The Story Of My Daughter's Graduation

Tuesday I woke up early. I lay in bed. I knew that if personal beauty were my first priority I ought to wash my hair. And then blow it dry. But I hate blow drying my hair because it makes my arms hurt to hold them up over my head for that long. I decided not to bother. I justified my decision as follows. Justification #1. Due to jet lag, inordinate sensory stimulation, Katie Couric, drunken people in the streets late at night, and a comically loud air conditioner at the Nassau Inn, I had not slept much and was too tired to get up any earlier than absolutely necessary. Justification #2, I have read that washing your hair too much is bad for it, especially old lady hair. Justification #3, what’s the point of long hair if you can’t wear a ponytail? Justification #4, (had I needed more by that point), no one would care. Hair in a ponytail. So be it.

If personal beauty had been my first priority I would also have worn something memorable. Complications. The event took place in New Jersey. Where it rains. Where it is on occasion horribly hot. Sometimes both. Without warning for either condition. And I live in California, where it never rains at the same time that it is horribly hot. So I don’t own enough clothing to have smashed into my small suitcase all that would have been required to cope with these eventualities. Add the problem of having to walk around hither and yon and it might become clear what course of action I took.

Commonly known as throwing in the towel and going with a few unfair advantages.

Princeton Graduation, Class of 2009 by High WASP featuring Burberry

I wore my 25th Reunion hat. A straw hat. Which has a band of tigers around the crown. Hideous, second only to my Reunions jacket covered in Tommy Bahamas tigers that somehow I left at home. The hat made it clear I was an alumna. Position of strength. Helped to counter any tendencies toward social anxiety. Navy linen Giorgio Armani pants and a navy cotton v-neck t-shirt from Target. Yep, Target. Target represents some of the best characteristics of America. No shame. Besides, I have blue eyes and navy happens to make my eyes look very blue. Position of strength #2, maybe even #2.5 except that I don’t get the thrill out of a Target bargain that I should. I wore flat closed toe shoes with a black trench coat and I carried an umbrella. I hate getting wet feet especially when grit gets caught between the sole of my foot and the innards of my shoes. Position of strength #3.

In fact, I did know that this graduation was not about what I wore. Not that my knowledge saved me from worry altogether but on the day that I become the Buddha I expect trumpets and so far the heavens are silent.

Tuesday turned out to be rather similar to much of motherhood, where events of inexorable significance unfold as you think about who might be thirsty, and does everyone have sunscreen, and who brought the camera, and how did I come to be holding all the important pieces of paper and the garbage at the same time?

I have watched my daughter from a distance during events with large audiences many times. It is always about catching sight of her red hair. The color of a new penny. Almost pink in spots, gold in others. I caught sight of her hair this time too. Her boyfriend’s mother took a picture. She is waving, her face turned towards us. Today I remember the thunderstorm that caught me standing in line, the heat where we sat not noticing that we wouldn’t be in the shade when the sun came out, the long speeches, and the curious sense of sinking in the numbers of people, lost below the current of the group meaning, like a little fish in a stream. My real priority in all of this, the reason I waited in line, and wore comfortable shoes, and sat mistakenly in the sun, was getting a picture of my daughter on this day. Done.

The graduating part, well that she had taken care of herself, really.

"Denique, parentes, ego tutus vos. Pro vacuus vestri diligo quod porro - patientia nos non polleo ut exsisto hic hodie. Nos, discipulus Princeton, gratulor vobis totus."

*The salutatorian gave an address in Latin. In English this means, "Thanks Mom and Dad!"

Goblins And Other Modern Phenomena

So was there a lesson to be learned in my experience at my son’s graduation? Did I see the light, was I washed pure of need and anxiety, free to go forth into the world secure in the knowledge of my value unconstrained by social comparisons?


Not quite. I have not found that wisdom comes as a large and musical gift from the universe. Knowledge is in fact rarely revelatory. I find that wisdom, such as we might find it, is more like learning how to stock your kitchen cabinets. How many light bulbs of what wattage to have as backup? What size cans of diced tomatoes? The value of frozen chicken stock?

It is hard to unlearn one’s emotional makeup. I have not found the key to that palace in 52 years. But with luck I think we can come to understand ourselves. Sometimes I see my particular anxieties as goblins, goblins of need and worry making their living underground. The pictures here are from one of my favorite childhood books, The Princess and the Goblins. While I do not see myself as a princess the goblins are miners in my self for better or for worse. I would love to turn on some kind of very big and powerful hose and direct it down through their tunnels, to see their large-nosed selves washed up onto the plains and down the river. But I find the best hope is simply to discover what they need and make my peace with them. I forgive myself for harboring these goblins. It’s very Californian of me. We make a deal. I stock my cabinets with their favorite cereals. Come on up little goblins, have some Cheerios.


I could have spoken strictly to myself when my son graduated, knowing that it was wrong to feel as I did. I could have forced myself to go through what I dreaded. Or I could accommodate the goblins. Accommodate them with a rueful shrug. After all, as long as I can see their little goblin faces and count their little goblin shovels, they harm no one but me.

And no, unfortunately, wisdom does not make your old lady hair suddenly look like this.

Images: Wikipedia

Old Lady Hair

I know I said it was old lady hands that made me wince at my own mortality. But at least my hands still do what I want them to do.

It’s my old lady hair that I need to speak to. Very, very strictly. When I was young I had blonde hair that hung down my back in a torrent. I wore my hair long and straight for way longer than the cultural norm. But at some point blonde turned into light brown. And then, at some additional inevitable point, a broad stripe of gray showed up and said hello. Hello, yes, you are mortal.

At the moment when the broad stripe of gray appeared, I was at a dot.com startup where my colleagues and my employees had an average age of um, well, 28 isn’t an exaggeration. I was 43. And with hair past my shoulders striped gray I felt old. And I had too much work to do to be walking around feeling old. So one day I went to a hair salon frequented by women with serious face lifts and had someone cut my hair short and dye it back to blonde.

Immediately thereafter I was made vice-president. Hmm.

Recently after 10 years of short hair it dawned on me that I might want to grow it long again. That this might be my last chance at woman hair. Old lady hair is more like the fluff on a dandelion. It won’t hang down your back. It won’t twist like silk around your fingers. It won’t shine in the sunlight. It won’t do many of those sweet girlie things that hair can do.

I grew my hair back down to my shoulders. Hello hair. No longer a torrent, as creeping old lady hair syndrome has reduced the former torrent to a stream. Good enough however to do a little shining, a little flinging, a little bouncing as I walk. Unfortunately, now that my hair is long again, I find myself too often pulling it back in a ponytail. Which clearly won’t do in the workplace, where I am always trying for elusive executive stature.

I am now in preliminary mourning for my hair. I am preparing myself to chop it off again. Return to the time-honored executive woman hair of Carly and Meg and Ann. Some day in the far, far distant future, when I officially decide that I am in fact an old lady, I will grow my hair for the last time and let it go gray and wear it up in a tortoiseshell comb and pretend I am my father’s mother. Wear pearls. Black silk. An antique brooch, which of course for my grandmother was quite modern. I hope these tricks will compensate for the blonde hair that used to lie next to me on my pillow with a life of its own. If not I plan to pretend that I don’t notice.