Abe's Graduation and Some Sentimental Bits of Writing on My Oldest and Youngest

Abe graduated early last week. He was the 2019 Salutatorian. Not a bad achievement for a graduating class of close to 550. (Though, in truth, he was quite disappointed to not have been selected the Valedictorian. And I think he was truly as deserving.) But! the vice principal gave him a rousing introduction that caused quite a few exclamations and oohs and ahhs at the graduation ceremony and it was a happy thing hearing him recognized for all his drive and discipline (and fun for him to receive all the congratulations that followed).

We failed to get many pictures of him at graduation. We were running behind getting there, they turned their robes in right after getting their diplomas, it was crowded inside and raining outside after, Abe was exhausted from a very long day, and we were trying to get home to celebrate Penny's birthday; . . . so we only got a few from far away at the ceremony, a quick shot after with us, one with his grandparents, and one of him with his twin pals the Hurds (who happened to cross our path on our way to the car). I also made everyone run out when we got home for a fast picture with his siblings.

Daisy is on the jumbo tron in the picture above. The school choir sang at graduation. So she was at graduation with us . . . just not with us. (And Goldie was home tending all the other kids [minus Starling who we brought with us] and trying to make the day feel special for Penny while we were gone!)

Our oldest and youngest. And the two causing so much of the wild and contrasting change in our family right now.

This last picture was from seminary graduation a few days earlier. Our bishop and the eight graduates from our ward.

But we did decide, at the eleventh hour, to take a few senior pictures for a graduation announcement to send out to family (and for Abe to give to friends). We took them all -- clothing changes included -- in half an hour; and my sister Amy kindly made them into a card and even got them printed for us, so it wasn't too big of an added stress. And I'm glad to have these pictures of him.

In any case, life is pushing and shoving us towards and through so many endings and so many beginnings on both sides of our family all at once right now that I can hardly make sense of any of it. Most of the time everything I can't process in my mind just ends up sitting in my stomach like a big heavy stone.

Abe is in Moab right now with his two closest friends for a little senior mountain biking trip. He's taking typhoid pills. We just ordered his "10-12 white shirts". He and Mike stopped at a little El Salvadorian place in Logan a few days ago and brought home pupusas. Meanwhile this baby girl Starling of ours is shifting into bigger clothes, beginning to find a schedule and even batting awkwardly and dearly at her little mobile.

And I am growing unquestionably sentimental. No doubt my writings in upcoming days and weeks will reflect it. Just as they have in these two recent offerings:

On Starling:

You won't remember this of course, my little tenth child, but once, you were very very small. And often I held you in my arms for what seemed entire days. (It won't occur to you to wonder how that was possible when I was still making dinner and folding laundry and mothering nine others. But never mind. It wasn't possible. And yet it was so.) I held you and held you. And always the small debate over whether to keep you unswaddled (so your small arms and legs could mold perfectly around me), or swaddle you (so there might be some chance of you staying asleep when I set you down). As I held you, I walked and rocked and soothed, and sometimes wiped counters, and got kids cups of water, and put away clutter (and even vacuumed). And I called you "baby girl" and "my little bird", "littlest baby star" and "my sweet sweet girl"; and I repeated "I love you" so often that I wondered how you'd ever learn any words other than just those three. And I watched your eyes as they dropped half closed then shut all the way then opened wide and fluttered shut again. And sometimes, no matter how tired you were, they wouldn't shut at all (and do you know that babies rarely blink?). I'd stare at you and watch those eyes with irises that seemed to take up the entirety, and I'd wait for you to blink, but you wouldn't. You'd just gaze steadfastly back -- all full of some impossible certainty. And often, the words "I love you", no matter how frequently I felt compelled to exclaim them, couldn't possibly contain all the power and beauty and strength of what I felt for you and so they'd come tumbling out all overflowing with my own tears.

And on Abe: 

And, as we speak, Abe is cleaning out his big, blue backpack. The table is strewn with pencils, and notebooks, his TI calculator and Macbeth. He's emptying binders and sticking them in the cupboard by the kids' coloring books; he's laughing with Daisy over how great his The Scarlet Letter book looks with all the drawings he doodled around each chapter heading; and he has just weighed the stack of used paper from all his binders. (5 1/2 pounds!) And I recognize it's just a backpack. And these things are mostly just bits and pieces -- paraphernalia -- from his senior year. But it feels like there is an elevator just under my ribcage. It's slowly moving. Compacting everything inside of me into one tight mass in my chest. And I'm not quite sure what to do with it or why it's so heavy -- this sudden, fairly simple truth that Abe is done sitting in the chair at the end of the right side of our kitchen table -- with books and binders spread out in front of him, a pencil behind his ear, and that completely-full, blue backpack sitting next to him. 

Although, technically, Jesse is sitting in Abe's official homework spot for a minute in this picture. :) 

Anyway, enough for now. Amidst the stone in my stomach and elevator moving up in my chest feelings I am offering prayers of thanks in acknowledgement that it is a blessing to live these particular mortal experiences and become familiar with the complicated emotions associated with them. The end.