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Excerpts

Staying Connected

"Dad, I need to tell you something."
Jean had rehearsed the speech for hours and was determined to get through it without breaking down. She bit her lip and prepared to plow ahead when the wind blew the tassel from her mortarboard right in her face, distracting and frustrating her. Who thought up these stupid tassels anyway? Jean pondered as she adjusted the cap for the thousandth time. She wasn't much for formality: All the pomp and circumstance was so overblown. But Dad was big on tradition and ritual.
"Don't you see, Jeanie," he had often lectured her; "tradition is what holds families together. Without it you have no connection between the generations, nothing to help hold you to what came before."
And her dad definitely wanted her connected: Every family reunion at the farm in Tennessee meant a mandatory appearance by the West Coast wing of the McGee clan. Jean's dad and mom had both grown up in that small Tennessee town, and all her uncles and aunts still lived within a hour's drive of the family farm. Though her dad still called it "home," he hadn't lived there since graduating from high school. A scholarship to a big California college was too good to refuse, so he'd married Jean's mom two days after graduation and then moved to the Sunshine State, where Jean and her little brother had been born. The rest of the McGees predicted that Jean's family would lose their ties to Tennessee, but every summer that Jean could remember had included a trip to the farm and visiting all the relatives. Dad wanted them to know every cousin, aunt, and uncle by name. "This is your heritage," Dad would say when anyone complained about trips. "You have to stay connected!"
"Do you miss the farm, Dad?" Jeanie had once asked her father as they were starting the long drive back to California.
"Wouldn't you?" That was Dad -- answer a question with a question. "I learned to drive a tractor, bale hay, and ride a horse on that farm. Why I remember when..." If Jeanie would just sit tight, Dad would roll through one of his stories: The time Uncle Willie had nailed his brother's hat to the farmhouse floor to teach him not to be sloppy. Or the day Aunt Mildred nearly blew up the place when the pressure cooker got too hot while she was canning peaches.
Although Jean had loved listening to those stories as a child, she had no interest in them now. It was one more sign of the gulf that had come between her and her dad: Mr. Tradition versus Miss New Age. From burning incense in her room to a tattoo on her ankle, every issue became an argument. The year she ditched the family reunion for her boyfriend's rock band's concert had nearly seen her booted from the house. Only her mom's intercession had spared her from excommunication.
But then came the graduation thing.
Jean had been adamant: She was not taking part in the ceremonies. Her friends had applauded her independent thinking. "The cap-and-gown thing is an unnecessary, outdated custom," they had agreed. But needless to say, her dad saw it differently and was ready to push the issue. Three weeks before graduation day, she made her last stand. The announcements were lying on the hall table waiting to be addressed, and her cap and gown were already hanging in the closet. She dropped the bomb at dinnertime: "I've decided I am not wearing that silly cap and gown and going through that lame ceremony," she had casually said between bites; then she had added defiantly, "And there's nothing you can do about it."
Her dad's ears had gone crimson, and her mother just held her breath. After a moment of painful silence, Jean's mother picked up her dinner, nodded to Sammy, Jean's little brother, and quietly left the dining room. Sammy took his cue and gathered up his plate as well, saying, "I guess nobody will gripe if I eat in my room tonight." And with that the two combatants were left alone to duke it out.
Jeanie's dad began with a predictable response: "What do you think this says to your family?" When she did not respond, he continued, "Your grandmother and all the folks from back home will be here to see you graduate. It means a lot to them...and to me. Please, don't be so selfish!"
"Well, it means something to me too. I'm sorry, Dad, but I'm not backing down."
"I suppose you won't want the watch either," he had said softly.
She knew this was coming, but it made her mad that he brought it up so quickly.
"Oh, Dad, don't start with that."
"The watch" was a gold pocket watch. When her paternal grandfather had graduated from high school, the first McGee to do so, his father hadn't been able to afford a proper graduation gift, so he gave him a family heirloom, that pocket watch. That watch had been passed down from generation to generation for six decades and was always given to the eldest child at his or her graduation. Jean was the eldest McGee of her generation.
"So if I don't wear the cap and gown, I don't get the watch? Is that it?"
Her dad just shook his head, and that had been the end of the graduation conversation...until now.
The wind was getting chillier, and the ceremony was only a half-hour away. She knew if she didn't get this said now, she might never, so she started again. "Dad, this may seem strange, but I need to say this." She paused and soaked up the silence. Her father would not interrupt her.
She adjusted the cap one last time and couldn't help but grin. Here she stood in the goofy cap and gown she'd sworn she'd never wear, all ready to get her diploma in front of her relatives. But not because her father had bullied her into it. Far from it. Three days after the dinner argument, her dad had come to her room at bedtime and offered an olive branch.
"Listen, I'm tired of being mad about this. I know you're a bright girl and that you'll make your own way. Maybe it's time I let you do so." And with that, he had laid the pocket watch on her bed and walked out.
The wind blew the tassel across her eyes one more time, but she barely noticed. The tears she had fought back so fiercely now flowed freely...and she didn't care. Somehow, she kept talking.
"Dad, I want you to know why I'm doing this. It's not just because of what happened. I've thought a lot about tradition in the last two weeks. About staying connected. You never told me that it would become so much more important when...things were different."
She wiped the tears back and held out the watch.
"I'm going to carry this when I get my diploma. And one day I'm gonna give it to my child, if I'm lucky enough to have one. And I want to tell my children to stay connected to their history, their family. I want to tell them about you...I love you, Daddy. And I'm sorry."
There! She had said it. Those words had burned in her brain for the last ten days, ever since the phone call about her dad's accident and the painful meeting with her mother at the hospital. She knew she needed to say them, but her dad hadn't been able to hear them. The doctors weren't even sure if he was really alive when the ambulance brought him in: The drunk driver had hit him head-on.
"Good-bye, Daddy," she said softly as she laid a small piece of paper on her father's headstone. Then Jean turned from the grave, walked back to the car, and drove to meet the rest of family at her graduation. A gust of wind gently spun the paper on the smooth granite, as though an unseen hand was turning it around to read it: It was her graduation announcement.