another graduation

Yesterday we went to the graduation at the small private school that has been so important to our families for several generations.

The school had less than a hundred students when we attended almost 60 years ago, and since then has grown and declined. Now the student count is a bit over 100.

The Senior class was a little over 20.

Since it is a Bible school, there was a sermon involved, in fact, there were two, given by two students. The young lady talked first (I did not know her) and the grandson of a classmate of mine (’55) followed.

But between them one of the students whose family is from Hawaii stood up and came to the front. I looked at the program and it was not listed. These are not people who went to Hawaii and came back with a tan. I am talking about relatives of Queen Liliuokalani.

He was a well fed boy with a lei around his neck. He said that he wanted his family to come on stage. Other well fed dark skinned people began to stand up and make their way to the front. In the end there were almost 50 of these beautiful people on stage.

And then they sang a song. The song had deep meaning to them. They sang with volume and gusto. I did not know the song and had never heard it before, but they sang it well with great enthusiasm. . Even the children were singing.

When they finished the applause was thunderous. I was overwhelmed with the sheer joy of it all. When this lucky boy graduated, so did his whole family.

My family is not nearly that large, but though we are a flawed bunch of semi nutty people (they are related to me by the way) are so important to me and us.

Unfortunately all families are not uniformly wonderful.

And that makes me very sad.