Hitting the Pause Button
I rarely blog about my day-to-day life or my family, but today seems to beg it of me. Aaron, my baby, graduates from high school this evening. This is it – the end of an era. It feels more that way than Lyra’s wedding did or the college graduations did.
This is a step that each of my children has taken in turn. For the first time in 23 years, I won’t have someone in school. No more last minute potlucks, cooking projects or letters from school that I may or may not want to open. No more school district bureaucracy. No more school photos or yearbooks. No more piles of school papers in the front room and no more questions about whether or not homework is done. No more rushes so that there won’t be tardies at school.
Tonight, to the strains of a high school band playing “Pomp and Circumstance”, this all ends. My children are all adults in more ways than they aren’t. 233 young men and women will file into the Auditorium Arena and be dismissed into the world. And I won’t have any more kids doing this, ever.
I am a firm believer in life being about the journey and not the destination, but this is one day that I kind of wish I could hit the pause button on. For one last day, I have a child in high school.
We have loved ones coming to watch and celebrate with us. We won’t have all of the ones who came to watch the older kids; the relatives who will come today are those who are still alive and healthy enough to travel. This is a sadness in and of itself, but we are grateful for those who can come. Our family will be together for one more time before they scatter to the four winds – is it any wonder that I wish I could hang onto this moment?
We won’t have Grandma Fran, who died last year and will be remembered with love, or Granny, who isn’t living in the same reality as the rest of us anymore. We won’t have Grandma or Grandpa either, because they can’t travel up here. We’ll have Auntie and Uncle, though, and Lyra’s new husband and his parents, so our family group loses and gains people.
So as I sit here and reflect on the changes since the first high school graduation ten years ago, the one eight years ago and the most recent one five years ago, and I think about the changes that become realities tonight, I can’t help but let a tear or two leak out. Memories, lives, changes, and then there’s me holding on for dear life and marveling at it all. Marveling at the people my children have become and wishing I could hold it all forever – or at least savor it just a little bit longer.
Aaron, buddy, here’s to you and the world opening up in front of you. And don’t forget to stop by and give your parents a hug now and then. We’ll like that.
-Jane – May 28, 2010
The Wandering Path 