I have graduated from youth

Every business has its own version of retail’s Black Friday.
For us, it’s graduation weekend.
We hit the ground running Friday night with the Roscoe commencement exercises and don’t stop until sometime the following week when our biggest issue of the year makes its way to the press in Middletown.
We have hundreds of photographs to sift through, select, edit and caption; dozens of scribbles to decipher to pen the stories of the day and lengthy awards lists to compile.
I thought I was ready.
The camera batteries were charged, an extra notebook stowed in my bag.
My gas tank was half full, and the schedule had been double-checked.
Friday night, I made it to Roscoe early for those nervous “before” shots, and I sat through one of my favorite ceremonies.
The county’s smallest school offers a down-home touch to the standard service, the speeches pull at your heart, the kids lift you up.
The next morning, I hopped in the car ready for my second year covering Sullivan West’s commencement.
With Jonathan headed to work for the day, I packed Jillian in the backseat to switch her off to Oma for a trip to Chuck E. Cheese’s.
I slipped into a spot on the Lake Huntington field and wound my way through the crowd to find the soon-to-be graduates.
Waiting in the auditorium were 116 kids ready to face the world.
I started counting the familiar faces: 1, 2, 3 . . .
I stopped as the lump formed in my throat.
There were the kids whose papers I graded when I did my senior class community service in their elementary classroom.
There was the little girl who just wanted to follow her big sister’s friends around – including me – when we had better things to do.
There was the little boy who followed me off the bus each afternoon when I was a teenager, leading me on expeditions in the woods or adventures in the living room until his Mom got home from work.
Now this I wasn’t ready for.
If they’re getting older, what does that mean for me?
I’m not scared of wrinkles or nose hair, aching joints or making friends with my pharmacist.
But sleeping in the next room is a 2-year-old who is already scurrying as fast as her Mary Jane’d feet will carry her toward being a grown up.
So after all the Pomp and Circumstance, I walked out of the Sullivan West gymnasium with a heavy heart.
I was greeted by the younger brother of that boy I used to baby sit.
He’ll be a sophomore next year, he said, three more years until graduation.
“You can’t graduate anytime soon,” I told him. “Today your brother’s made me old, but you do that and I’ll be over the hill!”
He looked me over and laughed.
“Jeanne, you’re not really old!” he said, shaking his head.
I reached my arms out to wrap him in a hug.
“I knew I always liked you, kid!” I told him.
Three more years. Hmm.
I’m putting the Democrat on notice.
Better stock up on Metamucil and Depends. I don’t know if I can handle these jam-packed graduation weekends much longer.
In three years, I’ll be OLD!

I need a vacation from my vacation

It’s all decided.
I’m moving to Denmark.
Never mind that my Danish knowledge begins with “Alas, poor Yorick” and ends with those scrumptious butter cookies.
One of those human resource consulting companies (officially Hewitt Associates, which means just as much to all of us as that gobbledy-gook title!) has issued its breakdown of global employment practices.
No surprise there – we Americans are allotted the fewest vacation days by our employers.
But the Danish like to stop and smell the roses.
Hewitt Associates puts the average Dane’s vacation at 31 days each year.
It’s no wonder Hans Christian Anderson managed to get “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Thumbelina,” “The Princess on the Pea,” and hundreds more published in his lifetime.
He didn’t have Mum and Dad gnashing their teeth when he retired from his writer’s garret to the pool with a cocktail for a week… or two!
I left the office last Monday evening intent on enjoying my four days of freedom indulging in the pleasures of all things Sesame.
In other words, Jonathan and I loaded Jillian in the car and headed down the Pennsylvania Turnpike, his parents on our heels.
We’d no sooner rolled her stroller into every toddler’s fantasy world when the skies opened, and we got a taste of monsoon season Bucks County, Pa. style.
It rained on the Rock Around the Block Parade, then hailed as we huddled in Elmo’s studio watching His Royal Redness dance around his goldfish Dorothy while Jillian clapped her little hands off.
An hour later, the rain slowed to a drizzle, we strolled back out of Sesame Place intent on spending the second day of our two-day passes hitting every ride.
After sharing a king size bed with a cranky 2-year- and now 4-day-old desperately missing her bed, Jonathan and I “woke” up in a 55-degree hotel room.
Our alarm silenced by someone the evening before, we had an hour to make three people presentable for pictures at the Elmo and Friends Breakfast.
Putting our Super Grover skills to work, we made it.
I’ve got pictures of Jillian’s fingers in Ernie’s mouth, her hands clenched around Bert’s and her entire body enveloped in a bright orange Zoe hug to prove it.
Her syrup-covered dress switched out for a bathing suit, we made off for the rides where Jonathan and I discovered just how much fun a toddler can have when her parents get that cold.
A lot.
Trust me.
She’s fearless.
And more than my newly purchased Old Navy outlet suit had turned blue.
We hit every ride allowed for the under 42-inch set until the unseasonably windy, cloudy day sent us shivering for the car.
Ah, Jonathan and I thought, naptime.
Ah, Jillian decided, time to jump off the bed, grab snacks from the bag in the corner, demand “Up,” jump off the bed, climb into the otherwise unused porta-crib, demand “out,” and .… you get the idea.
Two days later, we were home.
Now I face this column and back to work.
I need a vacation.
Denmark, I’m on my way.

Kid’s eye view of the tractor parade

I used to go to a different tractor parade in Callicoon.
I had a few laughs, took a lot of pictures, and when the work was done had a few drinks.
Sunday I packed up my camera, finished raffle ticket sales for the Callicoon Sullivan Renaissance project and headed up to 27 Main Street to place my pizza order.
“Make it to go,” I told Kevin. “We’re headed home.”
I was exhausted.
It was the new tractor parade.
Or rather, the new me at the “good old” tractor parade.
I come to the parade not just as a reporter now but as a parent.
That means toting a stroller, keeping tabs on a sippy cup and the repeated repositioning of Elmo.
Fortunately Daddy does the brunt of the labor during the actual event, allowing me to weave in and out of the road snapping away with my camera.
There, the pictures I capture are unlike those I would have taken just two years ago.
I take special delight in the dads and daughters, the grandmas and grandsons.
I zoom in on cute t-shirts and pint-sized hands gripping tight to giant steering wheels.
The 11th tractor parade in Callicoon wasn’t just the longest I’ve seen or one filled with just as many strangers as neighbors and friends.
It was another learning experience for the self-proclaimed Callicoon Tractor Parade queen.
Professing my undying love for a tradition that’s both quirky and country, I assumed years ago that I “got it.”
The respect for farming, the sweet smell of diesel, the hilarity, the down-home togetherness.
Yeah, I got all that.
Guess what?
There’s more.
There were dozens of kids who ran up to me this year.
They tapped me on my thigh or yelled out “hey, Jillian’s mommy.”
I asked “whatcha doin?” and they all answered the same way.
Their already wide grins spreading toward their sunburned ears, they gave me that look that only a little kid can.
Pure pleasure mixed with disbelief that adults can ask such silly questions, they told me.
“Watching the tractors!!”
Elmo wasn’t coming, and Santa’s on vacation.

But the tractors were rolling, and the kids were bursting at the seams.
And when the day was done, our pizza stowed safely in the trunk, Jillian strapped into her carseat, we headed home.
Driving up past Roche’s Garage, we were slowed by two big farm machines, one driven by my uncle Bill, the other by my cousin Donald.
Even as a bad-mannered driver made a dangerous move out around the yellow line to buzz past, Jillian bounced in her seat clapping.
“Yaaaaay!” she said. “Trators! Billy! Trators!”
This was her tractor parade – and for a 2-year-old, there’s never too much of a good thing.

It’s as simple as that

I should have been taking pictures of Memorial Day happenings when I snapped the “scenic” atop the Opinions page in Friday’s issue of the Democrat.
I was. Technically.
The parade over and the official commemoration well under way, I’d wandered back into the crowd at the cemetery in Roscoe.
And then I spotted it.
There, on the edge of the grass, a little girl in a bright blue Cal Ripken League uniform was sitting with her head bent over in concentration.
Her flaxen hair covered her face, but it was obvious this little girl had a mission.
In her hands was a single blade of grass, something she’d no doubt picked to while away the time until her parent said, “OK, the adult stuff is over. Let’s go.”
Seconds later, her brother, who I’d watched bring his mother a large handful of dirt (while I stifled a giggle), plopped down next to her.
The perfect gentleman, he didn’t say a word to disturb the crowd.
But the scrunched up nose, the furrowed brow, said it for him.
“Whatcha doin’?” he wanted to know.
I’ve been to hundreds of these ceremonies, but this scene was rare.

Much more common is the little girl hanging from her father’s hand, whining, “I wanna go to the mooooovies. You prooooomisssed.” or an 8-year-old boy demanding Mom dig his Playstation Portable from the bottom of her purse.
But the Ackerly kids were wrapped up in their own adventures that morning in Roscoe, not a techno gadget in sight.
I snuck over to their Mom after snapping a photo and got both names and ages.
The girl was 5, the boy, 2.
I wasn’t surprised.
The younger they are, the easier they amuse themselves.
It’s not until they are handed talking dolls and remote controlled cars that they start losing that imagination.
As I was once told – kids are normal, until adults mess them up.
Climbing down off my high horse, I’ll admit Jillian has a room full of toys that’s encroaching on my home office.
But I caught one of my favorite shots of her just the other day – running bare hiney across our yard with two brushes she’d stolen from Jonathan’s car washing detail.
It will go up on the wall beside the shot of her standing in my grandmother’s kitchen putting a plastic strainer on her great-great-aunt’s head.
None of those pictures show the elements of a “good” photograph.
Caught on the fly, the lighting isn’t perfect, and the angles could have been better.
If I’d had the room in the crowd, I’d have dropped down low to get a shot of Madison Ackerly’s face in the middle of all that hair.
And if I’d thought of it, I’d have climbed on my grandmother’s table to get a more interesting shot of Jillian with Aunt Eleanor.
Or maybe the simple approach was right.
A simple photograph of a simple moment – simply perfect.