Pomp & remembrance: marathon graduation ceremonies give parents time for the flood of memories of the milestones and grace that paved the way.

They sit for hours through mind-numbing speeches, in bone-chilling cold or skin-searing heat. They listen through hundreds of names for one name and upon hearing it, burst alive for one glorious second. Normally dignified people, they cheer in many languages, scream, pound backs, play kazoos, and blow eardrum-splitting air horns. Intangible threads converge here: anticipation, memory, disbelief, and gratitude. So many emotions are tangled together it defies the English teacher's advice to focus on one theme.

Graduation, this endearing ritual of spring, is placed squarely between other seasonal events: First Communions and weddings. Caps and gowns may lack the sweetness of white veils, but the ceremonial robes clothe the middle child of youth's chronology. People grumble about the time commitment or expense of attending; nonetheless, they clump off cheerfully to a long morning in the bleachers. A heightened anticipation hovers over the scene: Will the graduate survive the previous night of partying and walk a straight line across the stage?

The green quadrangle of the college campus is also suffused with memory. Late afternoon light through the hospital window shines on a newborns fuzzy head. A toddler pilots her tricycle down the basement stairs; a third grader snags his first fish. The memories are jumbled: Halloweens and Disneyland trips, swim ruing lessons and science fairs, brown bag lunches and new shirts in September. Perhaps it explains why parents and grandparents can sit numbly through droning speeches that in any other circumstance would drive them to the door.

Rarely are two lives as entwined as parent's No illness of our own seems as excruciating as the child's dry cough, the chicken pox beneath the diapers, the mounting red line on the thermometer, the agonizing wait for the doctor. The little triumphs are also doubled: the trophy for speech, the election to class officer, a passing grade in algebra. The path to graduation is made of many steps in which larger and smaller footprints overlap.

In the midst of the chaos few parents notice the beauty. They are too intent on paying the dentist or returning the library books. Yet in retrospect the flood of memory almost overwhelms. It may explain the frequency of tears and smiles at graduation. These moments are frozen in photographs as if to capture all the moments that are lost.

One gospel parable captures this dynamic: the return of the prodigal son. According to Henri Nouwen's interpretation, the outstretched arms of the father welcome us into the role that models God and should define the adult Christian. When we take the difficult step of becoming father or mother, we leave behind childhood, self-centeredness, dependence. If we continue to identify only with the parable's sons, we never take the initiative to forgive, embrace, and celebrate.

Maybe the students aren't the only ones graduating. Perhaps God delights in the parents as well. Like the fond parent, God remembers the crises when we wanted to bail--abandon the kids, the maturity, the mortgage and become a blissfully unencumbered beach bum. Some mysterious grace held us firm, and some of today's celebration toasts that perseverance.

Individual paths converging in most schools bring together a rich diversity, apparent when the long-suffering dean pronounces names that must have taken careful practice. How did this son whose stories relied heavily on keg parties graduate cum laude? How did the daughter who couldn't organize her own closet win an award for spearheading multiple activities? How could inexperienced young parents or bumbling middle aged ones be linked with such magnificent offspring? By what cosmic graciousness are morns and dads, who didn't write a single paper or study for a killer test, included in the festivities? Even the expense is forgotten for now; some days are worth the cost.

The path that leads to graduation is marked by pitfalls, and only by sheer grace have these been skirted. Squeaking through chemistry on a C minus is the least of it. There were abundant near-misses on highways and boats, ski slopes and playing fields. Dating relationships that flame up then flicker out, pain-filled nights at the student health center, flirtations with alcohol. All these were negotiated along the way. While they may not articulate it overtly, those attending graduation are aware of those who are not here: one student who drowned on spring break; another in drug rehab. Their parents would give anything they own to sit on a hard folding chair in an auditorium today.

Especially here at a high school graduation in Colorado, the opening chords of "Pomp and Circumstance" evoke memories of Columbine High School and the kids who didn't graduate--Isaiah Shoals buried in his cap and gown. Such bitter loss is a hard teacher, but from it we learn the fragility of the kids who survived. Despite their bouts of wackiness, their endless late-night parties, we care for them fiercely. Having them alive, flushed with success, swelling with potential, how could we live out of anything but gratitude?

In a pause between receptions, my daughter and I, without much discussion, sit on a bench beside a lake. Perhaps subconsciously, this is the beginning of our farewells. She's off to be a camp counselor this summer, then to college in the fall. It's not the time for heavy sentiment. Instead we engage in a lighthearted litany of Places We've Visited. The names unspool as each one remembers trips: Carmel, Chicago, Islamorada, Williamsburg, Sydney, the Sonoma Valley, the Oregon coast. It's a fitting send-off, echoing the old toast: "If it's half as good as the half we've known, then here's to the rest of the road!"

Funny how the speech stutters when the heart is full. How many cold, dark mornings we struggled to get her off to school, racing to beat the carpool, grabbing lunch and keys in a plunge out the door. Now she is launched with music and solemnity, part of a long procession into the morning sun. All the fondest hopes in the world can't predict where that path will lead. But we count on a God who loves them more than any human parent, guides each step with providence and care.

At one ceremony, a favorite teacher chosen for an award chokes up during his speech. He blurts "C'mere!" and pulls a student to stand close by. How appropriate that he should hang on to a living symbol as he struggles to explain his life work. For the faculty, too, slogged through the February mornings, the tower of term papers, the student council meetings. Their ties to their students are palpable as they pose for pictures, meet the grandparents, give one last hug. Above teachers, students, and families an invisible banner might proclaim, "Well done, good and faithful servants."

It's an experience of contradictions: medieval regalia for kids who can't cook without a microwave or type without a computer, caps cartwheeling into the blue, bold predictions for a future cloaked in mystery. The event is so deeply human--and partly divine.

When she's not attending graduations, KATHY COFFEY writes books like Hidden Women of the Gospels (Orbis, 2003).