The graduation speech I didn't get to give It was graduation weekend at my daughter’s school and so I hung out with emotional dads for a couple of days and at the graduation dance I got a little teary-eyed myself. It was the Father-Daughter dance and we shimmied and shook to “I Saw Her Standing There” and then a slow waltz to “Wonderful World” and I sang the words to her, “I hear babies cry, I watch them grow; they’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know.” And I meant them. The school is a boarding school for kids with learning differences and the day we left her there years ago was an agonizing day, walking away from a weeping child in the arms of a teacher, and driving down the road telling each other we were doing the right thing and not believing it. She didn’t change her clothes for four days because her mother had hugged her in those clothes and she wanted to remember. And then it was Sunday and the bagpiper led them out of the gym and they stood on the green grass and on the count of three, they flung their mortarboards in the air. I took a picture and it shows my daughter’s cap flying higher than anyone else’s. Fathers of daughters at graduation are stunned by the rush of memories, the transformation of child into woman in high heels, the urge of patriarchy to lock the child in a tower, and the sheer pride at observing her freewheeling independence and acuity. It’s a day when toxic masculinity seems to fall away from a man and he feels much older, a little unsteady, a man on the sidelines of the world she seems at home in. Read the rest of the column >>> | 