So apparently my (Catholic) high school is proposing to change the school uniform. I know this because I saw an Instagram post announcing it. And then I saw that over 2,000 people signed a petition to stop the change. 2,000.
That Instagram post eventually had comments turned off.
Lots of people were not happy, and somehow the unrest became a story covered on Philly.com. Some of the complaints made sense, like it didn’t seem fair that juniors would have to pay for the new uniforms instead of starting the transition with incoming Freshman. That’s a good point. Some comments didn’t make sense, like “I think the new uniforms are ugly.” That’s not a good point.
Soon after I saw the post, I went to find a picture of me in that uniform. Hmmmm, I thought, don’t know that I would sign a petition for that. (Full disclosure, my uniform was blue. I believe the one they’re fighting to keep is brown – same uniform, just a different color. Which actually, if you’re going on a crusade for a uniform, don’t you want blue over brown??)
The bigger issue, of course, is tradition vs. change, which is a conflict that seems to come up pretty often. It has taken time, but I now understand the value of each. There are times when I like tradition and times when I am ready for change. There are also times when I hate both.
When the girls graduated high school and then college, change started coming at me like a freight train, and I didn’t like anything about that. But I understood why it had to happen, so I accepted it. I was happy that their new lives would bring many good things for these young women. So change was wonderful and awful, all at the same time.
Tradition, though, made the change somewhat bearable. A few months after Maura graduated college, she texted in our family text group asking about dates to go pumpkin picking. We’ve gone to the same farm, same hayride with the same cider donuts and pumpkin ice cream for years and years. When I mentioned how surprised I was at the text, Maura responded, “But we go every year.” So, mixed in with all that change were some solid traditions that remained. I thought I had to let them go, but these daughters were holding on – at least to some things, and that was nice to know.
So, the uniforms. You can see how alum from an all-girls high school would value tradition so much they would like to look back and see that where they came from was still there, looking the way it always did. It’s comforting to see what’s familiar, especially when so much time has passed. Your high school is your foundation, and no one likes to see movement in the foundation.
But it’s also reasonable to think that even our high school has to move on. Because at some point, everything does. What’s good to know is that some traditions remain, like the feeling you have when you attend an all-girls school. Every girl who has attended that school holds on to that. You feel it deeply.
Seeing this uniform debate unfold has been a little bewildering for me – it really isn’t a cause I would ever consider fighting for. But I wonder if some of the signers of the petition are where I was a few years ago, trying to run from that freight train. It’s a painful place to be. But one day, you find out that tradition and change can coexist. And you can live your life, even though it may not look the same tomorrow.
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