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For all the boys who wouldn’t grow up

May 24, 2015

“Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”

Sometimes a person tells you something so profound, so come-to-Jesus, that you swirl it around in your brain like mouthwash.

Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who when not singing “What a long, strange trip it’s been,” also said, “Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”

He was talking about (I think) stepping up to take care of our children, our communities, our earth.

He was talking about us, the kids. Us, the grown-ups. Us, the kids/grown-ups.

This past Monday the man quoting Garcia’s line to the graduates of University of Baltimore’s Law School was Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, who was not, to my knowledge, a member of the Dead (a straw poll of family members attending the graduation believed but were not positive they voted for Mr. Frosh. It was a hot day in Baltimore, so forgive their civic memories).

Brian Frosh was speaking in the context of Freddie Gray when he laid Garcia on us; we can’t wait for the grown-ups to show up because, as pathetic as it may be, we’re the grown-ups. Or the kids. Or both.

Many of us don’t set the bar very high when it comes to graduation speakers. While their intentions and messages are sincere, the speeches make you want to scurry back into the womb and dream of a massive do-over. All this talk of finding your way, taking risk, making mistakes, learning from your mistakes, finding your passion, following your dreams, changing your dreams, changing your sheets—all that insufferable journeying, learning and changing. It was much easier being womb-based—working and living out of the home, so to speak.

But Frosh’s speech kept me upright and in the real world. And there was a law professor who had the grown-up job of eulogizing a law student who died in a car accident three weeks before graduation. There are, she said, eulogy credentials and resume credentials—which are more meaningful and important? The things we say about ourselves on our resumes or things said about us in eulogies?

(Have you read your resume lately? Has there ever been a piece of writing that says so very little about you? Has there ever been a more heartless, calculated—and necessary—document created in your name and by your own hand? The truth, of course, is all between the lines.)

In eulogizing their classmate who couldn’t be with them, this graduation speaker quoted not from Jerry Garcia but from J. M. Barrie, whose own strange trip led to “Peter Pan” and this:

“Pan, who and what art thou?” Hook cried huskily.

“I’m youth, I’m joy,” Peter answered at a venture. “I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”

At this point, dear grown-ups, this boy almost lost it, as I was reminded again how ceremony can be so grounding, spellbinding and communal. It takes growing up a bit to see and feel this.

All this past week in Annapolis there has been ceremony in all its customary predictability and power. For it’s the season of graduating, the season of man and woman, boy and girl. In the natural world, it’s the season of pollen and popping azaleas, and osprey and falcon chicks breaking out of their eggs.

It’s the season of eulogies and resumes, youth and joy.

And finally, this from a man who never spoke at a Maryland graduation:

The only joy in the world is to begin.

Cesare Pavese—who was also not in the Grateful Dead.