A Month of Transition

May has been termed the busiest month for social engagements, and you can understand why. Weddings, graduations, First Communions - so many events!The focus of May is age-dependent, I suppose. My Facebook news feed has been filled with photos of graduates. My friends' kids, all grown up and moving on.So I thought back to my own college graduation day. Acknowledging our junior year abroad in Switzerland, my friend Peter and I hitchhiked downtown. We did! In black caps and gowns, we walked to Eaton Street and stuck our thumbs out. A car stopped. Three girls in school uniforms welcomed us into their vehicle and drove us downtown to the Providence Civic Center (long before it was the Dunkin' Donuts Center). It only took about ten minutes, a much shorter ride than the ones we'd accepted to Besançon or Saint-Raphaël.A week ago those same Facebook pages were filled with images of moms - moms my age, moms passed on, new moms cradling infants. This is social media, a way for some to express joy, accomplishment, grief. Sharing life's highs and lows (more often the highs) with everyone they know (and many they don't know).But here we are, ushering in summer in New England after one of the longest and coldest winters I can remember. Some can't wait, wearing shorts and flip-flops in 66-degree sunshine. Who can blame them, really? That green mist that rested lightly on the trees has morphed into thick leafiness. There's yellow and pink and lavender so pretty it makes us forget (briefly) about what we had to endure to get to this day. New beginnings - for couples, new parents, and those graduates, who will either move back home or venture forth on their own. It's a world of possibility, and that's a very good thing.