that year. Instead, per his request, I made pasta with butter, grated parmesan and a sprinkling of pepper. He took it back to the garage with only 30 minutes for lunch. Each evening, we shared dinner while watching the reality show, Survivor. We went through all forty seasons. After each show, we would dissect and critique: Who’s going to make it to the end? Who’s going to implode and beg to be lifted off the island? Who’s going to get voted out early?
Survivor is a masterclass in human interaction. The challenge is to get your competitors, the ones you defeat — usually by betrayal — to vote for you, at the end, to win. Lying is elevated to an art form. Alliances form like political parties. Too much dissembling, trying to be all things to all people, will get you into trouble. Eventually the others compare notes. Playing fair and taking the high road is the underdog everyone roots for, but who rarely wins.
More important than the winning though, is how a player turns a life of extreme deprivation into one that’s fun and not only survives but thrives. We watched and learned from our own island of deprivation.
For his sophomore year, when the mandate finally was lifted, my son rejoined the other students back in classrooms and hallways. Slowly, he began to reconnect: a new bestie, a small group of friends, a co-ed program sponsored by the YMCA called Youth and Government. During his junior year, his social life flourished, and I breathed more easily.
For his senior year, he served as president of the Youth and Government program. He poured his heart and soul into the job, and it paid off. The program — almost brought to extinction by the pandemic — tripled in numbers, in no small part due to his marketing genius. For the cherry on top, he was accepted to Stanford University.
Now, in 39 sandwiches, 600 kids — that’s a lot of Pomp and Circumstance — will process into a football stadium, a thousandfold full, with global-warming sun overhead and hats and water bottles below bobbing along a sea of heads. People will fixate on their iPhones as they struggle to frame the best shot. To zoom or not to zoom. We will listen to speeches full of life lessons, and then … caps will fly and shouts will soar. Such celebration, so bittersweet.
My fractured family will reunite long enough to take a picture or two, and then we will retreat to my back yard to reprise a celebratory meal of fried chicken and mac and cheese.
Just a shortened summer away is the last ritual: the college drop off. I will look him in the eye — if I can even see at that point — and hug him, and tell him how proud I am of him, how much I love him, and then turn to go. Yes, turn — so painful — to go, the punctuation mark to end this very long chapter.
Will he turn first, into his new room and three roommates? Or will I turn first, down an empty corridor? Will either of us look back? In my daydream, I not only look back, I run, no, sprint, no, fly back to him, wrap my arms around him, wrap my body around him, grab him so close that his cells merge with mine, smell his hair, his flesh, choke on my saliva. My body quakes. I’m gasping. For what? For air? For life? For this moment to hold tight, jam the whole damn time machinery, freeze-frame it, now and forever? As my daydream continues, my son allows this captivity, and then I hear a small voice from within: “Let go.”
I release him. “You stay safe,” I whisper. I turn, and this time don’t look back.
I return home. Sitting in my rocking chair in the living room, I am enveloped by tomb-like silence. Across from me is an upright piano showing its years, a few broken keys, quite a few sour notes, its piano tuner now dead. Family photos inhabit the top. There’s a beaming baby, like a Baby Gap ad. There’s both of them in their Little League uniforms intently focused on the game. There’s Dads’ Night Out with the two boys laced around my shoulders.
The half turkey sandwich will be placed carefully in my memory box. Morning will come and with it resurrection. I shall rise from my bed, shuffle into the kitchen and get food for the dog.
Homeless in my own home: once there was a family, once there was a wife, once there were two sons. They are no longer here. Oh, dear God.
Turn on the TV, quick. Silence the silence.
The boys are launched, and both have promising futures. Sure, there will be moments when they call, asking me for advice or, more likely, money, and I will be ever so grateful when they do.
They will be fine, more than fine.
And I sit … and I rock … and the clock ticks.
Cheyenne Wilbur
626-437-9160