My twins are on track to graduate from high school in June. Their GPAs are shiny, their extra curriculars squeezed in like commuters on the subway. We have opened the conversation about white dresses. Plans are in place to travel to Europe for college, and I have already stocked up on tissues for our adioses and au revoirs. 

 

But routines in my part of the world and probably yours have been disrupted of late. 

 

School has been cancelled, at least the part where you load up a backpack and head out the door. Learning will hopefully continue by virtual means. Events such as dance rehearsals, the oratorical, coffee houses and the prom hang in an uncertain time line. Where they will land, if at all, remains to be seen. 

 

Graduation is like threading a needle under the best of circumstances, what with missed assignments, and an under diagnosed condition called senioritis. But in the melee of health concerns currently sucking up all the oxygen in the news, this milestone of education may be compromised. 

 

My mother told me the story of her own exit from high school. The war was in full throttle and boys thrust into manhood were drafted in waves. The administration cobbled together ceremonies to pronounce them finished in the days before they stepped with a duffel bag on a train platform and into the unknown. Mom said that when she and her class stood in a line of lily white gowns there were only two boys left, one with a missing arm and another with a heart condition. 

 

Would it be possible for a homegrown seventeen year old to comprehend what he had signed on for? A sense of patriotism and courage based on comic books fueled their zeal to take up the fight. Hitler must be stopped, and they could not stand idly by. 

 

Things are different now. For one, girls are eligible for the military. For another, news travels at an accelerated speed and capacity compared to 1944. But fears are still rampant, and tears are as wet as they were in my mother's day. 

 

They called hers the Greatest Generation. I am clueless about how such metrics take hold. Is it based on the travesties they faced, or their response to them? 

 

This week I have witnessed people going outside the recommended parameters of social distancing, to give help. There are offers of food and supplies for the elderly or isolated. I suppose it is possible that the ramifications of recent attacks on the very fibers of society could render us as shiny and great as what has been recorded in the history books being read online.