As we approach graduation

We have several weeks until N graduates from high school. While she may be counting down, I am neither counting down nor wishing time to stop and keep us frozen in amber to avoid seeing her move onto the next stage of her life. I am going about the days as I always have.

In general, I have a difficult time stomaching sentimentalism and cliches. I have a difficult time with the public proclaiming of how wonderful kids are and how proud we are of them. Primarily, this is because it is all curated. It is all, in its own way, lies. Or if not lies, then abstentions. 

But this is the season of that sort of thing, I guess. 

People have begun asking me "How are you?" in relation to having a senior so close to graduation, and I emphatically say, "I am fine."

Because I am.

Maybe I would be a little sad if I didn't have six more years of middle and high school with her two younger brothers, but by the time they get through, I will be oh-so-ready to be the fuck done with all this. 

Maybe I would be a little sad if I hadn't savored the time with her when she was young. 

But I blogged about it and I journaled about it and I took photos of it and I took videos of it, and I was there for all of it. 

Why would I need or want to stay there forever?

If I put on the rose-colored glasses of sentimentality, I would forget that those times when she was young were not all wonderful.

The times of having to help do projects in elementary school. Ugh.

The times of being woken up in the middle of the night. 

The times I got puked on.

The times I had to go to so many freaking preschool birthday parties. Geez Louise.

The times I played Barbies until I thought my brain would pop out of my ears from sheer boredom. 

Maybe I've read too many Buddhism books, but all, including my children's childhoods and teenage years, is impermanence. 

And I am far more comfortable embracing this fact than feeling the sticky fingers of sentimentalism encroach on me. 

I think for many parents their overwhelming feelings about watching their child graduate have almost nothing to do with the child; it is about the parent. About losing control (as if they had it to begin with). It is about their own death looking them in the face for a moment. They are often sandwiched, as I am now, between parents who are aging, either planting feet into their 80s or already knee-deep, and children who are no longer under our thumbs. 

It is a strange and uncomfortable place.

Well, this got dark.

But that darkness is why sentimentality is allowed to swoop in. It feels better, I suppose. It is warm and fuzzy and maybe makes people feel better temporarily. 

I don't like its texture, though, any more than I like the uncomfortable of knowing the circle of life keeps turning. The clock hands have moved me to a position I remember my parents being at when I was 18. The hands for them are closer to midnight. The seconds continue to tick by.

The most comfortable place is the here and now. This day. This moment. Not the countdown of days until graduation. Not the wallow of time gone past.