Pomp & Circumstance

My brother Adam graduated from college last week. (In probably the most anti-climactic attempt at a surprise ever, I didn't tell him that I was going to drive with my mom up from Mississippi to attend his commencement. Though delighted to see me, when I approached him "unexpectedly" at the campus coffee shop our family always seems to patronize, after giving me a big hug he shrugged and said "I sort of figured you'd be here.")

The day before his actual graduation, we attended campus functions - the student circus, an evening open-air quad festival with music and hundreds of multi-colored hanging Chinese lanterns, a surprise birthday party for a friend of his (including a pinata, whose contents were largely confiscated by random kids unknown to my brother and his friends). It was threatening rain all that day, and there were murmurs about what might happen if it rained on commencement day, since the exercises were all to take place outdoors. As it happened, the next morning the sun shone down brightly on the little campus.

It was a long but lovely ceremony, with many speakers. I was moved to tears by the main commencement speaker, who began with an apology to the class for the fact that their inheritance is a world at war. This was not the focal point of her speech, but it made me think- particularly when she mentioned a photo she had seen on the cover of the New York Times that morning of a war widow, a young woman the same age as the graduates sitting expectantly in their folding chairs that morning.

The comment lodged itself somewhere in my mind. In some idle Googling days later, thinking about commencement and the armed forces, I turned up the fact that "Pomp & Circumstance" is actually a military march. For some reason, though I'm sure I have heard that before, that little piece of information was jarring. So, this is how we traditionally mark the completion of an educational phase: we have the graduates parade before us to stirring military music. An appropriate metaphor might be, they march out as soldiers into the battlefield of life, adequately trained and well-quipped to emerge victorious, decorated officers. It still might be a bit of a pompous, war-glorifying metaphor, but I can see the poetry. Unfortunately, reality seems to steamroll pretty imagery. With little room to feel distant from the situation as my first cousin, a recent high school graduate, is currently in Air Force training, I can't help but wonder: how many of our young people will be heading not into similes of service, but actual service time?

I remember when I graduated from high school, there was a popular (and popularly ridiculed) recording by Baz Luhrman called "Wear Sunscreen." It began like this:

Ladies and gentleman of the class of 1999, wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proven by scientists, where the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I swear I'm not always so dark, but as I commented to Adam, those lyrics are clearly dated. I envisioned a sort of gallows-humor comedy send-up, a modernization of the words:

Ladies and gentleman of the class of 2007, don't worry about the sunscreen. Between terrorists and global warming and avian flu and wars you may well have to personally fight in, the likelihood of the sun being the cause of your demise seems pretty slim to me. Consider yourself lucky if you wind up living long enough to get melanoma. Anyway, there's lots of money being dedicated to cancer research... right? Wait, what? Those funds are being diverted? Oh, well, like I said, forget about the sunscreen.

Don't panic, now - I am kidding, and that's supposed to be funny... it's just that it's also a little frightening. I understand that there are no easy answers, that safety and security, pride, peace, protection, pomp and circumstances are all confusing and conflicting values. I also keep seeing hope: the sort of small kindnesses that were the ultimate focus of the commencement speaker's address, the love and support that unexpectedly lifts us individually...

..and, they didn't play "Pomp & Circumstance" at my brother's graduation.

(This post is dedicated to Adam, who is a thinker, who appreciates gallows-humor, and who wouldn't have wanted me to post something sappy about how proud of him I am... but for the record, this big sister couldn't be prouder.)