Tomorrow, I run head first into parenting milestone overload, when my older son turns 21 and my younger son graduates from high school. All on the same day. This comes not all that long after a significant milestone birthday for myself and not that far before a significant wedding anniversary for my husband and me. This year of milestones has naturally made me more than a little reflective in the past few days, weeks and months. Reflecting on the the things I did right and the mistakes that I’ve made: the ones that could have been avoided and the ones that probably would have happened anyway; the mistakes I regret and the ones I’ve learned the most from.
Being a parent is not an easy job. It’s fraught with your own worries and baggage, along with feeling your kids’ emotions, too: You celebrate their joys, you cry for their pain and discomfort and you go into full on mama bear protective mode when you need to. And it’s one job that you really can only learn by doing. I know this because I have read tons of books, articles and websites about how to be a parent. It all helped me, for sure, but it was only the real experiences that got us to where we are today.
So where are we today? Well, we’re on the brink of new territory for all of us. For one, it’s going off to college for the first time and learning how to navigate a new game of school, a new campus, new people, new expectations. For one, it’s going back to college for his junior year, where work on his major begins in earnest and real adult life is peeking around the corner. For me (and my husband), it’s getting ready to enter our own new territory. A territory that has no children in the house (on a regular basis, anyway) and figuring out what that “empty nest” looks like. For all of us, it’s celebrating and enjoying our moments together and developing relationships as parents with adult children, not children children.
When I look back at the last 18 and 21 years, my mind lingers longingly on the little boys that they were: messy, loud, curious, fun, laughing, excited. Today, they are self composed, confident young men. I am extremely proud of both of my sons. They are kind and resilient. They behave with integrity. They think deeply. They’re funny. They are loyal, good people. The kind of guys I’d want to be friends with if I wasn’t already their mom. But as we get ready for tomorrow, this day of milestones, I find myself marveling over how we got here. How did we go from carseats to cars, from Gymboree classes to the last day of high school? Passage of time is a funny thing. It feels really slow while you’re going through it, but when you get to the other side, it feels like it went by in the blink of an eye.
Happy Birthday, DJ
Congratulations, Ted
