Slow then fast

Our son graduates from high school tomorrow. A few days after that, we’ll leave for a family vacation to Iceland — our son’s destination choice for his graduation trip. Less than a month after that, I’ll take him to the University of Virginia for orientation. Then dorm furnishings, clothes for school, registration, and mid-August, move-in. We’ll drive him the two and half hours away, drop him off with all his stuff, wave goodbye and cry a lot, and not see him again until the holidays. We’ll come home to his open bedroom door, silence in his room instead of the sound of his mechanical keyboard clacking and him laughing on his headset with his gaming friends, and our cat Tubbles wandering the house lost and meowing, wondering where he is.

When the kids were small, it was unimaginable that they’d ever be not little, that they’d ever not need us so much. It seemed their childhoods would take — and last — forever.

These past few months, I’ve known these summer days were coming. These end-of-high school days. I felt a sense of waiting and anticipation, but it was comfortable. Things happened slowly and normally; an email reminder here or there from the school, college applications, weeks of waiting for a reply, then the reply, and then nothing really happening except us sending a check to UVA. This was fine. I was in no rush.

Now, suddenly, everything is happening, and it’s happening fast.