Remember your son's first day of kindergarten? His hair trimmed just so and a new backpack hanging from his small shoulders, he tentatively took his first steps away from your world and began making his own way in life.
Remember the little girl who curled up in your lap again and again to hear about
Goldilocks and the Three Bears? Overnight, it seems, she turned into a confident young woman who has proven true your oft-repeated advice that there wasn't anything she couldn't do or be that she set her mind to.
Where did the time go?
An estimated 58,000 seniors at about 1,400 Arizona high schools already have or soon will receive their diplomas this month and in early June.
Some will attend college, from the University of San Diego to Yale University and many schools in between, and others will find jobs. Some will marry and move out; others will continue living at home.
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Each possibility is prompting a medley of emotions - pride, relief, elation, ambivalence, a sense of loss. For parents watching their baby cross the dais, flashbacks of this child's other firsts - talking, walking, driving - bring a lump to the throat. The cruel reality:
"Separation starts at birth," said Alvin Rosenfeld, a psychiatrist in New York City and co-author of
The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap (St. Martin's Griffin, 2001, $13.95 paperback). "It's a constant process, bit by bit they're gaining independence.
"Your job as a parent is to love your children deeply and unconditionally, and then lose them to a stranger," whether that be a person or a place, Rosenfeld said. "A job well done is a job in which they jilt you for someone or something else."
For all, graduation is a night to remember.
Nishi and Anant Raman will watch their eldest, Priya, graduate next Thursday from Chandler High. The 17-year-old will attend Yale in the fall. Nishi Raman said she's thankful she still has a son, 14-year-old Puneet, at home.
"I've already told him, 'When you graduate, you have to go to the same city where she's going, so I can just move there, too,' " said the Chandler mom, 46.
Raman's feelings of sadness about graduation began to surface earlier this month, when her daughter went to the prom.
"We were taking pictures, and it was just like a flashback, the whole scene when I brought her home from the hospital, when I was holding her," she said. "She's a very good friend, more than just being a daughter."
Raman will miss Priya's sense of humor.
"She has the ability to make anyone laugh," Raman said. "The lightheartedness of her is what I'm going to miss the most."
Parents graduating the baby of the family may look forward to an empty nest, from which they'll watch that child further spread his or her wings.
Joseph and Vicky Feldman have felt their youngest son, Sam, pulling away from them throughout high school. The 17-year-old, who will graduate from North High in Phoenix Thursday has been busy with school and volunteering and will attend the University of Arizona this fall.
"It's the end of one phase and the continuation of a new phase of watching Sam turn into a man," said Joseph Feldman, 50, of Phoenix. "My stepfather always said, 'It's good to know the man you've become,' and that's always stuck in my head. Your children become adults, and if you're really lucky, you get to know them as adults."
Feldman said he's most proud of Sam's leadership awards from Madison Meadows School in Phoenix, where he created a program for eighth-graders, and the Shannon Smith Memorial Community Service Award, named after the young woman who was killed in June 1999 in her back yard by a random bullet.
"This kid's going to do great things in his life, and it'll be fun to watch," Feldman said.
For many parents, graduation brings fond memories of their own rite of passage.
It did for Margie Beltran, whose heart swelled with pride Monday when her daughter, Valerie, 18, received her diploma from Apollo High in Glendale. She was the first among her two older brothers and five cousins on her mother's side to graduate; her mother was the first and only among her siblings and cousins to finish high school.
"It was in her from a very young age - she went out and did things on her own," said Beltran, 48, whose daughter was involved in marching band, volleyball, the school newspaper and Glendale's youth advisory commission.
Valerie Beltran had 20 family members cheering for her at graduation, including her 65-year-old grandmother, Minnie Andrade,
and her 3-year-old cousin,
Victoria Andrade.
Margie Beltran said she'll always cherish the evening.
"It was wonderful - really exciting," she said Tuesday. "I tried to hold back (the tears), but it's joy, it's not a hurt feeling, it's just joy."
No matter how many times you've witnessed graduation as a parent, it never stops being special. Just ask Shara-Dee Seiter.
Aaron Seiter wasn't born yet when his oldest brother, Bret, graduated from Corona del Sol High in Tempe in 1985. Bret Seiter's other siblings followed suit: Paul (1988), Jana (1989), Nathan (1992), Alan (1994), Juliana (1996), Jonathan (1998), Brandon (2000) and Liann (2002).
Aaron, 18, will be the 10th child of Shara-Dee and Steve Seiter to flip his mortarboard tassel at festivities Thursday. He plans to attend Brigham Young University in the fall.
"I probably should be sad," laughed the 57-year-old mom, who can do this graduation thing in her sleep. "But I'm not at all. I'm so excited and thrilled that he's done so well."
And proud that she and her husband have "hung in there to the end being parents."
Stevie King won't even attempt blinking back the tears Thursday when her daughter, Sarah, graduates from North High.
"I can't not be emotional," said King, of Phoenix. "I've said to myself, 'It doesn't matter who's looking.' "
Sarah, 17, lived this school year with her father, who's divorced from King. That forced her mother to let go a bit and watch her youngest child become "the boss" of herself, something Sarah has long wanted. King thinks her Arizona State University-bound girl, who wants to become a virologist, is ready.
"She could go anywhere - she could be in England, Japan, Australia," King said. "But wherever she lands, she'll be off to great things. I just know it."
Reach the reporter, whose second son, Joel, is graduating Thursday, at (602) 444-8998.