In one of the upstairs bedrooms in the lovely Chateau de Smith, next to the board games and spare blankets, is a large plastic storage unit known to all in our family as The Dress Up Bin.
In it are the remains of several year's worth of costumes from Halloweens, school plays and generally less than fully thought-out souvenirs (seriously, there's a genuine fake coonskin cap in there) that have accumulated over time.
For those keeping score, that's four kids, lots of costume changes and numerous years. So, a pretty full box.
Dig through that and you can find a cheesy-looking crown, a sailor's cap, an authentic-looking space helmet and, thanks to years of dance classes and recitals, all manner of feathered and/or sequined things. Because, dancing, feathers and sequins. I mean, sure.
And while it's all pretty goofy-looking, the one thing that comes to mind when I'm called on to rifle through it is that, while kids may play, they don't play at being kids. Silly as some of these thing may be, they're quasi-adult roles. OK, at least as adult as a pirate with a plastic hook and fake parrot, but you get the picture.
From almost their earliest moments, children practice at being adults. Which doesn't quite prepare you for the moments when you realize ... that's what they are.
My oldest son got engaged over the weekend. It was an event both families involved anticipated with all the quiet restraint usually reserved for Christmas and New Year's, mostly because he and his bride-to-be have known and been perfect for each other since they were juniors in high school.
Still, there's a distinct difference between knowing how something ought to turn out and seeing it unfold before your very eyes. And it's somewhat amazing to see a young man whose typical approach to things like term papers and schools projects was; "It's 10 pm and the assignment is due tomorrow. Looks like it's time to get started!," apply D-Day-caliber planning to actually popping the question.
The whole thing reminded me of those parent-teacher conferences where the instructor would extol the virtues of my child, and I'd stop them, whip out a picture and ask, "Is this the kid we're talking about here?"
Still, there they were, the soon-to-be bride and groom, looking all happy and dazed and very much like the young adults we all know they'd become, standing right in front of us.
Just like grown-ups.
At some point between now and Nov. 8, my youngest son is going to vote in his first presidential election. Yes, we've already apologized and assured him they're not all like this one.
Yes, the kid who ran his first cross-country meet with boxers hanging out the bottoms of his running shorts is going to join millions of Americans in deciding the country's course for at least the next four years.
Frankly, the whole "boxer short" thing doesn't make him particularly unqualified. That may not have been exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Or, maybe it was.
This spring, my youngest daughter is going to clear the runway of parental dependence and actually graduate from college. Or at least that's the idea. Since graduate school is not exactly in her plans, this will be her last bite at the educational apple, at least in a formal way. From now on, if she's carrying a backpack, it's going to mean she's actually backpacking. Hey, it could happen.
And when graduation actually happens, for both of the "youngests," we'll all be there, including my oldest daughter, her husband and their by-then-4-year-old daughter.
When my oldest was 4, she was spending an entire Saturday playing in a cardboard box while I constructed an entire swing set, only to discover there were key pieces installed upside down, a fact I couldn't correct simply by getting a bigger hammer.
Now she's the one negotiating just how many green beans someone has to eat to earn an ice cream cone and appreciating that the inevitability of bedtime is not quite so fixed for all parties involved.
There's a dress that used to be hers in that bin. A clown wig that used to be my oldest son's. Tap shoes, a cowboy hat, all sorts of things that used to belong to my children, whose presence mark the passage of time.
They don't even look at them much. It seems they don't have to pretend they're grownups anymore.
They already are.
Commentary on 10/28/2016