‘Pomp and circumstance’ times FIVE High school hits hard, then leaves suddenly when siblings graduate together

BY KATHLEEN MURPHY

The day I picked up graduation announcements, I thanked the printer, went out to my car, put it in gear, then sat there and cried. The grad announcements were in my hand, but I was thinking about birth announcements and how they looked so similar, almost like a bookend.

I expect most parents have a similar moment when their child graduates from high school. Maybe it’s their teenager posing for graduation photos that prompts the waterworks, or maybe it doesn’t hit until “Pomp and Circumstance” is played. At some point, we all get hit with the feels.

My husband and I have been blessed with five children and have weathered the necessary chaos that raising five children entails. But in a twist few expect, they all graduated from high school this year. Five different children, with five different personalities and five different sets of dreams — all graduating seniors. There are no younger siblings waiting in the wings for me to try this again. No one still young enough to snuggle with me while I read out loud their favorite book, or even young enough to beg me to take them out to practice their driving.

My oldest four are a set of quadruplets, three boys and a girl. That in itself stops most people short, but that’s not even the most shocking part. The real kicker was my surprise pregnancy when the quads were a mere nine months old. It turns out that the constant repeating of the sleepdeprived phrase “I have quadruplets” is not adequate birth control.

I know. I was surprised, too. Our youngest son was born just a few days before the quads turned 18 months old. He’s our “fifth quad.” He never thought he was anything else, and we never treated him as though he was. It almost felt cruel to single him out as younger when he wanted so badly to just be one of the gang.

So when we moved to Duluth in 2012 and a few years later decided it was time to be done homeschooling (and yes, I know that statement just added an entire tanker truck full of fuel to the opinion that I am crazy), we enrolled all five children into the ninth grade. Together. Technically, because of where their birthdays lie, the quads should have been considered for 10th grade and the youngest for eighth grade. But it seemed practical to allow them each to begin high school at the same place every other student does — at the beginning.

I’m not going to lie. It was not an easy four years. As anyone who has ever had a high school student knows, there is a lot of uncertainty in a teenager’s life. They are trying to figure out who they are while at the same time holding down that compulsory full-time job of “student.” Sometimes they even have an actual, paying job on the side. Their lives are complicated, messy, and full of sharp turns, and as their parent, we are invited along for the ride. Having a carload of teenagers all at one time was an intense experience.

But there were so many joys, as well as life lessons learned. They made friends, they joined clubs, and they went to dances. Love interests bloomed, then sometimes faded. Some of my kids struggled through algebra, others through history. All of them, for some reason, struggled through Spanish. My own high school Spanish teacher, were he to find and read this, would probably snort and feel a renewed justification in his belief that the apple doesn’t always fall far from the tree.

My relationship with my children changed. They had their own lives and their own agendas to keep. Often that agenda included little more than sleeping in as late as possible before running to catch the last bus that would get them to work on time. I had to be available, but not any more invested in their lives than was absolutely necessary. The high school years are a time of learning for parents, too.

Overall, I would guess my kids felt their high school years were stereotypical, aside from the fact that they collectively took up almost 10 percent of their class at their small charter school.

As their parent, however, I never really felt I had control of the vehicle. If I can stick with the full car analogy, I pulled onto a random highway and immediately began careening. We missed a bunch of turns, struggled through too many expensive breakdowns, and often slammed on the breaks so we could all gape at a scenic overlook. Sometimes we laughed together when their dad came up with a particularly terrible dad joke, but often the kids fought in the back seat. The GPS steered us wrong more often than right. I’m not sure we even arrived at the destination we’d been planning on. One day the car just slammed to a stop in the middle of the road, and the kids got out. I realized it was never my destination in the first place.

A parent’s tears are a complicated thing. We all feel it. But we give those graduates a hug, remind them of how proud we are, and get back into the car. — MDT

Kathleen Murphy is a freelance journalist who lives in Duluth with her husband and five children. She is a frequent contributor to Moms & Dads Today and Duluth.com magazine, publications of the News Tribune.