Graduation Time

Time can be measured in bars of soap or changed light bulbs. I am told for coffee drinkers, spoons mark time. I know time has passed when I need to change that pesky refrigerator filter.

Yet, as we celebrate the college graduation of our eldest child, the passage of time feels even more real. How could this be? I won’t start singing, “Is this the little girl I carried….?” but it is a question I keep asking myself.

How on earth did I go from being the at-home dad with two young children to the old man at school with one child about to be in graduate school and the other about to be a senior? Did I miss something? What happened?

A mantra in our family is that the days are long, but the years are short. This has certainly been true for us. Weeks and days seem endless, and then I look up and years have flown by. I often advise young parents to take lots of pictures, journal, and cherish the time. Blink twice and your children are taller than you – or don’t blink at all.

We are always blinking! We have jobs, responsibilities, meetings, chores, goals, and on and on. My life is far from boring. Time may fly when I am having fun, but it speeds past when life is full. Having children has filled my life with so many wonderful things, and that fullness has accentuated my shock when we arrive at these landmarks.

It is shocking to see the little child as a young adult, twenty-one years old! Often, my mental image of my children does not match the reality before me. We are all changing and growing, whatever our age. Yet, sometimes I forget and think of our family as static and unchanging. Then I have to adjust that mental picture to fit the times – and then it changes again!

Much as I love the challenge of change, it is tiring and surprising. All of a sudden, my son is shaving, driving, and doing other things he couldn’t do six seconds ago. My daughter lives far away and I am so eager for our weekly video chats that I take screen shots so I can savor them until the next week.

Yes, this means that I am getting older. We are all getting older, and that is a good thing. However, it is shocking, surprising, and challenging. I watch the parents of the daycare children come into the high school, and I long for those days. Then their children start screaming or crying or otherwise behaving like preschool children and the feeling passes.

There are new challenges to parenting children who are twenty-one and seventeen. There are new joys, too. Our relationship has changed and deepened in a way I could never have imagined when they were younger. It really does get better as they get older! 

I can’t generalize. I don’t know how this works for other people. I am still learning to embrace the process, and there are no viable alternatives. Fighting it doesn’t get me anywhere. Neither my children nor I will stay the same, and landmarks like graduation are great opportunities to celebrate and embrace time’s passage and our growth.