CONVOCATION at McGill takes place under white tents, on the green lawns of the downtown campus, at the end of May. The weather can still be raw, which it was the weekend we attended. But after six years of ambivalence about university and a great deal of hard work Casey had earned his degree in history, and I thought it was something worth celebrating. Even if no one else in the family did.
Brian had spent the last few weeks in France, reporting from the Cannes Film Festival; he had just arrived back, jet-lagged and exhausted. In any case, ritual gatherings and convocations hold little appeal for him. He had skipped his own graduation, in fact. As for Casey,when I phoned him earlier to talk about plans, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go to the ceremony, or indeed what the point of it was.
Was I going to have to use a forklift to get everyone mobilized— and for what? Once again, I felt like I was singlehandedly trying to create a “family moment” in a vacuum. The train ride to Montreal with my semi-comatose husband was not very festive. There was no “Remember when he was in Miss Archer’s class and made that clever bridge out of toothpicks?”
But our ragged clan did assemble, on an overcast day with a cold wind that shivered the blossoms on the trees. As soon as we arrived in Montreal, Brian came down with a fever and a sore throat. He closed the curtains in our lovely hotel room and crawled under the covers. Casey and I had dinner in a restaurant down the street. The next day Brian announced that he was too sick to attend the ceremonies. “Being sick never kept you from showing up for band gigs,” I reminded him meanly. This father-and-son dismissal of social ritual (as I primly thought of it) was wearing thin. It also made me feel like the boring CEO of the family, trying to wrangle everyone into the stockholders’meeting.
But fine, I said, you stay in bed. No, I insist. I’ll go sit through the entire alphabet by myself. From under the covers, Brian replied that he’d try to show up later.
Casey Burke Marley Johnson. (Yes, that Bob Marley. No wonder he didn’t want to go to dental college.) I calculated that the Js would arrive roughly in the middle of several hours spent sitting on hard folding chairs in an unheated tent, watching polished young people, many going on to post-grad work in lucrative fields of study, cross the stage in their book-shaped caps and Oxonian robes.
I reached the campus in good time, I thought, only to discover that more diligent families had staked out their seats near the stage hours earlier. I found an empty chair toward the back and reserved it with my coat. Then I went behind the tent and followed the long serpentine line of grads until I spotted Casey, in his bachelor robe with the white fur around the hood (the “arts” fur) and a tasselled cap perched on his springy hair. Always a sucker for costumes, he was getting in the spirit of things. He was wearing his Ray-Bans, too, even though the day was overcast.
Casey had only thought to invite his girlfriend, Rebecca, and his roommates the night before so he wasn’t sure they would turn up. Wow, good sense of occasion, I thought glumly. At least our party of two wouldn’t need to make special reservations for lunch.
I went back to my chair under the Big Top. Families were milling about the lawns, getting yearbooks signed and taking photographs, as the girls’ high heels sank into the grass. Nobody in our family cares about this occasion except me, I thought morosely and . . . why did I care again? I had forgotten. And come to think of it, why hadn’t I pursued a career as a cabaret singer like Marianne Faithful?
Then I saw Brian striding across the lawn with a scarf around his neck, carrying a large tea.
“I took some Advils,” he said, sitting down beside me.
I studied the program and counted the list of arts graduates. Three hundred and sixty-five. But I had to admit that whoever announced the names of the students as each one came to the stage was giving it his all.
Thomas . . . William . . . Cullen . . . Please come forward!
There is something about an unadorned list of names that is mysteriously moving. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, that long black granite wall, got it right. Every time a new name was announced and another grad crossed the stage, a pocket of cheers would rise up from their family in the crowd. Tears came to my eyes, and I didn’t know why; it was the wedding moment, of witnessing hope and promise, while knowing that life will test that hope in ways that couldn’t be imagined now.
Finally Casey was inside the tent, a few yards from the edge of the platform. He craned around in the line, spotted us in the crowd, and waved. He was still wearing his Ray-Bans and grinning. James Dean, B.A. I assumed he would pocket the sunglasses before he crossed the stage but, no, he left them on, loping across the platform and warmly shaking the chancellor’s hand with both hands, like T. Bone Burnett getting an award at the Grammies.
I thought this tiny act of subversion was harmless enough, but months later we learned that it had set a historical precedent; henceforth, the wearing of sunglasses was officially banned from McGill Convocation exercises.
Well, it wasn’t a fellowship but it did represent a contribution to the academic world.
Rebecca and several other friends had showed up just in time to watch Casey cross the stage. They whistled and whooped; heading off stage, Casey waved the paper baton of his diploma in the air—he had graduated “With Distinction,” which was news to me—and flashed his smile. I insisted on witnessing the rest of the students right down to Zwicker, and then we gathered on the lawn. Brian’s hue was slowly changing from grey to pink, now that the captive-audience part was over. Even the spring sun had made an appearance.
We took pictures of our son and his friends, then of him riding his bike around the lawn in robe, cap, and sunglasses.
“I get it now,” Casey said to us, who also likes a good wedding. “Thanks for coming.”
After the ceremony,we took the group out for lunch at a sunny, high-ceilinged bistro on Bernard Ave. There were other families there as well, celebrating, and solo diners reading newspapers on the patio. It was the sort of Montreal place where Sunday brunch goes on for hours, as if Monday will never arrive.