A Big Green Wave

We sat by the edge of the pool, my daughters and I, our feet dangling into the water. I had an overwhelming urge to jump in, the three of us together, holding hands. My older daughter, the rational one, refused. My younger daughter was willing, but only if the three of us went together. I cajoled, I begged, wished I could threaten some consequence -- a grounding, perhaps? -- but that ship has sailed. I resorted to petulance. I'm going in myself, I told them. They reminded me I was wearing white shorts and a light colored tee shirt.

So we sat by the edge of the pool, my daughters and I, three grown ups -- well, two grown ups and me -- our feet dangling into the water. We watched a group of children play. We guessed they were cousins, given the age range. They waged fake wars with foam noodles, played basketball into a floating hoop, splashed us they climbed out of the pool and leapt back in, over and over.

There is something about water. As I watched the cousins play, I wondered what it was, that magic that beckons us when we are very young, telling us to just play. Like babies in a  bathtub, these children squealed with what could only be described as pure joy. Adolescents had lost their inhibitions, and the younger ones had achieved equal footing. Whatever the pecking order might have been when they were dry, eating breakfast, the lines were blurred in the water. A hotel pool -- a great equalizer, a giant cocoon, a gently undulating reminder to all of us that we need to just lighten up.

Two nights earlier, we attended the long planned graduation dinner, a chance for eight families to gather together and celebrate our daughters, eight young women who seem to have formed a bond with each other that will last a lifetime. I have known some of them since the day I first moved Nicki into her dorm room, before she had any idea how much these four years would shape her, become a part of her. Before she believed she would like it here, even a little. They are barely recognizable, even though they sort of look the same, these young women who used to be girls. They are, at once, articulate and incoherent, sophisticated and goofy, independent and hanging on to each other for dear life. Graduation. Commencement. Endings and beginnings. They are, at once, excited and scared to death.

When the time came to get ready for the meticulously planned dinner, the skies opened up and buckets of water rained down on New Orleans. Nothing like Katrina, to be sure, but it was relentless. The deluge caught the city by surprise, turning the streets into rising rivers, wiping out the annual outdoor party on campus, making a lot of us wonder why we had just spent money at blow dry bars. We got soaked just climbing into an Uber. I watched out my window, getting a little nervous as we sat, stuck in traffic, the waters seeming perilously close to the bottom edge of the car door.

The city had become a giant swimming pool, and there was nothing left to do but dive in. We were a little damp, a bit less well-coiffed than we had intended, but the torrent swept us up in its odd embrace and reminded us all that, sometimes, we need to just lighten up.

They do it up right in New Orleans, graduation, or commencement, or whatever you want to call it. Everything is set to music. It's serious, this launching of young men and women, but we are reminded not to take ourselves too seriously. Old and young, and everything in between, we all dove in together this weekend, and we played.