Randi Cairns
3 min readMay 25, 2022

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Humble Brag Season

It’s officially humble brag season and here’s what’s on my mind. Before I start, let me just tell you how incredibly proud I am of your son’s twenty college acceptances and your daughter’s scholarship offers and the fact that they accomplished all this while lettering in twelve sports and volunteering at the local senior center every week. Truly. Ya’ll put in the time and the work to make that happen and of course, it should be celebrated.

But here’s where I’m at as the last of my brood anticipates her walk across a stage for a diploma in the weeks ahead. We isolated our babies for TWO YEARS. We kept them from their friends. We yelled at them on the daily to log back in for the 1,000th straight hour of staring at a computer screen for whatever version of education could be made to happen under the circumstances. We canceled their activities. We failed pretty miserably in being their entertainment as we struggled ourselves with work and housekeeping and lockdown. We did all this because science and health and I’ll never take issue with decisions made with the intention to protect each other. But we did it nonetheless. And despite that isolation — despite the world essentially shutting down — our babies still showed up. They got (most of) the lessons done. They found new ways to connect with their friends. They (for the most part) didn’t turn into hermits. They resisted the urge to rage about it all and just kept on keeping on.

Then we sent them back to the classrooms. Told them to get their ‘ish together and get back to the grind. We insisted they follow the new rules while we made them up as we went along. And as we’d done since this batch of seniors were babies — we got back to the routine of stuffing them under desks and in closets for their routine active shooter drills. We’d already done it so many times by now that for most of them, it’s not even noteworthy enough to mention in a “how was your day” line of inquiry. They’ve gotten used to preparing to be shot at in the buildings that are supposed to be their second homes — their safe places when they’re not with family. Can you read that and not want to vomit? They talk to each other about the latest shooting with little emotion — how many kids this time? What town? Because if they processed it more thoroughly, it might break them. How is it not breaking US???

They listen to the latest commentary on immigration, abortion, and LGBTQ rights and hear us tell them that they should have no autonomy, no right to make choices about their own bodies, no protections from harm for being a different color, religion, gender, national status, fill in the blank with the things that make us “other”. And then we insist they recite, on demand, where they’re going to college, what their plans are for the next decade, what work they’ll do to feed themselves. We want to know when they plan to grow the hell up and stop being such special little snowflakes.

So here’s where I’m at right now. If you’ve got a kiddo graduating with all the honors and all the monies and all the offers — congratulations. But if you’ve got a kiddo who’s barely holding on and you’re tripping across the finish line together — can you please celebrate the crap out of that baby too? To get through these last few years and still be putting one foot in front of another is no small accomplishment. You know that yourself as an adult over some of the most trying times of our generation. Remember that when you look in the eyes of the children in your life. And then throw them a damn parade.

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Randi Cairns

Nonprofit Professional, Writer, Mom (not in that order)