Contrary to popular belief, I am not counting the days until my nest is empty. Although our four sons throw footballs, use a bounce pass to move a basketball through the foyer and wrestle to the point of madness, I still enjoy having them around.
It’s enough to make you doubt my sanity, isn’t it? I have cried at their firsts as much as their lasts. And with our youngest, Charlie, well into his senior year, I am at my wits end.
Looking back in time, I was miserable when Charlie went to preschool. I cried when I took him into kindergarten, and on the day he told me that he was big enough to walk into school all by himself I remember thinking, Well, that’s a fine how do you do.
Charlie’s sixth grade graduation wasn’t much better. I kept a stiff upper lip as they handed him his diploma. I held firm to my dignity as his class sang out their graduation song and I remained composed as the ceremony reached its climactic height.
But when Charlie came at me with a self-crafted tissue peony, I lost it. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I threw my arms around him. It was a beautiful and emotional experience for me, and what he proclaimed to be the most embarrassing moment of his life.
“She cried at a stupid flower,” Charlie lamented to his brothers over dinner.
“What was up with that?” asked his older brother, Lawrence.
“He graduated sixth grade,” I said in my defense. “That means he’s going on to the seventh!” exclaimed another brother by the same mother.
“You know,” said Lawrence, “that literally means he’ll be going to school across the street.”
I could have defended my emotions, brought the quick passage of time into play and explained that it is hard for parents to see their babies playing with Tonka trucks one moment and heading off to college the next, but it would have fallen on deaf ears and much to my delight they went from interrogating my emotions to something much more important — sports.
The past six years have flown by, and here I am going through the epitome of emotional roller coasters — the last child’s senior year. It is the last of everything. The last session of two-a-days, the last first day of school, and the last months I will have a child spending every night at home and in his bed where he belongs.
Knowing how sentimental I am, Charlie likes to point out how it is his last this at home and the last that coupled with reminders of where he will be “next year at this time.”
When Charlie’s brothers return home, they join in on the fun. “Yep, next year you and Dad will be eating all alone, going to church by yourselves and there won’t be anyone around to mess up your hair.”
The worst part of this final senior year was the last football Parents Night — that emotionally charged evening when moms and dads escort their children out onto the playing field to commemorate their athletics and to send mothers such as myself into a downhill spiral of emotional fits.
Some moms conduct themselves with an ironclad demeanor, but for me, there is nothing quite like seeing your 6-foot-something baby standing under the goal post in full pads and a crisp uniform as he waits to hand you a bouquet of wilted flowers.
Call me a ninny if you must, but minds such as mine start to play a movie of this child’s first breath, his little cowboy boots and the way he would watch “Batman” with a towel draped across his shoulders as a makeshift cape.
Worse yet, my mind played background music that consisted of Trace Adkins’ “You’re Gonna Miss This” and “Ready-Set- Don’t Go” by Billy Ray Cyrus. And I don’t even stinking like country music!
Last Friday night I kept telling myself not to cry and not to think about what was happening, and I reminded me that I am not a pretty crier.
I did it, I got through it, but now that it’s over, I’m in a funk as I contemplate that in less than a year Charlie will be leaving us with an empty nest. I’m sure a part of him worries that I will embarrass him at his graduation when he hands me the traditional rose. I already know that I have every intention of doing just that.
Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of “Are We There Yet?” Reach her at [email protected].