Graduation

School always made it so neat and clean.  Transitions were negotiated long before and promulgated well in advance via the calendar courtesy of your friendly PTA.  The school year ended on a fixed date and if you were in the eldest class, you knew it would be your last day.  Tell your secret crush you love her.  Pass along the yearbooks for final signatures.  Shed a tear as the bus pulls away because the public school is a bit too public for the likes of Mom and Dad.  Next year, you're in with the nuns.

Life does not accommodate so neatly once we're outside the purview of credit hours.  It seems as though most transitions are imposed rather than anticipated.  You work at a place until your salary gets too swollen for the Bottom Line and your new Friday task becomes cleaning out your desk.  Relationships don't end because Becky's dad got a new job in Minnesota; they end because Becky made a new friend at work and you're scheduling the couch you'll sleep on next week.  The landlord raises the rent.  The dog gets hit by a car.  Mom breaks her hip.  We live day-by-day until some new shifting of the currents throws us off course and has us regazing at the stars. 

I should consider myself lucky, I suppose.  For the whole White Anglo-Saxon, sure, but more topically that I get to point my finger to the outfield and call my shot.  January 3, I said, and January 3 it shall be. The foresight accommodates Last Hurrahs and all the minutiae necessary for my future Gas Food Lodging.  It also suits the arrangement of goodbyes.

We're still A Couple months out, but no longer A Few.  It's too far out to start calling in the salutations; it feels odd to even imagine doing so when it is that time.  But it's already been on the minds of others and therefore imposed on me. 

Let's get together before you leave.
You're going to have a goodbye party, right?
Wait, when do you leave again?

The anticipated post-mortems make me the ghost of my future departed self.  I want to scream that I'm here now, but we all know that the knot is about as tight as it ever could be and there's only unmooring ahead.  Departure's got us all in a holding pattern and all we can do is enjoy the fleeting moments and wait for the yearbooks to come out.  And after that, we'll reassure one another to have a great summer, and to don't ever change.