Graduation parties are a grand tradition

In the years I lived in cities, I was rarely invited to a high school graduation party. Now living fulltime in Cromwell, friends and neighbors are making up for that.

After Cromwell-Wright's graduation on Friday, May 24, the parties commenced. Some parents rented spaces like our Cromwell Pavilion or the Sno-Gophers Club. Others gussied up their garages, homes and lawns for festivities. Always, the parties offer scrumptious food, from the very healthy - such as blueberries, yogurt, carrots, and celery - to the waist-expanding: roasted meats, cheeses, and more beautiful sweets than you could eat in a month.

When you arrive at each party, the graduate is positioned at the welcoming spot, happy to see you and willing to answer queries on where she or he is headed next and where they are working this summer. Older siblings home from college fill you in on their studies and aspirations. You linger over poster boards filled with snapshots of the graduate at many ages and events, some serious, some goofy.

Eventually you make your way to the food line, stopping to chat with neighbors old and new. Once you're seated at a table in the round, you catch up on others' work and families.

From former teacher and coach Oscar Eliason, I learn that he raises lambs and that in the fall, I can buy one from him to fill my freezer for the winter. That our neighbor Joey Anderson continues to make high-end boat canopies in her roomy sewing shop. From Linda Shelton, that my pastor friend Janeva Stromberg is planning to retire. Coach Pocernich's mother and I have a lively conversation about my college classmate Bill Clinton and our mutual delight reading Michelle Obama's biography.

These conversations are accidental, but always engaging. But I also have an agenda. I'm recruiting contributions for our June 28 Cromwell Community Club Silent Auction and Variety Show, held in conjunction with our summer steak fry. Yes, Destiny Gervais will again dance for us, and her daughter, Aurora, will sing. Rob Switzer will bring his sound system. Both Rob and his wife, Deb, will sing. Debbie Levinsky will weave a tapestry for us. Lori Wester will donate wild rice. And so on.

The parties also offer opportunities to talk over community issues. Twice this weekend, neighbors wanted to discuss my recent Pine Knot piece on conflict between forestry and trail users in the Fond du Lac Forest. It's a good way to hear and ponder others' experiences.

City folk do celebrate graduations. When our son David graduated from his New Jersey high school, we hosted both his grandmothers, who commuted from San Diego and Boulder, an aunt and cousin from Chicago, old friends from up and down the East Coast who'd helped mother him, and our best friends locally. Because I hadn't had the time to make posters of his childhood photos, I put our albums on the dining room table. Three generations of relatives extracted and mounted photos on construction paper, shouting out when they found ones of each other. Belligerently creative David mounted on black paper the most "out there" of the set: him as a Halloween ghost, his 13-year-old long curly hair, and his skateboarding buddies with him in action. Toward the end of the afternoon, we stood around our largish living room and told stories about David's life. My mother, unexpectedly, told the most hilarious ones. Everyone, even David, laughed heartily.

High school graduation often precedes moving away from your family and your community, for education or work or maybe just to explore other worlds. Some of you may return, as my husband, Rod Walli, did, taking on the math classes his favorite teacher had taught. Some of you will find other hometowns, fill jobs that you love or at least can tolerate, marry, and build families. In any case, we who are anchored here hope you'll return often. And that the community values you've learned here, you will put into practice wherever you call home.

Ann Markusen is a Pine Knot board member and lives in Red Clover Township north of Cromwell with her husband, Rod Walli.