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Lynn Yellen's avatar

I didn't even look at the video and I'm all teary. I'm with you. The celebration of what we are to each other is more interesting than the celebration of what any one person achieves. Congratulations to your son and his classmates.

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Asha Sanaker's avatar

I absolutely adored my son's fifth grade graduation. Not only because he was my first kid to finish elementary school, but because our lives had exploded a year and a half prior when my marriage fell apart and so both my kids moved to a new school in the middle of the school year-- Otto's fourth grade year. It was a brutal time for our family; my kids STRUGGLED and my ex and I were in a very bad place still when it was time for Otto to graduate fifth grade. But since I got there early because the school was in walking distance from my place I saved him a seat on the front row anyway. It seemed like the right thing to do. A deeply uncomfortable thing, but the right one.

Otto didn't tell me that every one of the kids made a short video where they thanked someone who had helped them during elementary school. We all watched every one on the big screen up on the gym stage and cheered and cried. When it was time for Otto's all of a sudden there he was, his face filling the whole screen and he said, "I just want to thank my mom. Because she brought me to this school, in this neighborhood, where I can be my weird, true self and where I made friends who I'm going to keep forever." Gah! Tears poured down my face. I felt, I'll admit, a little vindicated. And just really, really grateful to be on this weird, sometimes difficult journey with my particular kids.

(He didn't keep those friends, by the way. But he's even more awesome now and I adore him even more, which I wouldn't have thought possible in that moment.)

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