Passages

At the risk of sounding to sappy, I don’t do mush very well, I am going to venture down that road called nostalgia for just a bit. My kids are growing up. Yes, I am aware that is what happens, but somewhere along the way I got older too (nobody quite explains that to you) and slightly more emotional at things I used to roll my eyes at. This month (May) and the upcoming month of June are very packed for lots of people. These are months of proms, graduations, and weddings. And I am experiencing all three, some several times in this month and the next. It was all fine and dandy, before it involved my kids!! My oldest has graduated college and I am not sure when or how that happened. Wasn’t he just running around the house like this?

Tomorrow he will be in his best friend since first grade’s wedding, and my best friends son. We are not sure who became friends first, the kids or us. Either way we have been through it all together. The football games, the good and bad teachers, the friends who have fallen by the wayside, the dances, the dates, the trouble they got into, the fights they had, the weekend getaways…you get the idea, lots of history there. I will be a wreck as this man child that I have practically raised waits for his bride at the end of the aisle with my son standing beside him as he always has. Then for more dramatic effect I can glance to the back of the room and see son #2, (who moved from pesky little brother to close friend several years ago) operate the music and the lights with his girlfriend ( who I am pretty sure will be his wife one day) of 2 years sitting beside him. In the seats beside me I can hold hands with my husband (soon to be 25 years!) and look at my youngest who is going to start middle school in the fall and his brother who just asked his first date to the spring dance! Cue the crying mom! There are all kinds of parenting books, magazines and websites and blogs full of advice for parents of young children and rightly so. But this phase, this house full of almost grown, almost completed young adult type children is practically void of information, research and helpful hints. Where are the Dr. Spocks’s and Brazelton’s of this age group? Is it over when they enter high school, graduate high school, drive, get a job….? I don’t think so. I still need my mom! Maybe I’ll write the book……