When you bring home that first baby, I don’t care how many people you’ve talked to or books you’ve read, lurking in you is the core dread that you have no real idea how to keep this tiny entity you love so much alive.

I started writing in this space in 2010. My kid who was six at the time graduated high school last week. My daughter who was 11 at that time (and was engaged in activities like rhetorically dueling with me about cell phone upgrades) graduated from college the week before that.

In my line of work, I go to a lot of graduations (this year while wearing my own graduation costume I even read out the names of undergraduates in Drexel’s College of Arts & Sciences). But in 2022, I was contemplative as I watched my bookend kids (Nate is in the middle of his journey right now). I puzzled through a question: How much did I really do to make it all happen?

The girl, Elizabeth, had triumphed over some, ahem, indecisive years to cross the college stage with a degree in behavioral health counseling and a minor in psychology. She has plans and dreams and goals, and she is equipped with the talents and smarts to achieve them. Even though her road was bumpy, I always thought her day would come, but when I heard her name called, the moment held a peculiar emotion.

I guess I also never doubted that my youngest, Zachary, was going to finish high school. His graduation marks an end to one point of my wife’s and my collective journey. Graduation night (as we took pictures in front of the incredible PHSFEE mural!) people kept asking us, “What will you do now that you’ll soon be empty nesters?” Geez, we were only a half hour post graduation, I thought, and it’s gotta be less pressure than all that wondering about keeping them alive.

Zachary’s group is close knit, and I coached many of his classmates in soccer and wrestling. I knew them since they were all these little bodies with giant noggins. There are incredible stories, I thought, as I watched the red-gowned cohort on the green athletic field in front of us graduation night. Where some of those kids were five, six years ago–incredible how they have become who they are.

By the time kids get their name called on the big day, many of those watching are weary/wily parent veterans. I looked around at the parents at Elizabeth’s two ceremonies–first, the college graduation at The Mann Center and then at the big gig at Citizens Bank Park–and then at Zachary’s Palmyra High School Stadium event. There we all were, a bunch of people who at times no doubt wanted to leave things be because we didn’t want to mess it all up–and then sometimes, damn it!, we felt we had to get involved, well, just because. And we were never knew which way was right!

That tiny human stage ended fast, didn’t it? They grew, and they met these other humans, their friends, and after all the time you spent indoctrinating them with our values (c’mon, let’s face it) they immediately start doing things their friends do, including developing their unique discourse communities and saying a bunch of stuff you have no idea what it means. (I’m still not clear about “That’s cap.”)

But graduation night, here my kids were, despite all the fatherly missteps and blunders. Through a combination of great communities at Palmyra High for Zachary and Drexel for Elizabeth and good friend groups and incredible mentors and adults for both, they made it.

Elizabeth is going through the transition. Graduation, commencement, is laced with joy, but that betrays the reality for many, especially after college, that the years of structure and friends are disrupted–until new structures and new friends emerge.

Zachary’s cute “brownie bunch” posed for pictures with, of all things, cigars, and I was pleasantly bemused.

They are through and out of their particular stages.

Maybe there was even a little good parenting in there somewhere.

Congratulations, Zachary and Elizabeth.

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Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.

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