This coming Monday, I will sit in a high school auditorium and watch as my third son graduates with a cap and a gown and a group of 39 other high school seniors he’s spent the last two years with at the charter homeschool high school he attends (I know it sounds weird. It’s a cool, out-of-the-box hybrid). I’ll likely have Mighty Joe on my lap and Christian (he’s 8) squished against my side, and three pre-teen and teen daughters, and grandparents, and girlfriends, and young friends right there with me, but I will feel a schizophrenic dichotomy of emotions from elation to relief to joy to pride to fear to sadness. Oh, the sadness.
We walk hand in hand with each child for the length of 18, maybe 20 years, and then it’s over. They walk with strength and a plan right out the garage door, with a box of stuff like socks and books and a photograph or two. But here, back at home, I’m still the mom with the heart that has just walked out the door. And my life has, once again, been changed for the better because each of these young men entered my life just short of two decades before they stood on their own and faced the world.
