The event was a bit anticlimactic in July. The occasion was the first of the lasts. What does that mean? I have a senior in high school in my house this year.
The first of the lasts was supposed to be Jayna’s last summer softball game. However, as we watched the skies darken and the rain start to fall, we knew the game was not destined to happen. In a year of what could be some depressing days, the worst is when something you look forward to for the last time doesn’t actually happen.
But the following week was the last summer basketball game. And so we will continue throughout the year until May 31, when graduation occurs.
Is it sad to know that Jayna’s high school career is nearing an end? I suppose so, but, as I’ve been telling folks, I’m excited for this part of the journey. It’s not that I’m eager for her to leave home and head off to college, but I recognize that this is part of being a parent, the letting go.
My senior year in high school is a bit of a blur all these years later. I don’t remember how I felt going into it or if I was particularly sad when I played in my last concert or sporting event or anything like that.
Of course, we didn’t have cell phone cameras to document every minute of every day of our lives. Mom used up a roll of film about once a year, maybe twice a year if something important happened. Today, kids and parents are taking pictures all the time. If you’re on social media, you get reminders of things that happened last year on this date or five years ago or 10.
I got one of those recently. Remember this day 13 years ago? It asked. Well, no I don’t, but there were my kids, ages 4 and 1, playing in the front yard and on the driveway. And I realized that Jayna hadn’t even started school yet. I just stared at a picture of her cruising on her Big Wheel. She was so excited to go to kindergarten in a month.
Now she’s still excited to go to school, though not in the same sense of wonderment that younger children have. Jayna is excited to go through all the great moments of her senior year of high school. She’ll be happy to hang out with her fantastic group of friends that has developed over the years. She has an outstanding class, one that (I think) the teachers have enjoyed as they progressed through the years.
So Homecoming will roll around quickly. The end of first quarter. The start of her last basketball season. A final indoor marching band concert. One more Christmas concert. Another band trip. The last basketball game (date to be determined!), hopefully close to when her last season of softball will start.
There will be last moments in favorite teachers’ classes, culminating projects and papers that have seemed endless these past few years. At least she knows it won’t be the end of those projects and papers since there are at least four more years of those in front of her!
And as the snow starts to melt and spring arrives, it will really hit: the end is near. Seniors really start getting antsy at that time of year. Countdowns occur, and once you get below 50 days left in your high school life, things get real.
There is so much to do your senior year of high school. In addition to all your normal classes, there is planning for what will come after school is done, whether it is college, tech school, the military, or the work force. A graduation party needs to be planned. The senior class has to do a lot of work to make their graduation ceremony something special.
And then it’s over. The year of lasts will reach its last moment when graduation is done. I’m not really an outwardly emotional guy, but the fact that tears are welling up in my eyes even as I type this tells me that I’ll probably be a blubbery mess on May 31. Sure, I’m loving this part of the journey, but whenever something you enjoy is over, there’s a big comedown.
The good thing is that you don’t have to move your child to college right after graduation. There is that grace period called summer to enjoy having your child at home for an extended period for perhaps the last time.
Maybe I’ll get a reminder in a year that I wrote this column about all of Jayna’s lasts. If so, I know it’ll be fun to remember all of them as we help send her off to college and a year of firsts.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is nestorize, which means to fill someone with the idea of being very wise, as in, “The parents hoped they had done everything they could to nestorize their child before seeing her off to college.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!