Graduation (Friends Forever)

We are now in the very center of the trio of months that for well over a year I’d been anticipating as much as I’d been dreading. I knew rolling into 2021 that May, June, and July were going to be especially emotional for me. These emotions come from the fact that so many of my favorite people all happen to be graduating high school this year and graduations always get the best of my emotions.

Seven of my babies are all growing up and making me face the harsh reality that one day they’ll all be older than me as I remain a steadfast twenty-nine years young. This is a hard pill to swallow given the immense amount of time I’ve known each of them, but nonetheless, it’s the reality we’re all faced with. I want to take this opportunity now to congratulate each of them and share with you all how much I love each one.

Appropriately kicking my emotions into high gear was none other than The Original Sweet himself, Cody. When Melissa and I showed up at the end of May to celebrate him at his graduation party, I amazed myself by managing to not cry as we stood there looking over the dual poster boards covered in adorable photos of Sweet Cody. I’ve known this little angel since he was two years old, so I remember him through all the stages of his life that we were standing there viewing in pictures, still though, I kept it together. I was even featured on two prominent occasions and managed to hold back my tears. Amazing.

Melissa and I were there for several hours and had the most wonderful time talking to so many of the people who helped shape Cody into the absolutely perfect young man he is today, but when it came time for us to finally leave, I found myself incapable of saving my tears for another day. Cody’s smart, he’s bypassing college and avoiding all that unnecessary debt and heading straight into a good paying job in construction, which he’s already started and thus far enjoys. This isn’t a knock against anyone else – I myself am a college graduate – but college isn’t as necessary for life as society wants us to believe, but that’s another blog for another day. I’ve literally said it probably a million times and I’ll happily say it a million more, but I’m so proud of Cody for being the outstanding individual he is. I know I call a lot of people, places, and things, “the best,” but I couldn’t honestly mean it more than when I use that terminology to describe Cody. He really is simply the best, better than all the rest.

Proving his bestness, he went to Hawaii for two weeks with his equally perfect girlfriend, Kaylee, and her awesome family and prior to leaving for this picturesque trip, Cody created a Snapchat group to simplify his sharing of photos. In this group he added his dad, his mom, his grandma, and me. AND ME! You all already know my eyes were full of tears when this happened. Like I said, he’s the best.

The first weekend of June gave Melissa and I the privilege of celebrating our niece, Madison, and in all honesty, she couldn’t be more impressive. She’s an incredibly talented musician who writes and records her own material, which I can say has only strengthened in sound as she’s grown more mature and capable in her craft. She even mixed and recorded a song I wrote, “Demons of the Sea” from my blog of the same name telling of my immense fear of sharks. Despite the regrettable fact that she did this well over a year ago and I have yet to hear more than a mere snippet, doesn’t negate the fact that she did it and she did it well. Madison when you read this, I expect you to get me my song! Aside from her seemingly never-ending musical talents the one thing I admire most about Madison is just how comfortable Madison is with being Madison. She’s never trying to be anyone she isn’t, she’s incredibly confident and comfortable with herself and who she is and I respect and admire that so much about her. While so many of her contemporaries are still trying to discover who they are, Madison knows who she is, which will make her a formidable force as she propels herself into her future. I love this girl and cannot wait to see what she does next when she attends Lewis and Clark Community College this fall. Additionally, she had the best lil’ thank you’s at her graduation party: lottery scratch offs accompanied one of her adorable senior pictures and because of her genius, I won a $1! Great Success!

My could-be nephew, Daniel, is another 2021 graduate and while he’s by far the freshest on my list as I didn’t get the privilege of knowing him till 2017 when he was already fifteen, this by no means diminishes my love for him. Finishing high school with a 4.7 GPA, Daniel is exceptionally brilliant. We recently toured the Cutesville campus of Southwestern Illinois College together where Daniel will be earning his Associates in Applied Sciences – FOR FREE – because he ranked in the top 10% of his graduating class! An absolutely spectacular accomplishment given just how many kids were in his graduating class (I don’t know the exact number, but it hovers around 400)! The experience of this tour with him made me most excited for his future and the possibilities he’ll gift himself with once he’s achieved his eventual degree in Electrical Engineering. His brilliance knows no bounds and I cannot wait to see where life takes him.

Before we leave the aforementioned Illinoisans behind and head out to the golden coast where the remaining four of my seven graduating babies all reside and I’ll see in July, I want to congratulate all the high school graduates I work alongside at TJ Maxx: Emma, Jalen, Kristi, Asjah, Kennedy, Meagan, Katie, and of course my perceived favorite, Eli, as well as anyone else I may be forgetting. Y’all just the best!

The first of the four is Colsen, he’s been Logan’s best friend forever and an intricate part of all the triplets lives. This kid is absolutely amazing in every sense of the word. Just like how I mentioned Madison’s completely comfortable in her own skin and with who she is, Colsen is the exact same. Since the day I met him back in 2014, Colsen’s been 100% authentic and true to himself. He’s an all-star athlete having played football and hockey all throughout high school and his love for fishing and the great outdoors are inevitably what has encouraged him to attend university at the Marine Mechanics Institute in Orlando, Florida. The best part of him attending school down there is the fact that one of the great magnetic forces of my life, Walt Disney World, is also there, so there’ll be plenty of opportunity for Melissa and I to visit him throughout his university years, beginning with this October when we head that way to celebrate Disney World’s 50th anniversary! Colsen is undoubtedly one of the most genuine people I’ve ever known and I have no doubt in my mind that he will achieve the most wonderful life. I honestly couldn’t be more excited for him!

Now for a quick lil’ story about the triplets before I gush over them.

My first time meeting Logan, Garrett, and Gabby was one that I’ll never, ever forget. It was one of those endless summer nights and I had just arrived back to my new home in Temecula, California where I’d been living up to that point for just a couple weeks – like literally two. I was managing the Men’s Sportswear Department at the Macy’s in Mission Viejo, California and my commute to and from work was a solid hour each way. Needless to say, I would typically arrive home a little bit exhausted, especially those nights I had to close the store down.

Once home on this particular evening in late May 2014, I walked inside my house, but as soon as I did, I saw six little kids all running about aimlessly. I was instantly shook, so I froze and stood there for several moments wondering who in the world these children were and what in the world was going on. After several seemingly eternal seconds of me standing there awkwardly like a deer in the headlights, I’d caught the attention of the six and they all stopped what they were doing to stare right back at me. Instantly, I panicked, and rushed back outside the house to my car parked on the street.

I was convinced I’d walked into the wrong home, so I immediately called my California Dad, Mark, to help bail me out of this stressful and strange situation. When he answered and listened to my abrupt ramblings of the last few minutes of my life, he just laughed and told me to get back inside the house. I did as he said and there he was with three other adults and the six kids.

Mark introduced me to two of his friends and pointed at three of the kids, two girls and a boy, informing me they were their triplets. He then shared that the other three, two boys and a girl, were Danielle’s triplets. Danielle is Mark’s girlfriend, who I’d actually met a week earlier while shopping at Macy’s with Mark’s two oldest sons. We all got a good laugh out of my panic and confusion and from it I got a first encounter I’ll never forget. This was the first of what has become a lifetime of memories I now share with Logan, Garrett, and Gabby.

I very much hope you recall because his pictures are phenomenal, but Logan once did a guest blog for me, Co-Pilot Photography. I titled that post the way I did because when Logan was little, I’d always call him my co-pilot and that had nothing to do with the fact that of the four California kids, he was the only one who got to sit in the front seat of my car. After our fantastical seventeen hour days at Disneyland, Logan would remain the only one awake with me on the hour long car ride home; Logan could always be counted on to help me best navigate around town (and sometimes even through life); and Logan would always tag along with me anytime I had to go get even the most simplest of items for whatever it was our makeshift California family had going on. More so than anything else and anyone else, Logan is dependable and that dependability has earned him much success.

Like Colsen, Logan also played hockey throughout his formative years (they were on the same team) bringing his skillset and dependability to each and every game. Attending his games while I lived out there were truly some of the highlights of my California life and seeing photos and receiving Snapchats of them during the four years I wasn’t able to attend continued to bring me great joy. You all know how much I love a good picture and so many of my favorites were taken by Logan. If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to check out his guest blog I linked above, I know you’ll love it. Logan will be attending California State San Marcos in the fall with his eyes set on a degree in Marketing, but it’s my secret hope he keeps one of those eyes behind a lens because I firmly believe he has true gift. Wherever life takes Logan, he can be depended on to ensure success for himself and those around him.

Garrett, or Sweet Baby Garrett, as I’ve called him for all these years truly is the sweetest kid ever – he is the ONLY ONE who can rival aforementioned Sweet Cody – and of the triplets, he has always been the baby of the group and I truly mean that in the best of ways. He personifies best what it means to be a little brother. There were times when he was eleven, twelve, thirteen, that he would just drive me crazy – and NOT like the smash hit song by Britney Spears – but by being as annoyingly little kiddish as he could. Initially I would holler at him to cut out whatever irritating thing he was doing, but when I realized my hollers seemed to be falling on deaf ears, I conceived another form a punishment. I called it Hug Discipline.

Anytime Garrett poked Gabby, complained about whatever, said something nonsensical, didn’t follow the rest of us as we moved from one area of the store to the next, whatever incorrect thing he did, he earned himself a hug, really irritating things got him two. Then when it came time for us to go to dinner, see a movie, whatever, I would make him pay off all his hug debt before we could go inside. Garrett thought it was so embarrassing to have to give me those hugs in public, but my method worked, slowly yet surely he quit doing the things that earned him those hugs. I found Hug Discipline to be so much more effective than screaming and yelling ever once was and I credit it with the level of trust that Garrett and I now have with one another.

Garrett is the only other person who has access to verybeneficial.net besides myself. Honest to God there is no one else I would trust with my site than him. He takes care of all the behind-the-scenes technical work and while I’m incredibly biased, I think he does THE BEST job ever. He has always had a knack for this craft though, going back to his middle school years when he was a 3D printing machine – obviously not literally – but figuratively he was printing all kinds of amazing things. As a parting gift when I moved from California back to Illinois he printed me an incredibly appropriate Baby Groot (a Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy character) that still sits in the center of my dresser. Garrett has always been phenomenal with technology, which is why he’s heading to California State Northridge for Mechanical Engineering and like I’ve mentioned to him many times before, just like Moana, no one knows how far he’ll go.

One could argue that I’ve gone and saved the best for last, my girl, Gabby. When I left California and gave the four kids each a personalized Coca-Cola contour bottle with the name I’d coined for each of them, I feel like I got all the boys correct, still do in fact, but Gabby’s I got embarrassingly wrong. I always thought Gabby and Colsen would end up falling in love and live happily ever after – this was not the mistake because they’re both equally amazing – but what was the mistake was coining Gabby as “Gabby Mercier” (her first name, Colsen’s last). Shame. On. Me.

Gabby has never needed anyone to help define her, regardless of how amazing that individual might be. She has always been strong, sophisticated, intelligent, and independent and these traits of hers have only been magnified as she’s aged. With Logan, I’ll facetime him and we’ll talk for ten minutes, fifteen on a good day. Garrett I can easily do a hour with if we have blog stuff to discuss. Gabby though, we’ve had many two hours plus conversations because she’s so insightful and aware of life. Not just her own, but the world in which we live in. And let’s just be real here, both she and I are serious talkers, two hours is pretty much our minimum. I love hearing her perspective on all things and appreciate her feedback immensely. She has a heart of gold and is one of the most driven and determined individuals I’ve ever known who I could not possibly be more proud of. Despite her flawless track record in school consisting of a perfect GPA, hundreds of hours of community service, president of all her clubs, and plenty of awards and recognitions, she had quite the bumpy road when it came time for university acceptance. Everything happens for a reason though, which is why I think the opportunity for her that she accepted at University California Merced, where she’ll be studying biology, is going to be the perfect fit and open to her countless doors. No doubt about it, the future is hers.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE 2021 GRADUATES, BUT ESPECIALLY THESE SEVEN BABIES! I LOVE Y’ALL SO MUCH AND AM SO HONORED TO BE A PART OF EACH OF YOUR LIVES!

Well, as always, THANK YOU so much for reading! PLEASE feel free to leave a congratulatory comment or some well wishes below and I’ll happily pass it on to the graduates! I promise it will NOT be another month till I post again. I’ve already written my next blog, but until it arrives, I wish you all, all THE BEST!