As graduation season arrives once again, it seems fitting to revisit another thoughtful column written by Ann Melvin, this time in 1980. Though written more than four decades ago, long before our current environment of wifi, Google and IPhones , the reflections on friendship, faith in young people, and the challenge of finding the “right” graduation gift still resonate today.To match the memories of yesterday, a photo from the 1980 MVHS School annual is included. – Ken Greer
By Ann Melvin
Editorial Staff writer, Dallas Morning News
Mike is graduating from high school this weekend and I’ve been looking for a suitable graduation present.
Everything seems so, well, inadequate.
I went into this store. “I’m looking for a graduation present.”
The saleslady knew her way around this dilemma. “Matching towels for the dormitory? A book? A thesaurus? All college-bound kids need a good thesaurus. How about an electric pencil sharpener?”
I thought about Mike. My son’s good friend, Mike. Our good, gangly, young friend, Mike. Mike’s pretty mother. Mike in my kitchen. Mike in the parking lot. Mike’s dad, cheering him around third base.
“Do you have anything like, uh, a marching band?”
She eyed me coolly. “Perhaps you should try records.”
“Yes,” I said, “marching bands, trumpets, drums, bugles. Flags waving. Girls screaming. And the dust rolling ahead of them, rising in a halo around the banner saying, ‘Yea for Mike!’”
She tried again. “He’s going to college?”
I looked up. “Uh, oh, uh, yes. College.”
She began showing me appliances for cooking in dormitory rooms.
“What we need,” I was thinking, “what we really need is not bands. It’s a symphony. A symphony playing a light trill of celebration above a grander theme of longing and wistfulness and aspiration. Then perhaps a brave marching movement, some lonely themes of self-doubt and heartache and then a grand finale of confidence and strength.”
“A great crescendo,” I said out loud.
“Perhaps you ought to try records,” she said again, and edged away.
Actually, I thought, stumbling from the store, it ought to be something lighthearted, something unexpected. Like skywriting. Maybe a biplane spelling out, “Watch Out World, Here Comes Mike.”
I lurked along the mall looking in windows. Aimless.
Well, I wish I had done something thoughtful and so very personal ahead of time. Like make a book, a scrapbook of old photographs from all the years we’ve known Mike: jumping off the board at the pool, fixing bikes in the driveway. How about that shot of his red-haired mother drumming her freckled little feet on the stand seats when Mike caught the impossible ball in far left field to make the essential out that eventually defeated my son’s team? Or the picture of him working that first night at Wendy’s? And then the picture of him pulling up to the house in his first car.
Shots of him fixing his little sister’s handle on her thingamajig, going up for a basket against his brother and my boys, lounging on the den floor watching some dumb game and munching chips, grinning as he teased his mother.
That would make a nice book. Trouble is, my brain is a camera without negative film, and I cannot reproduce for others the images I have of Mike. The only Kodak print I have of him is from the Christmas he came and helped decorate the tree. He was a junior in high school then. In this sentimental record, two boys are standing in front of the tree; my son scratching his foot, standing behind Mike who is looking into the camera, eyes crossed, tongue hanging out.
Oh, what can we give the graduate? Billboards, bonds and billfolds. Perhaps something gold — well, maybe silver — engraved with a synthesis of all the knowledge we have accumulated and, at this wrenching juncture in his young life, feel compelled to pass along:
“All good things in their own good time, Mike,” or “Part of the art is to know when to move along,” or “Mark your own roads, buddy.”
Well, I guess I’ll wrap a billfold and give it to him and in a rushed, bashful voice tell him, “Hey, Mike, I’ve got a lot of faith in you.”
I hope he hears me. It is true.
And in a world like this, that faith in Mike is, after all, our greatest gift.
And still inadequate.
