New beginnings

It’s once again that time of year–a time of new beginnings. Folding chairs will be arranged in careful rows. P.A. systems will be tested and retested. Gowns will be steamed, tassels adjusted. At four separate ceremonies in three small towns, graduates will walk across stages that have seen their peers take the same tentative steps.

The stages will be modest, in gyms not built for grandeur, but the ritual is the same as it is in any American city: a young person accepts a diploma and steps into the unknown. “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind,” wrote C.S. Lewis, a line that likely wasn’t penned for graduation ceremonies, but fits it as well as anything could.

There’s a certain elegance to small-town graduation. The audience  knows the names of every student called. We cheer not just for our own child, but also for the kid who played tuba in the marching band or showed livestock at the fair or helped shovel a neighbor’s walk after a February snowstorm.

In the next two weeks, at Buffalo High School, New West, Kaycee High School and Arvada-Clearmont School, a class of scholars, athletes, artists and dreamers will take their seats for the last time as high schoolers. The ceremonies will include humor and hugs. These aren’t just commencements—they’re community affirmations.

Graduation speeches — earnest, sometimes awkward, often wise — will say what parents may find hard to articulate: that this moment matters. That it is the threshold between what was and what will be.

These ceremonies also offer a rare thing: a pause. A moment to witness growth, to reflect on years that passed in the blur of school lunches and early-morning practices, of heartbreaks and unexpected victories. High school may have felt endless once. Now, it feels like it vanished too fast.

In big cities, graduations can feel like a processional, just trying to announce all the names in a timely fashion. Here, they are personal. Teachers tear up. The Buffalo Bulletin will be there to record history. And after the last speech, the last handshake, the last tossed cap, our communities will go back to being what we’ve always been: launchpads for kids who may stay or may go, but will never really stop belonging.

To the graduates: You carry not just your accomplishments, but our hopes. May you go forward with courage, curiosity and the knowledge that no matter how far you travel, there’s always a place that will welcome you home.