Waving Goodbye (Wesley McNair) and Yes (ee cummings) to it all

Really, does it get any better than this?  A perfect night, the girl who holds your heart, all your buddies together all night, your senior prom.  I think back on it, and I don't have quite the same memory.  In fact, I cringe when I think of the creamsicle-colored, polyester gown my mother made me wear....  Oh well, I spent about an hour with all the other parents (boys' and girls') taking pictures and truly just watching the parade of these beautiful kids having such a wonderful time being together.  Many of Will's buddies had on their crazy lacrosse rings, which are about the size of a bread box, requiring that the boys  hold their fingers apart all night, but no matter.  They look cool!

All the parents stayed behind after the kids left, and I think we all felt the acute weight of these kids in our lives, and how much we will feel their absence.  For me, a great deal of this feeling comes from this vast web of people he has woven into our lives---friends, girlfriend, sister who so loves the girlfriend, girlfriend's brother who loves the boyfriend, girlfriend's parents, friends' parents--this whole cast of characters and connections are such a part of our lives and will be sorely missed.  There we all were watching the kids drive off wondering where the last 18 years went.  Actually, I found the evening so comforting because we were ALL feeling the same way.  So, we turned on the Kentucky derby and had a drink and laughed.....so incredibly therapeutic.   I highly recommend it under similar circumstances.  This poem is a little sad, but mostly bittersweet; which is just what I'm feeling--sadness, and in the same moment, gratitude, deep thanks, and excitement about what's coming.........  I also include a lovely piece I think I may have sent over 2 years ago about gratitude.  (This was hit home again today at this wonderful little church in the bulletin. I KNEW I liked this place.)

Waving Goodbye by Wesley McNair Why, when we say goodbye at the end of an evening, do we deny we are saying it at all, as in We'll be seeing you, or I'll call, or Stop in, somebody's always at home? Meanwhile, our friends, telling us the same things, go on disappearing beyond the porch light into the space which except for a moment here or there is always between us, no matter what we do. Waving goodbye, of course, is what happens when the space gets too large for words – a gesture so innocent and lonely, it could make a person weep for days. Think of the hundreds of unknown voyagers in the old, fluttering newsreel patting and stroking the growing distance between their nameless ship and the port they are leaving, as if to promise I'll always remember, and just as urgently, Always remember me. It is loneliness, too, that makes the neighbor down the road lift two fingers up from his steering wheel as he passes day after day on his way to work in the hello that turns into goodbye? What can our own raised fingers to for him, locked in his masculine purposes and speeding away inside the glass? How can our waving wipe away the reflex so deep in the woman next door to smile and wave on her way into her house with the mail, we'll never know if she is happy or sad or lost? It can't. Yet in that moment before she and all the others and we ourselves turn back to our disparate lives, how extraordinary it is that we make this small flag with our hands to show the closeness we wish for in spite of what pulls us apart again and again: the porch light snapping off, the car picking its way down the road through the dark. And by e.e. cummings: i thank you God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes