My baby boy Nick is GRADUATING from High School today.

I looked it up… the one word definition of graduation is commencement.

The two word definition of commencement is new beginning.

Lately… the two word phrase that I seem to hear from all around me when I speak of my youngest son’s graduation… empty nester.

I remember the days surrounding my oldest son Chase's graduation and how sad I was at that time.

A friend sent me this LINK to an old NPR radio interview about the subject of sending a son off to college and I cried.

I looked up the poem referenced in the interview, read it and I cried.

I sat through the graduation breakfast, luncheons, parties and the commencement ceremony and I cried.

And today… two years later I am sure I will cry BUT it won’t be the same sort of cry... it won't be a sad cry.

Two years later I know what lies ahead of me and as sad as I will be to see Nick go I realize that this is a new beginning for us all and that brings me GREAT JOY not sadness.

Based on my experience with Chase I now know that your babies will grow up and go away but when they comeback… they comeback with an attitude of gratitude and growth that can only be realized AFTER going away.

So for me… today… Nick’s graduation day… the two words I am thinking of have nothing to do with EMPTY & NESTS and everything to do with ABUNDANCE & GRATITUDE.

I am immensely GRATEFUL for the GIFT of  NICK and for having the privilege to be here for him over the years to support his education and growth from that first day of school till today… HIS GRADUATION DAY!

Nick…

I love you and I am SO PROUD OF YOU and I just can’t wait to see what you do with YOUR New Beginning.

Always...

Momma

The First Day of School

My child and I hold hands on the way to school,

And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.


Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible


Bow down before it, as in Joseph's dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend,
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.


A school is where they grind the grain of thought,
And grind the children who must mind the thought.
It may be those two grindings are but one,
As from the alphabet come Shakespeare's Plays,
As from the integers comes Euler's Law,
As from the whole, inseperably, the lives,


The shrunken lives that have not been set free
By law or by poetic phantasy.
But may they be. My child has disappeared
Behind the schoolroom door. And should I live
To see his coming forth, a life away,
I know my hope, but do not know its form


Nor hope to know it. May the fathers he finds
Among his teachers have a care of him
More than his father could. How that will look
I do not know, I do not need to know.
Even our tears belong to ritual.
But may great kindness come of it in the end.


-Howard Nemerov