It is Friday, June 5, at 10 AM. Acalanes graduates tonight — football field, 6 PM call time, gates open at 5. The cap is on the dresser. The gown is hanging on the back of the bedroom door, still in its plastic. Grandma flew in last night and is in the guest room. The relatives from Sacramento are driving down at noon. The party is tomorrow, so today is just the ceremony, which means today is just the waiting.
There are eight hours to fill. Nobody knows how to fill them.
This is the strangest morning of the year in Lamorinda. Allow me to walk you through it.
5:47 AM — Someone Was Up Early
It is not the graduate. The graduate slept until 9:40 and is currently eating cereal in pajamas. It is the mother, who has been awake since 5:47 because she remembered, in a single jolt, that the photographer wants to start at 3:30 and the corsage for grandma is not yet picked up and did anyone confirm the dinner reservation for tomorrow night. She is now on her second coffee, in athleisure, making a list on the back of an envelope. The list has seventeen items. By 11 AM the list will have forty-three.
7:15 AM — The Father, in the Garage
He has decided, this morning of all mornings, that the driveway needs to be power-washed before the relatives arrive. He has not power-washed the driveway since 2022. The power washer is in the back of the garage behind the bins of holiday decorations. He is now blocking the entire garage with bins. The car cannot get out. This was not on the list.
The father will spend ninety minutes on this project, achieve roughly 40% completion, and abandon it when the mother needs the car. The half-clean driveway will be visible in every group photo tomorrow.
8:30 AM — Trader Joe’s, Lafayette Location
The Trader Joe’s on Mt. Diablo Boulevard is full of graduation morning. You can spot them. They have a focused, slightly haunted expression. They are buying: a bag of ice, mini brioche rolls, the everything-but-the-bagel cream cheese, a vegetable platter (for the grandmother who “doesn’t really eat the heavy stuff”), three bottles of prosecco, a bouquet of orchids, and a single banana, for some reason. The single banana is not for tonight. The single banana is just because their hand reached for a banana the way it does every Tuesday and they are running on autopilot.
The Trader Joe’s cashier has had this conversation 11 times this morning: “Big day?” “Yeah, Acalanes.” “Congratulations!” “Thanks!”
The Trader Joe’s parking lot at 8:30 AM today contains a higher concentration of black Lululemon and Acalanes Don Family Sweatshirts than at any other point in the calendar year.
9:15 AM — The Graduate Surfaces
The graduate appears in the kitchen in a t-shirt and shorts, hair sideways, phone in hand, and asks if there is any of the sourdough left. The mother stops mid-list. Today is your graduation, she says. The graduate says yeah, I know, and pours cereal into a bowl. He has been to the senior breakfast already, three weeks ago. He has had his last day of finals. He has signed yearbooks. He has been graduating, in a process sense, for six weeks. Tonight is the part where they call his name and he walks across a stage. He understands this. He is not nervous. He is mostly thinking about whether his friend Justin’s mom is making the Costco baked ziti for tomorrow because last year hers was insane.
The mother looks at him for a long second. Her own eyes are getting just slightly wet. I made you cinnamon rolls, she says. They’re in the oven. The graduate, without looking up: Thanks Mom. He eats the cereal. The cinnamon rolls do not get opened until 1 PM.
10:00 AM — The First Phone Call from Grandma
Grandma is in the guest room. She has been up since 6:30. She has been quiet, she insists, but she has also re-organized the linen closet and folded a load of towels and made a small pot of coffee for herself in the Keurig that she does not actually know how to use, which is why there is a small puddle of water on the counter. She emerges at 10:00 sharp, fully dressed, asking what the plan is. Plan for what? the mother says. For the day, Grandma says. For getting there.
The ceremony is at 6 PM. They will leave at 4:45. It is 10 AM. The plan, technically, is to wait. But Grandma did not fly in from Phoenix to wait. Grandma needs to be Useful. Grandma is given the assignment of making the cheese plate for the post-ceremony arrivals, which is a task that will take her ninety minutes and produce a cheese plate of staggering, almost diplomatic complexity. There will be crackers in four shapes. There will be quince paste. The cheese plate will be the best cheese plate Lamorinda has ever seen and nobody will eat it because everyone will be at Postino afterward.
10:45 AM — The Father Returns from Home Depot
He went for “one thing.” He has returned with seven things, none of which were the original one thing. He has, however, run into three other Acalanes dads in the parking lot. Each conversation was approximately four minutes long. Each conversation ended with “see you tonight.” Each man has the exact same haunted-but-cheerful look. They are all power-washing something. They are all going to abandon it by noon.
11:30 AM — The Iron Comes Out
The gown is wrinkled. The gown is deeply wrinkled. It has been in plastic on a hanger for six days. The mother is now ironing the gown on the dining room table because the ironing board is buried in the laundry room. She is using a damp towel as a press cloth, the way her own mother taught her in 1986. The graduate’s gown is now the most cared-for object in the house.
The cap is the next problem. The cap has no shape. The cap is a square of cardboard wrapped in shiny black polyester. There is no way to make it look correct. The tassel has been on the right side, then the left side, then the right side, while the family debates which way it is supposed to be for before the conferral. (For the record: at Acalanes, the tassel starts on the right and moves to the left after the diploma is handed over. It is in the program. Nobody reads the program.)
12:30 PM — The Sacramento Relatives Arrive
Two minivans pull into the driveway, which has been roughly 40% power-washed. Eight people get out. Three of them are children. One is a dog, against the no-dogs agreement that was reached on the family group chat in April. The dog is named Biscuit. Biscuit immediately runs onto the half-clean driveway and tracks soapy footprints onto the doormat. The mother says it’s fine in a voice that is not fine. Grandma loves Biscuit. Biscuit will be at the cheese plate within ninety seconds.
Lunch is a fend-for-yourself buffet: leftover lasagna from Wednesday, that Trader Joe’s vegetable platter, the cinnamon rolls (finally opened), and three boxes of Pizza My Heart that the father ordered at 12:10 because he panicked. The Sacramento cousins are happy. The graduate eats two pieces of pizza and disappears upstairs to change into the suit.
2:00 PM — The Suit Crisis
The suit, which was bought at Nordstrom in Walnut Creek in mid-May, no longer fits the way it did in May. The graduate has either grown half an inch or lost two pounds, or both, and the pants are now an inch too long. There is no time to hem. The solution is a roll of double-sided fashion tape that the mother bought in 2019 for a wedding and has kept in a drawer for exactly this moment. The pants are now taped to the inside of the shoe. They look fine. They will hold.
This is also when the graduate quietly says Mom, I’m a little nervous. The mother says of course you are and hugs him for slightly too long and they both pretend not to be crying.
3:15 PM — The Photographer Arrives
She is a Lamorinda graduation photographer, on her second family of the day, with one more after this. She has the location scouted (the front porch, the side garden with the hydrangea, the backyard with the oak tree). She arranges the family in approximately 90 seconds. She takes 600 photos in forty minutes. She gets two of them with everyone, including Biscuit, looking at the camera at the same time. Those two will be the cards.
4:35 PM — The Caravan
The two minivans plus the family car plus Grandma’s rental car form a caravan to Acalanes. The graduate is in the family car. The gown is on his lap. The cap is in his hand. The tassel is, as of this moment, on the left, which is wrong. Nobody has the heart to correct it. They will figure it out in the parking lot.
Pleasant Hill Road is exactly as bad as predicted. The caravan loses cohesion at the Stanley Boulevard light. The Sacramento minivans take a wrong turn. The dog is still at the house, with Grandma’s sister, who decided to skip the ceremony and stay back to “manage the cheese plate.” The cheese plate, of course, is fine. The cheese plate has been fine for hours.
5:55 PM — Bleachers
The family is in the bleachers. The light over the Lafayette hills is the kind of long, slanted, late-spring gold that makes everything look slightly underexposed. The football field is full of folding chairs. The band is playing Pomp and Circumstance. The graduates are walking in.
The mother is crying immediately. The father is filming on his phone in landscape mode like a person who knows what he’s doing. Grandma is searching the line for her grandson and is convinced she sees him at least four times before she actually does.
He walks across the stage. They call his name the way they have practiced it. He shakes the principal’s hand. He moves the tassel. He grins.
It was just an evening, in the end. Eight hours of waiting for forty seconds of walking. Both of these things are real. Both of these things are the day.
8:30 PM — Postino
Postino’s terrace is full. The Lafayette Park Hotel bar is full. Social Bird is full. Half of Lafayette is in dress clothes with a teenager in a slightly oversized blazer at the table. The graduates have their caps on the tables. They are eating bread like they have not eaten in days. They are starving.
The mother orders a second glass of wine. The father orders the steak. The graduate orders a burger. Grandma orders the lasagna special and falls asleep, gently, in her chair, at 9:45 PM, head against the wall, with a small smile on her face. Nobody wakes her. Tomorrow is the party. The cheese plate is waiting.
The hours before the hours are over. The actual hour was always going to be enough.
Companion pieces in this week’s graduation series: The Lamorinda Supply Chain You Didn’t Know Existed for the off-stage version of this same day, Saturday: The Party for tomorrow, and The In-Between Week for what Lamorinda looks like Monday morning.
