When I passed out of high school, my Senior Cambridge and London Matriculation certificates came by registered post, addressed to my father. When my daughters finished higher secondary, their certificates were distributed at an assembly by the Principal. More recently, such an assembly included me as chief guest to offer a few pearls of wisdom and present the prizes, followed by the Principal distributing the certificates.
What a contrast to what I’ve been through in California recently! My grandson’s high school graduation was spread over the two weeks I was there and more. It’s bigger than graduating from college, I was told.
I wasn’t there for all of it, but from hearsay and experience this is what high school graduation from a leading private school was like. It apparently started with the Prom, a dance organised by Classes 12 and 11, to say farewell by one and to hand over the baton to the other. All very formal, tuxedos and long dresses (no saris or cheongsams, though more than half the class was Asian) and grandson taking a corsage when he went to pick up his ‘date’ as well as a cake he had baked for her mother. Next came what sounded like a retreat, a week at Laguna Beach for the seniors, a class trip to do some last-minute bonding. At the end of it, I was able to catch up with the person who had invited me for his graduation. But then we lost my daughter and husband to the seniors’ moms’ lunch and grads’ dads’ barbecue and a couple of other graduating family parties, before we caught up with them for Baccalaureate. Held in the school’s outdoor quadrangle early one evening that still called for me to choose warm clothing, it was meant to be a farewell function to bless the outgoing students, who attended all duly robed.
Apart from the sombre music and brief farewell speeches by a member of the faculty and a junior, the highlight is the “students’ farewell”, a speech, an interesting one, by a classmate who is the popular choice of the graduating class.
Getting out of the cold and into the main auditorium, we went around an exhibition of collages profiling each student. Dominating grandson’s was Grandson the Chess Champion — the U.S. High School Champion and The Americas’ Junior Champion.
The next day, duly swathed, we were off to the reason for my visit to the U.S. after six years: to watch ‘Graduation Day Exercises’. Duly wrapped up for a 5 p.m. function set to end about 7.30, we headed for the 2,500-seat amphitheatre that is a part of Paul Masson’s Mountain Winery in Saratoga. Masson, a Frenchman who arrived in California in the latter half of the 19th century, took over Charles Lefranc’s winery in 1887 and began making a name for his wines by 1892. Accumulating a fortune, he built for himself a castle-like home, called Le Chateau, and became renowned as a host. Destroyed by the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, Le Chateau was rebuilt even more lavishly. Between the 1950s and 2000, wine-making ceased, and the mansion was turned into a lavish banqueting and reception facility, and an amphitheatre developed for stage productions, concerts — and graduations.
Music and speeches
The sun shone as promised as we arrived, so we were warm enough in what we were wearing. There was joyous music, a valedictorian address, a keynote address and other speeches I never heard in that open air vastness — and then the 185-strong procession began, from the top of the amphitheatre to the stage in the pit, two by two, duly robed and their mortar boards proclaiming loudly in colour and symbol the college he or she was going to. It was well past six when I was still deciphering the academic headware, but my rate of success kept diminishing as the icy winds began to blow harder even as the sun played hide-and-seek. It reached a point when my sister and I could take the cold no more and were escorted home, shivering, by my niece. And so it was all the way to Silicon Valley for a graduation ceremony — only to miss the key part of it, the handing over of the diplomas! But we did get to the dinner the new graduate gave us that evening. He and his parents were still dining out or partying after Graduation Day with other families, all too much for me, till it was finally the turn for a proud father and mother to host a lunch for 250 relations and their son’s friends.
Lunch was preceded by a video and speeches at which I reminded grandson that he was the third generation to join an Ivy League college (Princeton) and I hoped he’d do rather better than his grandfather who’d wasted six years in America and, would instead follow in the golden footsteps of his mother and aunt. As usual, I had to make a faux pas : I forgot a son-in-law who had been to the Ivy League clone in the West, Stanford. And then it was time for goody bags — containing small daughter’s enthusiastic attempt to duplicate her mother’s famous recipe for fruit cake.
Grandma would have loved to be there.
smuthiah.mes@gmail.com
