Musings & Thoughts for Saturday, June 17, 2023, or: Commencement + 40 Years – A Tempus Fugit Piece

It’s mid-afternoon on Saturday, June 17, 2023. It’s a hot (90°F/32°C – but feels like 114°F/45°C!) early summer day in Lithia, Florida. We’ve already reached the forecast high of 90°F/32°C), and although the forecast for the Tampa Bay area calls for light showers, it’s still mostly sunny and worse, extremely humid outside. Definitely a stay-indoors-unless-it’s-absolutely-necessary kind of day for me; as I’ve grown older, I have become averse to going outside for long walks at this time of year. Either it’s too hot and sticky, or afternoon thunderstorms or rain showers are likely overhead.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the commencement ceremony – held at what was then Miami-Dade Community College, South Campus’ cavernous Gibson Center (Building Seven). Unlike today, June 17, 1983, fell on a Friday, and even though it was a sunny early summer day then, too, it wasn’t as hellishly hot as it is in 2023.

If you’ve read my other posts about my last days as a high school student, you know that I was, at best, ambivalent about graduation, leaving the school system, and – in the grand scheme of things – unprepared for the future. Financially and psychologically, I was not ready to go to college just yet, and even though I’d applied for jobs at various stores in the nearby Miami International Mall, I had not been able to get even a part-time job.

Plus – without getting into details – my home life was too full of “drama” caused by the stormy relationship my mother was having with a retired pilot – Joe Bubenik – whose façade of affability and generosity hid a darker, nastier side that emerged when he drank heavily. He didn’t live with us, but he rented one of the houses next to Mom’s, so when he was in Miami (he also owned a primary residence in Sebring), it was like having Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for neighbors and “constant presences.”

When I was in school – and Joe, unfortunately, was part of my life from the year I started ninth grade to the second semester of my freshman year at college – at least I was in a place where I felt safe and surrounded by people who weren’t abusive or heavy drinkers. I may not have enjoyed every single aspect of junior and senior high school life (especially when I had to take math classes or had to deal with the crushes I had on various girls). Still, there were quite a few times when I dreaded the 2:30 PM dismissal bell and that bus ride back to East Wind Lake Village.

So, yeah. Instead of being thrilled and hopeful about getting my diploma after three years of all that “hassle for a tassel,” I was numb. Sad. Scared.

I don’t remember if Joe was in Miami on my graduation day; by June of 1983 he and I despised each other, even though – as would be the case with my half-sister Vicky later – we tried to get along (or at least pretend to) for Mom’s sake. I’m uncertain if Joe was in Miami on that day because I remember that he hated South Florida passionately; like many Americans of European descent, he disliked the cultural changes that Miami was going through as a result of the large influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Like many bigots, he didn’t like the growing political influence and power of Miami’s large Cuban exile community. He also resented such things as going to, say, a hardware store and not finding an employee who spoke English. He was, at least in the six years that I had to put up with him, an alcoholic, angrier, more profane, and unfunny version of All in the Family’s Archie Bunker.  

So, when Joe came down to Miami to check on his ailing mother, Frances, who still lived next door in the house he rented, his mood deteriorated with each passing day. If he arrived, say, on a Sunday afternoon after a four-hour drive from Sebring, Joe was usually in a decent mood; a bit irritated with South Florida’s heavier traffic, but otherwise, he’d be in “Good Joe” (or Dr. Jekyll) mode. By Tuesday, though, he would start drinking well before 5 PM – vodka with tonic water was his poison of choice – and, depending on variables such as the weather, interactions with other people (especially those “fucking Cubans”), or whether he was thinking of his various marriages, he was more likely to be aggressive and truculent.

If he was at my commencement ceremony, I have no memory of it. He would have had to be on his best behavior on a day in which I was the “star” (at least as far as Mom was concerned), and considering that by 1983 he hated my guts – the feeling was mutual, too – I think that staying sober or being civil to me on my graduation day would have been…challenging. I don’t recall anyone taking any photos of me in my white cap and gown either before or shortly after the ceremony, and since Mom would have insisted that Joe be part of a group shot, I’d have to see photographic proof that he was there. Otherwise, I’ll go to my grave believing that he was in Sebring on June 17, 1983.

What do I remember from Commencement Day, 1983?

Painfully little, I’m afraid. But…if you must know, here are some snippets of memories that I retain in my heart and mind:

• It was hot and sunny. Not as hot as it is now with a heat index of 114°F/45°C, but enough to make wearing a suit and a cap and gown mighty uncomfortable
• The South Miami High School band playing the same fragment of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance No. 1” as we marched into Gibson Center
• Sitting restlessly through the salutatory and valedictory speeches
• Getting up out of my uncomfortable folding metal chair and getting in line to walk up to the podium where Dr. Burchell, our principal, was handing out our diplomas. And, of course, having to listen till my last name – Diaz-Granados – was called
• The standing ovation I received when my name was called, and I made my way up to the podium. I was not expecting that, especially since this time the crowd included the families of my fellow students, and I didn’t know too many of them, nor did they know me well, either
• The last moments of “being a high school student” included handing in our rented caps and gowns alphabetically. I think that one last little mandatory bit of business really drove home to me the fact that once I’d handed over my cap and gown to the teacher assigned to the D-H table, that would be it. My 10 school-year odyssey in the Dade County Public Schools system was over