Class of 2003
Class of 2012
Class of 2013
I just don’t know how parents do it. My baby sister just graduated and I feel so… sad. I am really happy for her to be moving on in her life, but it really brings into focus how fast time flies. My siblings are not the little kids I left at home when I moved to Arizona when I was 19… one has become an adult (well, almost)! And the other two are growing just as fast. I want them to stay put so I can be gone and get my life where it needs to be, then I can come home and watch the softball games I’ve missed, and go to high school footballs games with them.
I remember the day Justine was born. Mimi got a call at our house telling me I had a baby sister. As 5-year-old I didn’t care nearly as much as when, at ten and 11, my brother and other sister were born, but I still remember being intrigued by this new guest that would be joining our family.
Over the next ten years Justine would become my best friend, making pacts with me like, “I won’t tell if you won’t”, and staying up late talking when we really should have been sleeping. Then in the next 5 years watching her shock me time and again as her personality and quick wit developed. She really is an amazing girl and I regret that I haven’t been around nearly as much as I would have liked to watch all of it unfold.
Then as I am shaken back to reality as a football (soccer) crowd cheers outside my window, I remember where I am… The Middle East. Yep. And married with a sleeping ten-month-old of my very own in a bed down the hall. Holy Crap! It seems like last week we brought him home from the hospital to our little apartment in Boise and here we are, a walking, fun-as-Hell baby boy, on the other side of the world, just trying to get ahead so we can sit in the bleachers ten years from now and holler at our own kid in his own sports.
It’s so conflicting to sometimes still feel like Mommy can fix everything for me if I want her to bad enough, then to see the same look in my son’s eyes… but I am the Mommy now. Where is the manual that tells me how to do it all? Everyone always says you appreciate your parents more when you have kids of your own. I doubt that’s ever been truer for anyone than it has for me. I feel overwhelmed even thinking of doing for my kid all the things my parents have done for me. But ever parent has had to learn on their own how to be parents… it’s crazy that more people don’t die from the shock of this experience!
Anyway, baby sister isn’t a baby anymore. Scary. Sad. Encouraging…
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