Channel Markers

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Added: Thu. Jun 11, 2009 12:12pm
Posted in: Living

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My "caboose baby" is graduating from high school tonight.  I'm nowhere near ready.  I still need to iron his graduation gown, prepare dinner, take a shower, do my hair.  But even if all that were done by magic wand...I still wouldn't be ready.  I don't think I ever will be.

Twenty seven years of daily hands-on mothering is drawing to a close, with the last stop on the train being dropping my son off at his dorm room at college this fall.  As mile markers go in the stream of life, though, the high school graduation ceremony itself is a big one.  No more tennis meets, no more volleyball games, no more Halloween decorated cupcakes, no more potluck team dinners.  Hard to imagine that the bouncing baby boy I brought home in a diaper and a car seat from the hospital eighteen years ago will be wearing a perfectly knotted tie and a dress shirt under his robe.  We'll all go out for ice cream afterward to mark the occasion...and then wake up tomorrow morning to the new order of the universe.  Wow.

I remember a friend with older children years ago telling me that nature has a way of preparing a mother for the fact that her children will eventually leave the nest.  "Trust me," she said, "you'll find that you're ready to push them out!"  I haven't found that moment yet.  I'm still in mourning over the fact that my "treats for the team" baking days are over.  But for the rest of that story, turn to "Love in the Time of Cupcakes".

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