Parental Pride

Tomorrow my oldest daughter, Beanie, will officially graduate from High School. I am struggling with the thought of her leaving in August and also with the passage of time. It seems like just yesterday she was my little girl.


If you met her in person, you would think she was shy, although once you get to know her, you know why she has earned her nickname “the life of the party”. She cannot sit still. She cannot look an adult in the eye. She dances through the house. To talk to her you often wonder if she even has a brain. She has absolutely no common sense, which does worry me. Her world view does not extend much past her immediate circle of friends and facebook. When she interviewed with the Dean of the psychology program she hoped to enter at college he asked her why she wanted to study forensic psychology. And she answered “because I love crazy people. ” And she got in! Takes one to know one, I think.

Unless you have seen her on a basketball court or other field of play, you would never know she is athletic. If she is home (which isn’t very often these days), she is hunched in a ball over her computer or lying half naked, sunning herself by the pool. She is amazingly clumsy, drops everything, can trip walking across the living room, and can’t manage to get food all the way from the plate into her mouth without spilling something, sometimes everything.

Her personality is very similar to Sid, the sloth from the Ice Age movies, to whom we often compare her. Naive, talkative, positive, caring, loving and extremely loyal. She wakes up smiling and goes to bed smiling. Teachers, parents and especially little kids love her. Probably because she has never outgrown those child like qualities of wide eyed wonder and joy at everything she experiences. No matter what she does, she comes homes saying it was the best thing she’d ever done. She is always laughing.

But on paper she looks exceptional - she has been a high honors student every year, she has played three varsity sports every year in a large school where making a team is highly competitive. She has been elected the captain of every team she has played on. She has won regional scholar-athlete awards every season. She is on the teen Board of Directors for our local Ronald McDonald House, last year winning the Biggest Heart Award and this year winning the Exceptional Commitment Award. She is an assistant coach for a girls’ youth basketball program. She is a school mentor and is the first to sign up for any community or school organization in need of a volunteer. A few weeks ago she was honored at an athletic awards ceremony with some plaques and a generous scholarship for her commitment to athletic excellence. Tomorrow she will be wearing additional tassels and stoles for academic achievement and community service.

She has made us exceptionally proud.

The quote she chose to go under her yearbook picture was this:

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine. - Anthony J. D'Angelo


Tomorrow I will be quite teary, and a little hesitant, yet very proud, to send that sunshine into the world.