Emotions Run High on Night of Passage

By job description, journalists are the detached observers of modern life. We stand back and watch while others dance.

I played the role again the other night, and I wasn’t even on the job. I went to high school graduation ceremonies for a delightful and accomplished friend -- and as a testament to our friendship, won’t subject her to embarrassment by identifying her. Why risk permanent disbarment from her home?

But while she was the focal point of my attention, thoughts strayed from time to time and picked up on other emotional and sentimental vibrations that coursed through the night on campus.

And in no particular order ...

You can’t watch a procession of California high school students these days and not realize how global our little corner of the world has become. Not a novel thought, I realize, but the last names of the more than 400 graduates on this night ran the ethnic and alphabetical gamut from Abazari to Zuniga. In between were a Bates, a Vo, a Foroughi, a Basiliere and a Rogalski.

Watching them marching into the football stadium to take their seats, you see another time-tested truth: some already demonstrate the bearing of mature young adults; others look severely overmatched in the world that awaits.

As the evening unfolds, underlying dramas stack on top of each other. Some you have to guess at; others are crystal clear -- such as the blind graduate accompanied by an adult who has devoted countless hours to working with him.

You listen to a graduate sing with operatic flair, learn she plans to pursue a college music education, and wonder if she’ll become a star or someone with tremendous talent who goes on to other things.

You listen to three student speakers discussing the perennial opportunity of their generation being the one to make a difference and putting the world on an irrevocable course of goodness and compassion. At this school, it’s the 82nd graduating class and instead of being cynical about a speech of hope, you’re glad kids are still thinking that way.

You think about the hours of studying (for most of them) that it takes to make it to graduation night. You hope they learned something along the way about working hard and bucking odds. And you feel like they did when one young man yells out during the recessional march, “I did it! I did it!”

Well done, lad.

You see a coach hug one of his players who is graduating, and you realize all over again the deep bond that can develop in a school between adult and teenager. You hear a teacher talk about a graduate who balked as a freshman at the wonders of a high school education but turned the corner and took the giant steps needed to become a real man.

After the ceremony, as gaggles of students and teachers linger, you watch as students approach certain teachers and hug them. You wonder if the relationship hasn’t deepened and imperceptibly changed in that moment: no longer in the presence of someone with power over them, the students see the teachers more fully fleshed-out as people.

You ask a middle-aged teacher how he handles the annual ritual of saying goodbye. He surprises you by saying that it once was easy but that as he has gotten older, it has become harder and harder to watch them go. You realize that nights like this are about passages for adults too.

And as the nighttime sky signals the end to one of life’s more seminal moments, the students drive away from the parking lot.

You wonder if they’ll ever return, if not in a car then in their reflective moments. You wonder if they’ll remember this night the way that detached observers did. Or if, in the blur of life flying by, they’ll remember much about it at all.

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Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana

.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.