2009 Grad!

Cindy,

It really doesn’t seem all that long ago that I held you in my arms and looked down with wonder at your happy, smiling face. Through the years I’ve watched with pride as you’ve grown from a child into a woman. It’s a journey that I’m honored to have been a part of, a journey that showed me as much about myself as it did about you.

And what a journey! You and I have had some wonderful times together. There has been laughter and tears, joy and sadness, hope and pain, but through it all you have kept moving forward with a smile on your face.

Well, today marks the close of another part of that journey, as you graduate from high school and get ready to start college in the fall, and like all endings it leaves me with mixed emotions. Just as you are both happy and sad that high school is ending, I find myself feeling both happy and sad that my little girl is growing up.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I walked you into the first day of kindergarten, holding your hand, not wanting to let you go. Then rushing home to watch the clock, anxious to get back to school and pick you up, worrying needlessly about you.

There have been many different phases that we’ve gone through together, and I was sitting here this morning thinking about some of them.

• There was the ‘send Cindy in through the window because Dad locked us out of the apartment again’ phase… (which popped up again several years later when I sent you in through the sunroof because I locked the keys in our car!)
• There was the ‘eagle eye’ phase…
• There was the ‘bring Cindy to work because I couldn’t find a babysitter’ phase…
• There was the ‘make Cindy bring a walkie-talkie with her when she rides her bike down the street because I’m nervous when she’s out of my sight’ phase…
• There have been girlfriends, boyfriends, new friends, old friends, and the ‘no longer friends’… Things are ‘hot’ one minute and ‘not’ the next… Sometimes it is hard to keep up!

Oh, there have been some challenges too, and I know that you will face many more challenges as you move forward and begin creating a life of your own, but I also know that if you approach those challenges with the same love and courage that you have now, that you will find your way in life and you will be happy.

Cindy, I’m so proud of all that you have accomplished, all that you have created, and all that you have done with your life so far… I can’t wait to see what the future will hold for you!

Love,

Dad

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