First Day of Senior Year

Okay, technically that was yesterday. I wasn't in a blogging mood yesterday, so I didn't write about it.

I didn't write about:
- Getting up at 6:30 to make breakfast, thinking "This is the last year I'll be doing this on a regular basis."

- Making Aidan's ubiquitous peanut-butter sandwich for lunch and thinking "This is the last year I'll be making his lunch on a regular basis."

- Kissing him good-bye at the door and thinking "This is the last year I'll be doing this every morning on a regular basis."

- Wandering around the house after he and Bjorn had driven off for the day, thinking, "Is this what it's going to be like after he goes off to school? This kind-of lonely, empty feeling?" Which, technically, I didn't really have because my heart knew he would be coming home after school and all would be well. The lonely, empty feeling was more "real" when he was off at Latin nationals for a week at the end of July. And then I was busy getting ready for our trip to London and Norway the following week, so I didn't have much time to dwell on the "faux Empty Nest" feeling.

God is trying to show me that Aidan is not my own, that he belongs to God, and that God has amazing and wonderful things planned for him. He's trying to tell me that we did a good job raising this kid and it's time to prepare to let go and let him go out into the world and do whatever it is he's supposed to do. Sometimes I really find peace with that. Sometimes I think, "Okay, God, you know I really, really hope Your will is that Aidan do his undergrad studies here at UT, but if You have something else planned, well, then, I'll accept that."

Until Aidan says something like, "I think God is telling me He wants me to go to the University of Chicago." In which case I want to throttle Aidan and tell him he doesn't have the slightest clue what God is saying to him, and then I proceed to tell God once again that I really, really want Aidan to stay here and go to UT.

*SIGH* God has a long way to take me this year.

Right now, today, the second day of Aidan's senior year, I'm not sure what I'm feeling. I do know that, today anyway, I want to take every day as a gift and not dwell so much on the long view. This morning I started to think, "It is so danged hot! I can't wait for October!" And then I thought, wait, yes I can wait for October. Hot or not, this day is not as close to THAT day as October will be.

Anyway, right now my son, my only child, is sitting in the office with me, looking at the various web comics he keeps up with. It's raining outside. It's cozy in here. And it's what I have RIGHT NOW. I'll take it.