I'm Not Ready

The other night, I was driving to Central Elementary School to pick up Younger Son who was volunteering at the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center. Something on the radio triggered a memory...

Older Son went to Manila Elementary School for Kindergarten. He and I had worked together on a little Lego Mindstorms robot and he wanted to bring it to school for Show & Tell. I can still picture the configuration of the desks in the classroom as we showed off how this robot could move around the room.

As I sat at a red light having this memory, I had a small panic attack. Older Son is now a Senior in High School. Instead of me helping him build Legos, he's helping me move refrigerators. He is applying for college admissions and scholarships. We're soon going to be worrying about Senior pictures and graduation.

And then he's going to be gone. Next Thanksgiving, he could very well be coming home from college for a visit. The following Thanksgiving, he will likely be serving an LDS mission.

I sat there, waiting for the light to change, fighting back tears, knowing how much I'm going to miss him--the same tears that I'm fighting back as I write this.

I'm not ready.

But he is ready. And ready or not, it's going to happen.

Despite the fact that I'm going to miss him, I'm so excited for the growth that he is going to experience in the next few years of his life. I take comfort in the fact that he and I have a really good relationship and I'm sure that I'll be one that he shares this growth and experience with.