The boat left the quay, in the Old Port, with on board the graduates of the secondary school of Fiston. We were among the few parents who stayed until the start. Fiston had already been on board for an hour. There is, without a doubt, a nautical metaphor for going fishing. About the daddy penguin who won’t let his chick go.
It was prom night, Thursday. Sonny had dressed up. Slicked back hair, black suit, bow tie over anthracite and bronze sneakers. The class. He had dragged his camera with him, to immortalize this trip on the river and this ritual of coming of age.
One morning, you ask your son who is in kindergarten if he wants to send a letter to Santa Claus. He looks at you dubiously, question marks in his eyes. A letter ? To Santa Claus ? This tall boy walks over to the fridge, maybe thinking “Why not? If it makes you happy dad! “. He attaches a magnetic letter to it, then exclaims: “I’m going to send him the A! »
I can’t remember if he chose a red, blue, yellow or green A, but this letter thing still makes us laugh years later.
One day, I said, you ask a question to your son in pajamas who is in kindergarten, and what seems to be the day after, a big pole walks off to his high school prom looking like James Bond .
My agent 007 was not the only one to have put on his 31. It took me a moment to recognize my goddaughter, who accompanied her boyfriend, a classmate of Sonny. She came to greet me, stared at me with her green eyes, and must have read in mine that I hadn’t immediately replaced her, made up, in her emerald ballgown.
Without warning, before our eyes, while we look away, a boy becomes a man, a girl becomes a woman.
You could feel in several of these teenagers, just before boarding, learning certain codes and conventions – some would say diktats – of the adult world. Many young women stuck in the straitjacket of sheath dresses, their hand holding the cut, perched on stiletto heels.
Some found it difficult to balance while taming these stilts. By the end of the evening, they had ditched their pumps and were walking barefoot. Others, clinging to a friend, had the gait of bathers discovering without pleasure the icy water of the sea or the burning sand of the beach.
This Montreal youth of rhinestones and sequins testified in its palette of shimmering colors – for girls as well as boys – of all its origins, all its confessions, all its genders too. A young woman in transition caused a stir when she arrived, in her elegant dress.
For my part, I looked like a good man on the return of age or a supporting actor escaped from a set of miami vice in 1984, with my t-shirt under my jacket and espadrilles arranged with my hair. The same look – black jacket, white sneakers – as at least half of the young men getting ready to take the boat. ” Dress your age », say the English.
The previous week, Fiston put on his toga for the traditional convocation of grades, in La Fontaine Park.
The presentation of the (yet false) diploma, the throwing of the mortar on stage: pretexts for far too many emotions for a father on edge. I was already holding back my tears before my son arrived in the auditorium.
They flowed unrestrained for most of the ceremony. The pictures I took are blurry.
Late Thursday evening, I was waiting for Sonny to return to the Old Port. I watched the boat speeding down the river, behind the Cirque du Soleil tent. A daddy penguin. I heard the music, the cries, the laughter, coming from the dance floor laid out on the bridge. Everything was much calmer on arrival at the large quay. The young people hugged one last time to the sound ofAll of Meby John Legend.
Sonny greeted classmates he may or may not see again anytime soon. We were waiting for him on a bench, away, facing the river. He came to sit next to us. As I was about to ask him a question about his evening, he told me with a subtle wave of his hand that he preferred that I not break the silence. I concluded that he wanted to take the time to absorb it all. Laughs and goodbyes. The bittersweet end of a life cycle.