Dear SMA Community,
In the coming weeks, we will be sending off “graduating” classes from our fifth, eighth, and twelfth grades. Each milestone is incredibly significant to parents, students, principals, and teachers. We will watch with prideful and watery eyes as young people and young adults march their way to new worlds, some a little bigger, some very much bigger. Where has the time gone?
This year’s graduation and continuation classes are particularly meaningful to me. I joined St. Mary’s Academy when the Class of 2023 was starting Kindergarten. I have watched them grow and come into their own. It was just last year that I saw my own daughter cross the diaz for her diploma at Bishop Evans. I know the emotions that come with these wondrous moments. We tend to channel them into the plans for celebrations, hoping for perfection to match our love for our children and their friends. Here’s where I might lend some advice: go with the flow and find the balance between holding onto them tightly and letting them go.
There will be many emotions bubbling up among us over the next few weeks. We share with our students and children the excitement and anticipation of what’s to come, and also understand there can be sadness for eras coming to a close and the unknown of the next steps. Parents, too, experience anxiety. We can lean on each other to maintain perspective during these times, and preserve the best memories.
I am picturing a five-year-old child blowing bubbles on our Butterfly Bridge, master of the wand they sputtered at just months earlier, launching glossy orbs into the air. A curious child, a child suspended in the moment, watching and learning. We know (through observation and the physics of cohesion) that many of those bubbles will join together into one beautiful, iridescent community-bubble. Some others may stray, break away on their own paths. Eventually, even that big bubble will disperse, but a gentle touch will sustain it the longest. It is the gentle touch of the members of our community, over all these years, that makes our upcoming celebrations so powerful and also so poignant.
Warmest regards,
Ms. Ish