Yup, that was my baby girl up there, for a second! And the speech wasn't so bad. He'd stop every little while to announce: "8 more minutes"; "6 more minutes"; etc. Those were his laugh lines. :D

The best part was afterward, at the house that the kids have rented for the last 3 years. All the families adjourned there for a dinner that the kids cooked, something they have gotten very good at. With 3 ovens, one on each floor for each apartment (though they treated the house as one unit), they have had Thanksgiving for 40, buffet style, twice, as well as numerous picnics, and catering the capstone project presentations for their school at the university. After graduation the families all mucked in to help, of course, especially since the kids are in the process of moving out, with boxes everywhere.

For us, their families, they served up steaks and whole lobsters with an assortment of sides. Our younger girls are used to eating Chesapeake hardshell crab, so they were undaunted by ripping off legs and so forth, but they declared the flavor mild after years of Old Bay seasoning cauterizing the wounds cut into their fingers by the shells at crab feasts.

It's hard to say goodbye to all that.

Tom Lehrer may have said it best, in his song "Bright College Days":
"Soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife.
Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life.
But as we go our sordid separate ways,
We shall ne'er forget thee, thou golden College Days.
Hearts full of youth! Hearts full of truth! Six parts gin to one part vermouth!"