As I promised in this post, I will now embark on a series of life recaps. 

Starting with, clearly, the most important.

Yesterday, my little sister B graduated from Barnard College.  

Here is how I generally picture her.

Here she is now, posing on Barnard’s campus with her adorable bf:

I was seven when she was born and I remember clearly holding her for the first time, in the hospital room. I wore a white bow for the occasion.  She was eleven—a little kid—when I left for college four hours away and basically never lived at home again.  In recent years we have become great friends—something that I never could have imagined when I was thirteen and she was six and I spent all of my time alternating between telling her to stop following me around and crying into my binder about my tragic teenage life. 

Yesterday was an emotional roller coaster, compounded by the fact that the President of the United States spoke at her commencement ceremony.  And triple-compounded by the fact that I went to Barnard too, and so had alternating feelings of pride-in-sister and pride-in-alma-mater and pride-in-president all the livelong day.

There were a lot of tears. And not just from me. Not naming names. Or initials.

It’s sort of hard to explain the setup of the ceremony, but it was on Columbia’s South Lawn, which is divided by hedges into three parts.  In the center were the students and faculty and the stage. To the right and left were family and friends.  

The proud parents:

This was our view of the ceremony:

(Hi, tiny President Obama!)

And this was our view of the monitor directly in front of us: 

(Hi, enormous President Obama!)

It’s true—the man. Is. Charismatic. He is also really funny. You can read about his whole address here. I thought he was terrific—not too campaigny, respectful of the fact that his foremost duty was to deliver a commencement address.  He spoke meaningfully about being raised by women and still being surrounded by the powerful women in his life.

And the Barnard women were, of course, phenomenal.  Going places. Hillaries in the making.

Congratulations, little B: you make us all so proud every day, just by who you are. I can’t wait to watch you start your postcollegiate life. 

And hey, for at least a year: NO MORE HOMEWORK!!!!!!