The end of school invites retrospection. But we have something better to look forward to.
About a week before my eldest child went to college, my family and I took him out for Sunday lunch. During the meal, one of his grandmothers asked me if I wished I could turn back time. My eldest sat beside me with his back straight, looking down at his plate. “Don’t you wish he were little again?” she said. “Sitting in a patch of sunshine in the yard, playing with Legos?” The other grandmother asked the same question with a different phrasing. “Remember the sweetness of those early years? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to go back?”
Their words, although well-intentioned, wrung the nostalgia right out of me. No, I said. I didn’t want to go back in time. I loved being at home with my kids when they were little, but now, I said, I was eager to see what was ahead for my son. Of course, I was also trying to signal something to him that day while answering their questions; I wanted him to know it was all right with me that he was growing up and moving on. Still, I felt like I was breaking a classic, unwritten rule of having a high school senior: Parents are supposed to be sentimental and even fraught, full of regret and given to ponderous rumination about their children growing up.
“Parenthood offers many lessons in patience and sacrifice,” columnist Michael Gerson writes in a beautiful piece about his son’s departure for college. “But ultimately, it is a lesson in humility. The very best thing about your life is a short stage in someone else’s story.”
When I first read Gerson’s words, they shot a dart into my heart. But on further reflection, I think they convey a fundamental untruth: that the best of our lives lie behind us.
I want to be hopeful ...
from
http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2018/may/parents-let-go-of-graduation-nostalgia.html
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