Day 8

This morning I attended the kindergarten graduation of 3 of our boys. They looked absolutely adorable in their little "togas" (which we would call gowns; they looked a lot like choir robes to me, though) and caps. It is apparently common at a kindergarten graduation for parents to give their son or daughter a solid gold ring. I'm not quite sure of the significance of this. (We didn't give any to our boys. We just don't have the sort of staffing to protect personal valuables of that magnitude around here.) At any rate, most of these children received their ring from their mothers. In theory, this is because their fathers went off to work for the day to make money to pay for that gold ring, but at least two of the children had their father come up and put the ring on their finger; this nearly made me cry. I mean, I suppose it is possible that the father is unemployed, but part of me thinks that those dads realized how important it was that they be there that day. (Additionally, if the father was unemployed, I'm not positive that the family would have shelled out the money for that gold ring. We were not the only "family" to not give a ring to our "children.") At the graduation, I also heard the Guatemalan national anthem for the first time. The whole morning--except for the part where I didn't get breakfast because I had to take the boys to their graduation mass--was absolutely beautiful. It made me wonder if I had had such a ridiculous and pointless ceremony when I finished kindergarten. (I hardly remember my high school and college graduations, and I only remember that I had an 8th grade farewell, no details besides what dress I wore. So, remembering kindergarten is not high on my list of abilities.)