My daughter Olivia has been writing a speech and my palms have at intervals turned clammy, and a fine sheen of sweat has beaded my forehead, as I shiver in nervous sympathy.

I imagine that moment, which seems to defy the predictable passage of time, when you stand at the lectern and the soft murmur of the audience suddenly goes silent and the eyes, all those eyes, focus on your face.

When the air seems to take on weight, the oppressive burden of painful anticipation, with only your words to fill the quiet void.

But I needn’t worry.

And not only because I won’t be speaking.

Olivia, who is one of three valedictorians for the Baker High School Class of 2025, has for many years surpassed my abilities in myriad ways.

Delivering a memorable speech will only be the latest example.

I too was a legitimate candidate for valedictorian of my high school class.

For about two weeks.

That fanciful dream disappeared amid the slashes of my algebra teacher’s red pen that festooned my first quiz freshman year, a debacle I would duplicate with depressing frequency for the next four years.

I could have recited the batting average and home run total for Red Sox slugger Jim Rice, but confronted with cosines and the Pythagorean theorem I was as helpless as a newborn kitten.

Olivia, by contrast, has mastered not only mathematics — including levels I was banished from even trying by my ever-despairing instructors — but every other subject she has taken on.

Her academic record, unblemished by a single B, would seem improbable if you relied on what she says rather than on her report cards.

Olivia has lamented to her mom and I so often, fretting about an assignment or an upcoming exam which she assured us she would botch, that we have long since treated her dire predictions as seriously as astrology.

The truth, eventually, is revealed in the list of A’s.

I never doubted that Olivia had at least one of the traits she would need to garner such scholastic accolades.

Since she was a little girl she has had a penchant for planning. Olivia compiles lists and writes schedules that exude precision and show the sort of logical thinking of which I was utterly incapable when I was a teenager.

(And which often eludes me still, at age 54.)

But managing your time, valuable skill that it is, doesn’t guarantee a 4.0 GPA.

That demands intelligence and diligence and persistence.

And probably several other words ending in “ence.”

I would of course be immensely proud of Olivia based solely on her academic achievements.

But my joy at her performance in the classroom is nothing like as powerful as what I feel when I think about the young woman who lives in the bedroom where, not so long ago, a little girl spent her time.

Her generosity and kindness please me more even than her academic awards and the several scholarships she has earned to attend the University of Oregon this fall.

I have complete confidence that Olivia will achieve her professional goals. She wants to work as a forensic accountant, perhaps carrying an FBI badge and deciphering felonious ledgers.

But it matters to me far more that she is a person of compassion and substance, one who will enrich the lives of those she meets, just as she has done for her family and her friends.

This, it seems to me, is the most meaningful of human legacies, the greatest contribution a parent, as they muddle through the travails of raising children, can make to the wider world.

I have several times recently, as graduation day nears on June 7, walked to the east end of our house and paused at the threshold of Olivia’s room.

I thought how different it will look in a few months, after she has gone to Eugene and to a fresh set of challenges and opportunities.

And I pondered a more distant future when that room, devoid of Olivia’s pictures and clothes and other possessions, will still bear the great weight of memories, so sweet and simultaneously sad.

This prospect, as inexorable as the passage of time, troubles me, as it troubles any parent who contemplates the terrible truth that the past, for all its power, in one sense has no more substance than a tendril of fog.

Yet I am also comforted.

I imagine Olivia, sitting at her desk by the room’s lone window, working on a vexing math equation or laboring over the next paragraph in an essay.

I imagine the wondrous things that happened here, the transformation of child to adult, the blossoming of a person destined to bring goodness and light to a sometimes dark world.

I will remember, and I will rejoice, that wherever Olivia is at moments in the years and decades ahead, a part of who she became will remain here, as real, in its way, as the limbs and leaves of the willow tree she once looked at and which I will continue to tend.

Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald. Contact him at 541-518-2088 or jayson.jacoby @bakercityherald.com.