Today our little girl will cross the stage at commencement, complete high school and walk boldly forward into the next stage of her life.

And I am filled with such a mixture of emotion – pride, trepidation, happiness, exhilaration, love, humility, gratitude – to name just a few!

Her first day of school is commemorated the world over.  Because within a half hour of her confidently leaving her parent’s hands and independently crossing the threshold into Mrs. Underwood’s PreK3 class at St.Joes, a plane would fly into the World Trade Center 20 miles away and the word ‘safe’ would be forever re-defined.  She started school on 9/11.  And it seems like just yesterday.

The days are long, but the years are short.  Gretchen Rubin

Today our little girl will cross the stage and graduate high school.  I am grateful.

• Grateful that with all that can go wrong in this world, she is still enthralled by the wonderful things that go right
• Grateful for her 8th-grade teacher who saw the shine in my middle child, loved her poetry and praised her with the English Award in Middle School.  And grateful to the High School teachers that made math so much fun that she won awards for that too.
• Grateful to so many teachers and staff at her high school.  You have individually encouraged and stretched her boundaries.  Collectively – by creating a community of strong academics and powerful social responsibility – you have surrounded her with peers and staff who continually challenge her to dream and play bigger
• Grateful to each school along her way for surrounding her with the right teachers to help set her fundamentals right – from being nice to others and praying together through to reading and arithmetic
• Grateful to each school principal that has made those staffing decisions and set up that community of teacher-student-peer-parent
• Grateful to the opportunities given to her to reach beyond her classroom into Me2We, emcee a school inauguration with Lawrence Hill, be student council co-chair and succeed at a moonshot goal of raising $177,000 for Cancer Society’s Relay for Life
• Grateful to her elementary school principal who supported us when we decided to take a year-long trip around the world because ‘travel is an education’
• Grateful to the girls who welcomed her into their circle at each new school and became the sisters she didn’t have.  Some will walk across the stage with her today
• Grateful to her Dad for teaching her how to fly, how to count, how to laugh, how to travel, how to risk
• Grateful to our close-knit family on 5 continents.  They give her security and unconditional love so that she can once again confidently leave her home and independently cross her next threshold, ready to learn, ready to explore, ready to fail-forward, ready to give to the world the best of herself

Above all else, we are proud of the citizen you have helped us create – someone who is more than just the sum of her academic marks.  Someone who cares about her friends, her community and the world around her.  Someone of whom we as parents are incredibly proud.  And we know that she is richer as a person and more capable, because of the contributions of each and all of you – friends, family, teachers, coaches, and supporters.

We are so proud of her.  She has boldly stepped forward into every role and every challenge offered to her.  She extended her boundaries, explored possibilities, and was open to new ideas as her various skills and academic aptitudes offered her more career choices.  She learned her limits, then when to test them.  She learned to recognize when she needed help, and how to ask for it.  Her merit and community scholarships fill us with humility and hope because we see her stand among so many others in her generation, eager to make their tomorrows in a better and more compassionate world.

All we had on Sep 10, 2001 as we packed lunch boxes and picked out her clothes was who she was  – this wonderful human being.  And a curiosity of who she might become.

And all we have today is who she is.  This wonderful human being.  And a curiosity of who she may become.  Because we do not know what tomorrow will bring.

Today our little girl will cross the stage at commencement, completing this stage of her education, and she will boldly go forth into a new world.

Fly, little girl.  FLY!

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INSPIRATION AND RESEARCH MATERIAL FOR THIS BLOG:

• Dedicated to my Dad – an elementary school principal – and to all teachers.  It is a long term ROI.
• The Khalil Gibran poem ‘On Children’
• Our wide net of extended family and friend-family who provide an invisible web of love and support
• My daughter