Alex Wong: The lessons of life, from square one

I am 22 now, Mom and Dad, and graduating from college. What that exactly means for me and my future, I'm not quite sure despite all of my plans and plan B's.

I know I talk a good talk and, on occasion, even walk a good walk. But those lofty goals of which I speak and all the magnificent things I am to write home about are still out there, and not yet cupped within my hands.

My life up to this point has been about education and growing up -- about potential begetting potential. It's hard to think that what comes next is supposed to be material.

When what I say and do really begins to matter -- when things begin to count -- I guess that means I'm an adult. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it does. Unlike before, I can say that without a hint of naivete or precocity because I say it with a certain sadness and no small amount of fear.

I can't help but be reminded that the fear and responsibility I'm just beginning to feel is what you both have been carrying with you for my entire life, dealt with for 22 years so what I did didn't have to count. You played this crazy game for me, held my hands on the steering wheel like you did years ago when I wanted to feel like I was driving.

Yes, I have certainly worked hard to get where I am today. I've always received a helping hand from friends here and there. I've had no shortage of luck.

But, at the end of the day, it is you two who have seen me thus far, carried me to here. So this graduation day is not so much about me as it is about you.

I can't tell any tidy anecdotes from my childhood that encapsulate what you have meant to me. That would be impossible. You've meant too much.

I can't wield any metaphors to say how much I love you both. I love you too much.

Like a tourist bargaining in broken French, I simply don't have the words. I can only speak around my feelings for you, elicit them in images. I can only hope to find them pushing against the surface of my memories.

I remember, Dad, you and I sitting on the floor of our garage so many years ago when I wasn't that tall and you weren't that grey. I remember that you had just returned from a business trip and we were struggling with the lock on your suitcase.

From inside that suitcase you brought out a toy airplane like the one that had brought you back from across the Pacific and home to us. I was happy then, not because of the plane, but because you were with me on that dusty floor, sitting Indian style in your business suit. I believe you were happy for the same reason.

I remember all of those times, Mom, when you came into my room to close the books I had supposedly fallen asleep to -- times when I really wasn't sleeping. I just kept my eyes closed so you could look upon me and kiss my forehead in the sweet pause before you shut the light.

But maybe you already knew that. Maybe you felt me loving you in those moments with same warmth with which you were loving me. Maybe that was our unspoken complicity: two nightowls in the stillness of the late hours, one smiling and the other smiling back.

I remember how you both toiled at those flea markets when times were leaner. Even though I was young, I understood how things were. I understood the burden of three kids and a mortgage, a burden that went beyond simply being financial.

Maybe that's what made me appreciate those makeshift family dinners we'd have after we packed up our goods and left in our station wagon. Passing Chinese takeout boxes between the seats along a New Jersey highway was never more special to anybody than it was to me.

I am graduating now, Mom and Dad, and, yes, things are starting to count for me. But even though I'm a little scared, I'm not worried.

Because I've learned more from these past two decades of being your son than this university could ever have hoped to teach me. I've seen you deal with things that, because of you, I'll never have to encounter.

In every moment, you were always teaching me -- even when you didn't realize I was watching.

And for that, Mom and Dad, I will always be thankful.

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