Graduation Week Continues...

I don't know whether this is an ELCA thing, but graduation activities have been going strong for the last two weeks. Senior awards, senior luncheon, senior skip day, senior activity day. And tomorrow, finally, is the big day. Graduation. My baby boy. A graduate. Done with kid stuff like high school and school uniforms, and ready to start the new chapter in his life. And I know this is the way that it is supposed to be. And that this was my job as his mother. That millions of mothers around the world are going through the very same thing about this time of year. But that doesn't mean it is easy. Or that I have to like it.

In a way, I've seen it coming. He's prepared me for it. And little by little, he's pulled away and spent more and more time away from home.

First with the friends...in the beginning, a night or two a month. Then as he started to drive and had his own car, he would come home later after school, after the game, after work. He'd drive himself to church and then leave from there to go and meet this friend or that...

Then it was the girl. And that meant every weekend night, and usually a week day night thrown in there too. When he turned 18 and spring sprung, he spent more and more time with her and

time with the friends, and we saw him less and less. And even though we didn't see him much, there was still comfort in the fact that he came home to sleep upstairs every night, and he stopped by my room at school every day.

But now there is this graduation thing. Which leads to college. And going away to college. And then moving out on his own. And then in with the girl. Which leads to a family and a life of his own. And I know that seems like I'm stretching it a bit--after all, he'll still come home tomorrow night after graduation, and the night after that, and the moving in with the girl part won't happen for a loooonng time. But I figure the first 18 years passed in a blink of the eye; how fast then will the next five?

I'd prefer to have him right here.

I'm not at all sure I'm ready for tomorrow night. But ready or not, here it comes!