Graduation's just a box of Kleenex away

I was standing in the third-grade wing of Muldown Elementary School early one morning a couple of months ago, waiting for a teacher to give me a stack of essays students had written for Whitefish's centennial.

School hadn't begun yet for the day, and in the solitude of those few quiet minutes, I got tears in my eyes.

It had been years since I'd been in that part of the school, but suddenly the memories of one particular Halloween party came flooding back. The year my youngest daughter was in third grade, she wore a clown costume. I could still see her and the other students bounding through the halls, parading in their costumes as parents applauded the magnificent masquerade.

Had the past 10 years really gone by so quickly? Of course they had.

When our oldest daughter graduated from high school, other mothers warned me of such moments, those times when the nostalgia hits so hard it's almost audible. This time around has been no different.

Our youngest graduates on Saturday, and even though I know she's not going away to some far-off college right away, I still find my mind working overtime in the "remember when" department.

It does seem like just yesterday we brought 8-pound, 9-ounce Deanna Rae home from the hospital. Our little "Dee-dee bear" was the quiet one of our kids, the one who always took things in stride, the one who had such a calming influence her third-grade teacher purposely paired her with rowdy students for group projects because of her patience and soothing aura.

When she burned her hand on a hot stove when she was 3, we didn't know it for several hours. She quietly went to her room and dealt with the pain, not telling anyone because she thought it was her fault she got hurt. Most kids would have screamed and cried over such an injury.

She's always been intuitive in her ability to know what people need before they need it, quietly dispensing kindness and compassion.

We made more trips to the emergency room with Deanna than we did with our other daughter. One time she got the childproof cap off a bottle of Dimetapp and drank half of it; another time she pushed a stick-on toy earring deep into her ear.

And in a mishap that still makes me shudder, I ran over her arm while I was driving our van on a Whitefish street. When she and a few other kids wanted to jog home from the park, I said I'd drive alongside them. I was going 5 miles an hour, tops, but in that split second I took my eyes off them, Deanna veered toward the van, tripped in a pothole and her elbow fell under the back tire. She was 4, and because her bones still hadn't fully formed, they didn't break. I still get chills up my spine when I think about what could have happened if her entire little body had lunged under the tire.

Deanna grew up in the shadow of her flamboyant, outspoken older sister. Their personalities have always been night-and-day different, but just because she was younger and more shy didn't mean she couldn't hold her own. She was always silently watching, taking mental notes, and waiting for an opportunity to develop her own strengths and talents.

That opportunity presented itself in the form of music. Her sense of rhythm was evident early on as she plucked away at the piano for a few years. When it came time to join the band, there was no hesitation. It was drums or nothing.

And it's still drums.

She's well on her way to becoming an accomplished percussionist. From playing the cadence in the Memorial Day march to the cemetery to rocking out with her band, Minus My Thoughts, she never misses a beat. We couldn't be prouder.

A few weeks ago I was going through old school papers and found a poem she'd written about herself a few years ago. It's worth sharing:

I'm just a girl in the world

A drummer girl for sure

Who loves the noises and rhythms

For each of them is pure

Some think I can't do it

Well I think that I can

So what if I'm just a girl

So what if I'm not a man

I'll just keep pushing myself further

To my one and only goal

To be more than just a girl

With drums as part of my soul.

Rock on, Deanna. We hope you always march to the beat of your own drum.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com