Adventures in Real Parenting: Counting the Lasts

MathMan is going to come into my comments and call me sentimental again. Then I'm going to have to kill him slowly. With pain.

Mary Ellen wrote of her empty nest syndrome and I got teary eyed at my desk. Shut up, I AM working.

Me? Teary eyed? Who am I?

I am the woman who is now saying things like....well this will be the last time we do this with The Dancer.

I'm counting the lasts.

The picture above is from the LAST First Day of School while The Dancer lives here. I cannot believe she is a senior in high school.

Yes, I get that we are not the first parents to send a child into the great vast thing that is life on one's own, and yes I feel she will be perfectly capable of handling it, but I'm still a little puzzled over how we arrived at this point. How did she go from being that baby who literally hung off my breast as I went about my business (once she got the hang of nursing, she was like a Power Vac) to this beautiful, intelligent, talented young woman who is driving a car, working a job and considering which colleges to which she'll apply?

When you're living it, it doesn't seem to rush by with a whooshing sound, but when you look back over it, the time certainly seems to have zoomed by. Getting all mathy on me, my husband will point out that it's a percentage thing.

Agreed, but when The Actor makes a face like the one in the picture and I don't realize it until the end of the LAST First Day of School, that moment is gone and don't talk to me about numbers. I missed my moment to capture forever. It mattered. When he discovered that it really did matter enough to me to make me go all quiet and withdrawn, he apologized.

I guess he's growing up, too.

Last night he was fretting over golf tryouts. He's convinced that he didn't do well enough to make the team. I tried to be encouraging. I told him what my friend Kitten Toes said about golf. It's the game that matters. I told him what Cunning Runt said. Look at those Olympians. They don't all win.

He looked at me like I'm a loser. "I can't believe you have online conversations about me with the other bloggers."

"Why not? This is important to you and you're important to me."

The best I could do was offer my lap. He may be in the seventh grade now, but he was okay to sit on his mom's lap and let her rub and scratch his back.

MathMan asked him to do something in the kitchen. He got up reluctantly to do it.

As he stood up and stretched, I said, "When you get done, I'll still be here."

Still here. No matter where they go.