I was drinking iced water the other day, looking at the chunks of frozen liquid bouncing off the sides, and I remembered France. There isn’t iced water, only water without ice. The cultural weirdness of this got me spinning and thinking about graduation. Right of passage? Dancing naked around flames?

I was eating dinner with my dad the other day and we were eating french fries. Our faces were greasy and we stared at each other not really needing to say anything. Then I asked, “What was your graduation like?” and he said, “It was big, there were over a thousand people in my class. It was hot.” Then he called his classmate and best friend who he’s known for over fifty years, since they were four. “What was graduation like?” he asked. And then he passed the phone to me and the friend said, “I don’t really remember our graduation. It was hot.” Will I remember my graduation? Is it something important or all vile ceremonies?

Sometimes in senior sing I sit on the bleachers and smell the sweat from everyone around me and wonder: what will I remember? Do these moments of stifling hot gymnasium fumes and Tsuda’s voice and hilarious clichés make up something bigger and more substantial?

In the bridge the other day Anna said that she’ll miss the little interactions with people during the school day. Everyone agreed and said that most people in the class are not close friends but just people that they see everyday and occasionally converse with. I nodded my head and seemed to agree but when I actually thought about it, I won’t miss those people. It seems harsh but it isn’t, really. Everything naturally comes to an end and we all die with wishes clasped in our hands. Maybe it is better to accept the natural end of relationships and places and experiences.

I am very close at every moment to agonizing over the people that I laugh with during European History, or the person I sit next to in Senior Sing or assembly ever cycle, or maybe that one person I thought I’d be able to befriend if I had the chance. Or over the salad bar that I’ll never eat from again or the water fountain, oh dear water fountain, that was so cold and so refreshing. I’m very close to agonizing and pining away with my video camera watching the sparkling flow of the water cascade in the sunlight.

I don’t, though. I’m finely balanced on the edge of agonizing and not giving a fuck. I say goodbye to those people, whether in my head or out loud, and I may take a picture or two but mostly I just smell the sweat in Senior Sing, and the dust in the Bridge, and the fresh grass in the quad. I watch the sun through the slits in the gym windows, and the leaves fall onto the walkway, and the freshman dart nervously into their exam rooms this last week of high school (ever).

It all seems right. It didn’t happen to soon, or too late. I approve of the timeline, and mostly I laugh til I cry everytime I think about the beauty of it all.