Let me show you who she is in a single hour. On graduation day, Ella signed the Pledge of Allegiance on the 50-yard line — whipping wind, hundreds of people, no nerves. (ASL is one of her quieter talents, one I’m not sure everyone knows about.) Then she walked straight off to sing with the choir. Then she picked up her instrument for her final band performance. Three things, one hour, and she made all of it look easy.
That’s the part I want to talk about, because it’s not really about graduation. It’s about who she turned into while I wasn’t always paying enough attention.
Ella shares some of my best qualities and a few of my worst. We’re both relentless workers. We both stretch ourselves too thin — and honestly, I still don’t know if that’s a strength or a flaw. Maybe both. She held first chair oboe for her entire high school career, the only oboe in the program, because when her band director mentioned the concert band had no oboe players, she saw the opening and took it. Like her father, she’s an opportunist — and I mean that as the compliment it is.
Oboe and clarinet are her instruments, but that barely covers it. At the spring musical she played three. Last year I showed up to her jazz band show and watched her stand up and rip a saxophone solo I had no idea she had in her. At my parents’ 50th anniversary party, we were doing karaoke, and she learned Bohemian Rhapsody on oboe, right there on the spot — no sheet music, just picked it up and played it. To her it wasn’t a big deal. To me it was. A few years back the two of us tried to learn guitar together; she had it in days, and I’m still working on two chords in a row without falling apart.
I’d be leaving out the important part if I made it all sound easy, though.
Her middle school years were hard. Her mother and I separated right as COVID hit, and I didn’t make it easy on her. A lot of kids would have spent years cashing that in as an excuse, and no one would have blamed them. Ella just overcame it — and came out the other side kinder than the situation had any right to make her. Loyal to her friends, gentle with younger kids, always the first to try the thing she’s never done.
So a few things, kid, for the record.
Learn to say no when no is the right answer. Nobody is going to be as mad as you think they’ll be.
Keep working as hard as you do — just not at everything, all at once, all the time. I’m telling you this because I never learned it.
Keep making friends and learning from them. They’ll learn just as much from you.
And keep walking into the rooms that scare you. Your first one was Scar, the summer you played the villain in The Lion King at camp. You memorized every line in a day. Nobody else did. So you spent the whole show crushing your own part while muttering everyone else’s forgotten lines under your breath, mouthing their cues, carrying the entire production on your back. It was hilarious and it was completely you. You always find a way to crush it.
Here’s the thing I most need to say, though, and it isn’t about me.
I had my part in raising Ella. But I didn’t do the hard part. Her mother, Lisa, did the dirty work — the car trips, the mood swings, the slow patient shaping of a brilliant young woman, year after year. This past Friday we threw Ella a graduation party, and I spent the afternoon surrounded by the women who got her here: my wife, Kelly, who planned it alongside Lisa and keeps a board of “momisms” I know Ella leaned on more than she’ll ever admit — and Lisa, Ella’s mom, who made all of it possible. I don’t have enough words to thank her, so I’ll just say it plainly. Ella is who she is because of her mother.
So proud of you, Ella. Go get it.