The Ties That Bind

For anyone who has spoken with me this past month, they've no doubt heard me mention our son Ryan’s high school graduation. The past two weeks especially as we’ve had several small, pre-grad activities, which only served to get me more excited for the big event. Well, commencement arrived on Monday and it was everything we could have imagined and more in our Covid’esque world. Unique times call for nimble action and everyone from the teachers and students to the parents and community rose to the occasion.

What I learn again and again is that even the worst situations come with unintended positive outcomes. The most notable is almost always found in the support we receive from the people around us. Think about 9/11 and how our collective spirit rose up from the ashes on what was surely America’s darkest day in my lifetime. We saw it again at the onset of COVID quarantines and we’ve continued to experience this awakened sense of community throughout the pandemic. We mourn together. We celebrate together. We thrive together. The older I get the more I value our collective desire to want to lessen each other’s fears, anxieties, and loss. We end up becoming pretty inventive in the ways we go about it too.

Which brings me back to Ryan’s “reimagined” graduation ceremony. Seniors received diplomas after a graduation parade through the streets of our hometown. Friends, families, neighbors, supporters, and business owners literally lined the streets for miles waiting to greet the 650-car parade. (That number isn’t a typo!) People held homemade signs, cheered, blew noisemakers, clapped wildly, and shook bells as students poked their heads through their car windows and sunroofs to take it all in. There were clowns and stilt walkers! Residents decorated their house windows with congratulatory messages to this year’s graduating seniors. Even the Big Easy Easton Brass Band turned up at our town’s Centre Square to perform for the students. The support was overwhelming. Check out parade highlights here and here. We were thrilled our daughter Sienna had the presence of mind to film Ryan as we drove through the center of town (that’s me in the back seat filming her and my mother-in-law).

Afterwards, the students were celebrated with remarks and music at the high school turf field. While parents weren’t allowed to watch the ceremony in person, the school put up a 25-foot screen in the gymnasium parking lot. We gathered around to take photographs and just enjoy the moment together. The event was so well done and far more memorable than the typical (and rather boring) commencements we’ve grown used to.

We didn’t know most of the people who turned out on Monday night, and the majority likely didn’t have a student at Easton High School. Yet the community chose to come together to give this year’s graduating seniors an awesome send-off. In challenging times, community really does become our safety net. But hard times don’t last forever. For this reason, it’s important for each of us individually to be more intentional about strengthening community ties so that collectively we can maintain the closeness we’ve built and continue moving forward as one.