“But did you get to enjoy it as a mom?” It’s a question that I heard over and over this graduation weekend from all the people who saw me scurrying around the Sullivan West High School campus, cameras hanging from both shoulders as I attempted to tell the story of the Class of 2023. 

I heard it again and again from those who saw a few of my photos posted to social media this past weekend. 

Yes, I’m a proud mom whose daughter graduated from high school on Friday evening. 

I’m also a photographer who has captured more than 20 years of Sullivan County graduates on one of the biggest nights of their lives. Friday night, it was my daughter’s turn to walk to the tune of Pomp and Circumstance with my camera trained in their direction. 

My colleagues here at the paper were gracious in offering me the choice of how this weekend would play out. I could have chosen to sit this one out. 

It’s something I’ve done just once in the nearly 22 years since I joined the staff in a full-time capacity (not counting my stints as an intern before that). That was the year I gave birth to the child who walked across the dais at Sullivan West High School on Friday night to accept a diploma they’ve spent 13 years working for. 

I could have sat this one out. 

Instead I decided to be as in the moment as I know how for one of the biggest nights of my daughter’s life. 

That choice gave me a special backstage pass not just to graduation but to a milestone of my daughter’s childhood and of the childhood’s of dozens of kids who I have watched learn to walk and learn to spell, learn to run and learn to drive. 

Because while many members of the Class of 2023 are, by society’s standards, now adults, what I saw before me for much of that night was simply a bunch of kids ... goofy kids, silly kids, excited and a little bit anxious kids.

I saw kids climbing on one another’s shoulders and giggling behind their hands. I heard kids who have argued with one another for nearly 18 years do exactly that for what might be the very last time and heard kids break out into one last — largely off-key — song. 

Most of all, I felt that moment when it all changed and these goofy, silly, excited and a little bit anxious kids became exactly the people we, their parents, had hoped they would one day be. 

They became our future. 

As a mom, there was nothing I would have rather felt.