The Graduate

That picture, minus the date, is how I felt when I sat for hours watching the graduating class of my sons’ take their diploma and walk away into the night. A group of young adults, weathering the tests, classes, and teachers for the past 13 years…out in the real world now. It was surreal. My baby boy. The one who cried so hard when I left him at the little church preschool when he was 4 years old…now a graduate. I remember not being able to take hearing him cry. I called my husband from the parking lot and told him he would be taking him from now on. He couldn’t do it either. So I called my mother to drop him off. Eventually it got better. He acclimated to the other children and settled in. But boy was it tough.

He never gave me any trouble in school. Always a straight ‘A’ student, very conscious of his GPA, and rarely ever missing a day. I had it easy being his mom. And then the night came to see it end. No more seeing him pulling his hair at the counter, trying to squeeze out another page to his already 7 page long paper. No more having him ride the bus for the 45 minutes it took to get to the school. No more curfew to get the bed so he could wake up at 5 in order to ride the bus! He is now officially in limbo until he finds a job and waits to go to college in the fall.

So how do I feel about it all? Old. I no longer can say I have 5 in school. I have four in school and one going to college. Ahh…it gives me shivers. One is out. OUT, I tell you. Out among the other responsible citizens of the world. Able to vote, able to work, go to jail if he’s bad. (although I highly doubt it…still, he could go) I’ve got an adult on my hands. No, I won’t say it too often in my mind. I can’t. To admit it means I’ve lost a little bit of the world I’ve lived in for so long a time. I prefer denial. When I see him meandering in the hall after all the others have gone to school, I simply say to myself he’s just out for the day. It gets me through it. Don’t ask me what I’ll do when fall really comes and I have to leave him at that college. I think he may have to call my mom to take me home because he can’t take the crying! 🙂