When I received the invitation, I knew I couldn’t miss this important event in her life

IN

the last few years, I’ve gone to countless graduations for my kids’ or close relatives’ or good friends’ children.

Yes, I know it’s an exciting moment in everyone’s life, but really, only the faces of the graduates and the guests changed at each event — the proceedings were all the same. First the procession, then the awards ceremony, then the valedictorian’s speech, then the principal’s two cents, then the diploma allocation, then the student choir, then the procession back behind the curtains, and then the graduates euphorically emerging into the welcoming arms of their parents and close relatives and friends.

Yep, same old… same old… and getting to be a bit boring.

(To be totally honest, whenever I had to go to a graduation, even ones when my own children were graduating, which I was thrilled to attend, I’d hoped the speeches wouldn’t be too long so I could go and hug the graduate and, on more than one occasion — dare I say it? —  get to those delicious-looking refreshments!)

I’d come to a point that I just didn’t have the enthusiasm to sit through another graduation ceremony anytime in the near future and decided I was going to politely decline any further invitations. That is… until I got an invitation to attend Blimie’s high school graduation.