One last time ...
The Lovely Mrs. Smith and I were at a kickoff breakfast for our youngest son's high school cross country season the other day. It's an event at which parents gather, get to know each other and the coaches and marvel at the fact that young people can actually run nine miles, then eat a plate full of mini muffins and wash them down with a half-gallon of chocolate milk.
As the runners went through the food line for a fourth or fifth time, The Lovely Mrs. Smith noted the pastry selections seemed to be drawing a lot more attention than the bagels she had provided.
"Next time, we're bringing donuts," she said.
And that's when I had to remind her there isn't going to be a next time. This one is it.
One last time ....
At some point, you start to do a little math. I have been a father longer than I wasn't one. I've been a father longer than I've been practically anything but married or alive. My being a father predates laptops, cellphones and mass-marketed bottled water.
And for a good portion of that time, at least one of my children and, on occasion, all four of them, have been in public school.
In just a few short months, all of that is coming to a close.
One last time ...
Those three words are going to be the punctuation of so many things this year. Last sports season. Last ACT. Last homecoming. Last prom. Last cap, last gown, last ... everything having to do with high school and, in a participatory way, our local school system.
From now on, we will officially have no skin in the secondary education game beyond a Faber College-like "knowledge is good" attitude about how nice it is to produce young people who can actually read a stop sign and, eventually, your X-rays.
One last time ...
In a few short months, our social and vacation schedules will no longer be determined by the varieties of off seasons, dead days, very much alive makeup days and the meet next Saturday. The rhythms of our falls will be dictated more by whim than necessity, our summers lived in anticipation of, well, whatever we choose to anticipate. Unless we decide to do it right now. Because no one and no one's schedule will be stopping us.
And yet ...
That connection to the heartbeat of every small to medium Southern town, the local high school, will be severed. If continuing to have children later in life "keeps you young," well, how does that work when they're not young any more?
One last time ...
The combination of angst and anticipation present in virtually every high school senior is almost palpable. On one hand, the beautiful, wide-open blue skies of their future lay before them. On the other, well, you only get to those skies when you leave the nest you've known for the last 18 years.
In an instant, a loaded car or an airplane ticket or the signing of a first lease, they'll be moving from your world to their own. They'll quit being bit players in the family drama and start being the stars of their own shows.
And before that happens, they, and you, will have nine months to wrap your respective minds around that.
One last time ...
It bears repeating that we've been at this a while. For us, there is no jagged, tumbling snap of children all leaving within a few years of each other. One by one, slowly, over time, a bedroom has become redundant, a mailing address has changed. When the last one leaves, our upstairs will officially become a combination off-season hotel and short-term storage facility.
One last time ...
Odds are we'll be fine. We've had a while to prepare for this, and if this summer has been any indication, the difference between having a teenager at home and out of the house is the difference between having some hot water in the tank and leftover pizza still in the fridge.
With the demands of school, activities, work and everything that comes with graduating in a few short months, most seniors are borderline wraith-like. Except wraiths don't leave a basket of dirty clothes on top of the washing machine.
We're getting a little time to practice at just being us again. Just like it was in the beginning. And, so far, so good.
Still, it's hard to believe this is going to be easy. Hard to believe we're going to get off scot free when it's just bagels for two, with a side order of donuts.
We'll find out just how hard a little less than a year from now. When all those caps and gowns start to line up and one of them belongs to us. For just a little while longer.
Commentary on 08/26/2016