Chapter 141: The End of the Beginning

Saturday, May 26, 1984

We slept a bit late, getting up around nine. Angie and I split a grapefruit, and I had a small bowl of muesli (which I’d recently adopted) while Angie had store-brand shredded wheat. Mom and Dad had initially teased us as being ‘elderly,’ but had given up on it when they’d decided we might be onto something.

I wasn’t sure if I’d stick to the muesli or not, but I’d gotten tired of regular cereals while still liking a cereal-like breakfast dish. We’d see how things went in the house.

I was pretty sure that Dad, in particular, was more excited than either Angie or I, with Mom only slightly behind him. This was a day they’d both looked forward to and dreaded for just about eighteen years in my case, and four (but also nearly eighteen) for Angie. When you have a child, you can immediately flash forward and think, ‘At this point, I’d expect them to be graduating high school,’ and — barring grade skips or being held back (both of which had happened to Angie, more or less) — that’s what would happen.

You would, of course, have no idea what that day would feel like, not then. I would, this time, but that’s because I was the exception to the rule.

Or would I? Was what I’d felt specific to my kids, the circumstances of their adoption, the way they grew up with my ex-wife, and all of that? Would it feel completely different with kids that grew up with Jasmine and me?

I suspected that it would. It wasn’t that they would be biologically ‘mine.’ Or, at least, I didn’t think that it would. I’d been a big believer in adoption then, and I was now. However, adoption wasn’t my ex-wife’s and my first choice, and Jas and I should (hopefully) be able to make our own adorable babies.

Well — she would do the making. I would contribute a critical (and enthusiastically provided) ingredient, plus lots of care and comfort. And I fully expected I might be called some very colorful names very late in the process.

In any case, that would be then, and this was now. And now was a huge step in our parents’ dreams for us. We weren’t done, of course. Dad wanted that college degree for us much more than he wanted the high school graduation. He had the high school diploma, and so did Mom. He’d lost (for now, at least) his chance at the degree. While he finally agreed that there was, in fact, more good in that than there was bad, it was still a loss.

I suspected he would want us to go on and get graduate degrees, and I suspected that we would, but exactly how we would do it was, as yet, unknown. An MBA for me? Dr. Angie? In Mathematics, or in something else? It could easily happen, if her abilities in college lived up to the potential she was displaying now.

Oh, she wasn’t a prodigy, but then neither was Tom Myerson. Or, at least, neither of them was a true math prodigy. They might both be prodigies at synthesizing disciplines and seeing around corners. Time would tell.

We dressed in casual clothes — t-shirts and shorts — that we would wear under our gowns. That was traditional for a Memorial graduation. The gowns were the pageantry.

Traditionally, too, at least a few people would wear only underwear under their gowns, and arrange to flash everyone at least once. It happened, and it was usually funny. It wasn’t like they were showing anything more than you’d see on a trip to the beach, after all.

At eleven, Dad called Grandmother and Professor Berman. They both wanted to give us well-wishes and congratulations. For our part, it was great talking to them. I felt like I knew them and (perhaps more importantly) understood them, far better than I had when I’d done this in my first life — not that Professor Berman had been alive by this point, I was nearly certain.

After that, Mom called Grandma and the process repeated. Grandma was just a trifle hazy on things, which worried me. I could tell that it worried Mom, too. We did our best to cheer her up, saying that Grandma was likely just overwhelmed by the big day, but I knew this was probably the beginning of Grandma’s decline.

It wouldn’t be a slow one, sadly, if history bore out. Her body would last for several years yet, but her mind might be largely gone within months.

Angie and I exchanged looks, which I was pretty sure translated to ‘We need to see Grandma this summer!’ We did, and we needed to see Grandmother and Professor Berman, too. We would drive up and be in Chicago when Mom and Dad flew up. That would make for an interesting summer trip, I was sure.

Those relatives who hadn’t understood what Jas and Paige really were to us might figure it out when they saw them again, and found out how we were traveling. Not to mention, there was an article about us in the Chronicle. Would that have gotten to Aunt Helen? Mom hadn’t mentioned it, but Angie was ‘out,’ and she was staying ‘out.’

Fireworks might abound.

Each of the grandparents’ promised graduation gifts (almost certainly cash — that was the tradition) were in the mail, for which we thanked them in advance. They might arrive today, or they might not, but we’d be fine either way. We also promised to see them in July, which made all of them very happy.

We were off the phone by eleven-thirty and headed out to lunch with Dad driving. He’d been given free rein to pick and decided on Steak & Ale, after Mom vetoed Olive Garden on the grounds that Italian was too heavy for graduation day.

Not that steak was that much lighter, but I understood the distinction, particularly from her point of view.

Angie and I had salads from the salad bar plus chicken dishes. Even in the air-conditioned coliseum, things were known for being warm, and we would all be wearing gowns, which (even if thin) trapped heat pretty well. Eating light made sense.

That said, we let Dad talk us into a beer each. Why not? I could legally drink, and Angie could legally drink with Dad ordering the beer for her. I wasn’t going to be driving for an hour and a half, and Angie wasn’t going to be driving at all. One beer wasn’t nearly enough to impair me, even without the wait.

That this was a big deal for each of them was obvious, of course, and we did our best to keep them at ease and reassure them. They knew we were leaving in just a few days, and that nothing was ever going to be the same again, but I think we convinced them that the future for us as a family was bright.

Dangling future trips to interesting destinations with hypothetical grandkids might have helped. The ‘What about grandkids?!’ reaction to Angie was long gone, since both Angie and Paige clearly wanted kids, and Jas and I had never made a secret about it. We didn’t want them now — and obviously any kids for Angie and Paige would require active planning! — but we wanted them.

As noted, that was something that had never happened in my first life. Mom and Dad had seen the kids in and around Austin a handful of times, and quite a few times in Houston. That was it. Never so much as a trip to Galveston or San Antonio, much less anyplace exotic.

In their defense, Grandmother and Professor Berman had come to Houston only once, long ago, and Grandma never had, so it wasn’t something the family did. They’d never met us anywhere else, either.

That wasn’t going to happen with us and Mom and Dad, though. Not if we could help it.

After we got home, Angie and I got our caps and gowns and our overnight bags, said goodbye to Mom and Dad, and headed off to pick up Jas and Paige. We had plans to meet the rest of our group at one of the coliseum entrances after the ceremony, though we would likely see them before it as well.

The four of us got to the coliseum about half an hour early, which seemed to be when the majority of students were arriving. We spotted Gene and Sue and parked near them, then walked in together.

At first, everyone just milled about on the floor, greeting each other, signing the occasional graduation cap (much less common than yearbook signing, partly due to lack of space), and hanging out.

About fifteen minutes before the ceremonies were to begin, the principals came out and divided us into four groups by the alphabet. Those groups were subdivided five times, giving us groups of roughly twenty people (though they were hardly even). A group that small could easily alphabetize itself, and we did so. That put everyone in alphabetical order. Once we were so arranged, they led us to where we would sit.

For my part, I greatly approved of this system. It was student-unfriendly — we couldn’t sit with our friends (though I was sitting next to Angie, of course) — but it was very parent and guest friendly. In my opinion, graduation as a ceremony is more for parents and friends than it is for the graduates.

I felt that way in high school my first time around, and I felt that way during my tedious college graduation. That had been nearly three hours of a random sequence of names crossing the stage with no warning whatsoever of when your graduate might appear. Heaven help those who’d waited two and a half hours, couldn’t wait any longer, and were in the restroom when their graduate finally crossed the stage. With cell phones, we could have reassured them that we were nowhere near walking across the stage, but that technology was still well off in the future.

It wasn’t even fun for me. Oh, I was sitting with my closest friends, but I knew enough others that I might have wanted to see walk. Who knew when they would walk? Not me.

No, thank you.

We’d been seated for about five minutes, and most of the parents were in place, when the dignitaries started taking the stage in front of us. All of the principals, of course. Some of the more notable teachers made the stage: Tom Myerson, for instance, but also Ms. Epstein, and the football and basketball coaches as well as the band director. Not Meg nor Steffie, but I was sure they were sitting in the teacher section in the stands. Also on stage were Cam Michaels (but not the rest of the school board), a local minister who would do the invocation, and the mayor of Hedwig Village (I assume because Memorial was in Hedwig Village — the coliseum was not).

The top five students by rank were seated in the front row, with Connie front and center. The rest of their row, and the next couple of rows, were the teachers.

Things got started when Principal Riggs called the minister up for the invocation. After that, Principal Riggs welcomed everyone. He had a short speech in which he praised the many accomplishments of our graduating class and enumerated some of the statistics about us. For the record, we were four hundred and fifteen graduates. Four hundred and eleven were going to college the usual way. One was going into the military directly. Two were going to service academies (one to the Air Force Academy, one to West Point). The last — a guy I barely knew — was, for some reason I did not know, seeking to join the French Foreign Legion. Interesting career, most likely, if he got in. I had no idea how hard that might be.

Principal Riggs also referenced the Chronicle article, if only briefly, talking about how we were part of the vanguard of change but also proof that Memorial was better than ever. It seemed fair enough to me.

He handed over the microphone to Cam Michaels, who praised Principal Riggs fairly lavishly, then praised us even more lavishly.

Mr. Blaine got to speak and actually joked around a bit. I suppose he was never going to have to discipline any of us anymore. In his estimation, we had been a largely trouble-free class, and most of our troublemakers had been ‘constructive.’

There was a brief round of awards, but most of the awards would be announced as we walked across the stage. Easily one-third of the graduates had some award, ranging from the mundane (perfect attendance!) to the sublime (perfect SAT scores, for instance).

Following that, Principal Riggs stood and said, “Now, I would like our valedictorian, Chau ‘Connie’ Ng, to come up and give her speech. Connie is one of the brightest students I’ve ever met. She’s also one of the kindest. She’s been a volunteer trainer for the athletic department for quite some time, because — in her words — ‘I hate to see people suffer when I know I could help.’ She will be heading to Yale this fall, with her goal being to eventually become a surgeon. As she told me, ‘It is a hard road, but the most rewarding career that I can imagine, and I cannot imagine doing anything else.’”

There was a loud round of applause for that, and then someone — Graham Beckett, I was pretty sure — rose. The next few to rise were definitely football players, followed almost immediately by Study Group members sitting toward the front. It rippled backward quickly, and soon Connie had a standing ovation.

I was pretty sure she was blushing furiously as she walked up. Knowing her, I also guessed that it was distracting her from any nerves rather than making her more nervous.

She took the stage, waved, and then said, “Please! Sit!”

She waited until everyone had sat back down, and then began her speech. For someone who’d never done this before, I was impressed, but not surprised. I don’t think Amit could’ve done a better job with it (nor Ted, but that was partly the material), and she had the audience in the palm of her hand. She got applause where you would expect, laughter where it fit, and quiet when the speech needed quiet.