Soaked Like a Tsunami at Daughter’s Graduation

Emotions erupt as a flood of memories stormed in

I’m sitting in the football bleachers at Quartz Hill High School in Raybans, a Polo shirt, and khaki paints peacefully minding my own business.

Then it hit out of nowhere. Without warning. Like quickly moving dark clouds on a clear sunny day.

A tear crept to the tip of my left eye socket, begging — pleading — to come forward and venture down my cheek.

No!

I’d have no such thing. I’m a man, right? Men don’t cry.

Boys don’t cry

Then they started playing that damn song. You know the one I’m talking about: Pomp and Circumstance. Played at every single doggone graduation across the land.

It was our 18-year-old daughter Brenna’s high-school graduation, my fourth and final child’s graduation.

Like an underdog boxer in a ring defending himself against a heavyweight champion, I held back the tears with everything I could muster. Dodging emotion after emotion. The battle got harder and harder the closer and closer Brenna got.

She was decked out — proudly — in a shiny yellow gown, symbolizing her four years of all As. Her matching yellow mortarboard hat is decorated with the letters MT. SAC where she plans to run track next fall. Brenna continues to slowly inch closer and closer to the goal posts where the ceremonially slow walk with a classmate to her seats will take place.

I feel like a flash drive full of photos flood me as hundreds and hundreds of memories from her childhood start swarming me like mosquitoes. Out for blood. Emotional blood. Wanting to be recognized. And remembered.

So take the photographs and still frames in your mind Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time.

“Good Riddance” By Green Day.

Ants marching

Kindergarten. Rancho Vista Elementary. Sweet, adorable Brenna singing nervously during her first school performance at Open House. Brenna in her cute pink dress and matching bow making hand gestures of marching ants and rain coming booming down.

The ants go marching two by two The little one stops to tie his shoe And they all go marching down to the ground To get out of the rain, boom, boom, boom, boom. “Ants Go Marching”

Zombieland

Soccer memories as her U8 Rowdy Angels coached by her dad are pummeled by the Zombie Queens, 8–0 in the season opener. Tears of exhaustion and disappointment take over Brenna. However, those gritty girls later avenged the loss, beating the Zombie Queens, 3–0, ruining their perfect season.

Paper doll/writer

Third grade with Mrs. Newhouser, assigning creative projects like the Alexander Graham Bell Flat Stanley-like paper doll project. Dad assisted with the creative art part and, of course, the writing.

In the Air Tonight

Gymnast Brenna bows royally and walks to the corner of the blue mat. Mom’s hand shakes nervously tracking scores as Dad steadies the video camera. Brenna’s arms raise high overhead. Her right foot arches ever-so-slightly.

Lindsey Stirling’s violin-rocking “Roundtable Rival” blasts over the gym speaker. Brenna takes off in a dash, performing a perfect aerial handspring, tossing her body courageously airborne, followed by a flip, and landing squarely on her feet inches from the white inbounds line as spectators roar approval of the well-timed, graceful floor routine.

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time.

Running against the wind

Brenna transitions to cross country her sophomore year and runs in the season opener at the Rose Bowl. Mom and Dad race around the golf course unable to keep up. Brenna’s focused. Her sophomore track season gets off to a blazing start, kicking butt at Crescenta Valley (10th and 15th place finishes). Then COVID applies a mean, disappointing deadly blow.

Running in the rain

Senior year: Arcadia Meet. Brenna takes the baton confidentially from her exhausted teammate — rain appearing from nowhere — tears around the first corner, edging closer and closer to the fourth-place runner, and eventually catches the No. 3 run with 200 yards to go. Her season’s best race.

Emotions in motion

Brenna reaches the goal post as the band continues to play Pomp and Circumstance. Pow! It hits me again. Like an overstuffed giant bag of books — English, math, science, history, French, photo albums, and yearbooks.

The blow is dealt. Suckerpunch to the corner of both eyes.

Bam! Wham!

Brenna takes her first step onto the grassy, well-manicured end zone, and the tears come flowing out. Pouring. And they won’t stop.

“What is wrong with me?” I ask my 23-year-old son Bryce, sitting next to me.

“It’s your last one, dude. This is it. You’re very last high-school event ever,” he says with a giant grin.

Yeah, that didn’t help.

Dam that river

“I’m a fucking emotional mess,” I say wiping tears from both cheeks.

“You’re tapping into your feminine energy,” Bryce says.

“I remember my pastor in a sermon saying that the older a man gets, he often becomes more sensitive and has a higher amount of female hormones,” I tell Bryce.

“Sounds like you, dude,” he says, patting me on the back.

Guilty!

Brenna’s taken her seat now in the back row. My emotions are back in check. The school choir sings the National Anthem a shade off-tune, and the principal gives his short speech about “thanking your parents, making smart choices, blah, blah, blah.”

The laborious reading of six-hundred-something names begins. Bryce leans over during the reading of Alexander Thorogood-Zimmerman’s name and whispers, “This is one reason I don’t look forward to having kids. Going to these long, damn, boring-ass graduations.”

I chuckle and continue to hold my composure as the assortment of hundreds of unique names from Dandelion to Boomer to Queen continue to be read. One. At. A. Time.

Shockingly, no tears gush out when Brenna Butler is finally announced over the loudspeaker, as my wife, Bryce and I clap and beam with pride.

Riding the storm out

The principal returns to the podium one final time and asks the senior class of 2022 to take their tassels and move them to the left side of their square graduation caps.

Then another surprising storm surfaces.

Again no warning.

“And now, presenting — for the very first time — the Quartz Hill High School graduating class of 2022.”

I’m a trainwreck.

A waterworks.

Can someone just turn the faucet off?

Tears are rolling. Left. Right. Onto my lips. It’s raining cats and dogs down my cheek. I’m wiping them off frantically, but they just keep coming.

I can’t fight this feeling anymore

I’m sad this is the end of Brenna’s high-school journey, but proud she made it. Excited she’s readying for life’s next chapter.

I’m a ball of emotions and I never saw it coming.

I sure as shit don’t think the weather person could’ve projected this.

Will they ever stop?

Call a plumber!

Then Brenna and the other graduates stand and start to exit the field as they entered in pairs.

End zone celebration — sort of

Bryce leans over to me.

“Dad, dude, watch this. Watch your daughter.”

And paying homage to her glory days of gymnastics — or just overjoyed and relieved to be done with high school — Brenna unleashes a perfect cartwheel at the 5-year-line for all to see.

And she nailed it.

A perfect ten!

It brought a brand-new bright smile to my damp face — changing my emotion instantly — as the last and final tear dropped off my cheek.

It’s something unpredictable But in the end, it’s right I hope you had the time of your life

Reflecting on my tears

I honestly don’t consider myself an emotional guy (those that read my tearjerker playlist may disagree). A father of four and a junior high school teacher, I’ve been to more graduations than I can count. I never once cried. Until the other night.

When your youngest and last child graduates high school, it’s a really big deal. A really emotional deal. And I wasn’t prepared for it. At all. I understand that now.

So bring on the tears.

I now have no fear of tears.

The only thing I would’ve done differently is to bring a package of Kleenex.

Thanks for reading my story.

Scot Butwell, Klara Jane Holloway, KiKi Walter, Bernice Puzon, Evon, Ruby Lee, Deborah Camp, MarkfromBoston 🌻Ukraine, Gerald Sturgill, Christopher Robin, Sreese, Kirby Workes, Melanie Workes, Lu Skerdoo, Linda Ng, Ning Choi, Jane Kelley, PJ Kaplan, Michael M-C, Bernie Pullen, Susan Wheelock, Ginger Cook, The Sober Vegan Yogi, Jill Ebstein, Deb Groves Harman.

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