Will the coronavirus spring make for the summer of strange? It already has, felling everything from St. Philip’s strawberry festival to Pumpkinfest; and more importantly are the lasting impacts illness and death have had on families. Maine has not been spared. And as we reported online last week and in this week’s paper, Wiscasset will graduate at Wiscasset Speedway and Bath’s Morse High at Wiscasset Municipal Airport.

How’s that for something you never envisioned? Not I, of Morse Class of 1984.

I tried to picture what it would be like to be pushing 18 again, having my wisdom teeth need pulling and the dentist explaining it happens a lot around graduation, which was interesting; and if I had just spent the end of senior year learning remotely – whatever that would have meant 36 years ago – how I would feel about graduating outside city limits, at an airport instead of McMann Field in those folding chairs with family in the bleachers.

I found, I really couldn’t picture it. I have no frame of reference. Who could, for this time of masks and one-way aisles in stores, and graduations where no one has gone before, to graduate?

And there it is: We haven’t been here before. With a lot of diligence on everyone’s part, maybe this will be one and done, with every town and city’s graduation back in its usual setting next year. But since graduations where planes otherwise land and cars otherwise race are one of the stops on the unique ride known as 2020, let’s be thankful for those venues that are big enough for families to get to see their seniors get their diplomas.

Thank you, Wiscasset, for letting Morse graduates and their families share the milestone together at the town-owned airport. Thank you, speedway owners Richard and Vanessa Jordan for doing the same for Wiscasset’s graduates and families. And thank you to Morse and Wiscasset Middle High School for the decisions, and involving students in them.

Strange doesn’t usually have a great connotation, but right now, it that’s what it takes for safety, it is just right.