Somehow my mind went to all the "lasts" the next six to eight months may bring as well. What lasts it has already brought.
Zach's football career is over. The Banquet this week will wrap up all those memories with an introduction, a few words, and a slide show. The week after, he will perform in his last Christmas Program with the high school Choir. It will be the last time I see all those oh so familiar faces, and their beautiful voices reaching to the sky for all to hear.
This may be one of the last Christmas's we are all together. Joshua will graduate with his Master's degree this Spring, and his plans are to leave Tuscaloosa, which is already five hours away, and move further up North for awhile. It's time for him to spread his wings even further, broaden his view of the world, and burst into the world of being a writer with all ten fingers creating words that will go off like flares and rock the world of readers everywhere.
Zach will turn eighteen years old this March. The next step into adulthood, his journey will take another fork in the road. He graduates high school in the Spring, college will begin in the Fall, and how long he decides to continue to live at home will depend on him and his immediate need for independence.
I'm just not sure I'm ready for all of that. I've gotten quite used to all the summer fun we are allowed to watch from the sidelines. Coolers full of fish and stories of rope swinging. Tales of girl watching from the front seat of a baby blue Chevrolet truck, Kornbread and Tater ruling St George Island. Frog gigging and dead frogs in freezers, stories for weeks AND weeks. And laughter, the endless laughter Zach and all his buddies provide every single time they grace my back door with their flip flop and boot filled feet.
I have sat here and thought too much, so much, that I had begun to get melancholy, so it was actually a relief when Mims came back inside from piddling in the yard and turned one of those dang Westerns on the television. Back to reality, the television being too loud (because he CANNOT HEAR), the dryer buzzer is going off, and I need to get up, shower and get dressed and ready for the what the rest of this day will bring.
Changes are bound to come. Some good, some not what we want or are ready for, and some needed for life to continue on in the cycle that was meant to be. I've been told all of my life, that there is a path made for us before we are ever able to walk it. Sometimes the pebbles and rocks along the way may cause us to stumble and fall, and sometimes, we may stray from the beaten walk that was meant to be, but somehow, most of us, always manage to find our way back again.
I'm sure all these changes a'coming are going to throw me for a loop. I'm also convinced I will not like them at all when they do. But with change comes new life. Renewed life and love of things we may have set to the side while we took charge of the life at hand. Maybe I'll find some of what I left behind, and learn how to do it all over again, even better than before. Maybe that's how it's all supposed to work anyway, to give us that second chance, to do it all again, so that we appreciate all that we left behind much more than when we had it the first time. Looking at everything with a more clear, and wiser vision, leaving those rose-colored glasses from our younger years behind. Knowing that the grass is still plenty green on this side of the fence and how lucky we are for another shot at enjoying what we were moving too fast to see clearly before.
We only get this one life. Enjoy every single bit of it while you can. Whether it comes in two parts, three parts or one. Never take any of it for granted. And never make too big of a deal about the things you could have done without. Including Westerns playing too loud, ALL DAY LONG, on Saturday afternoons.
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