I’m not that mom who cries on her child’s first day of kindergarten or even at high school graduation. I’m not really so much of a “they-grow-up-too-fast” parent, as I am one who thinks “how-cool-is-this-next-phase-going-to-be?”

Maybe that’s why as our youngest duckling begins winding down her high school career and preparing to leave our pond, I’m looking more forward than back. Yes, I’ve thought about all the things I’ll miss, but to be honest, I’ve thought just as much about those I won’t. For instance:

I Won’t Miss

• Fundraisers
• Parent-Teacher conferences
• Mothers Club, PTA, club parents and other meetings
• Last minute requests for lunch money, party snacks, sick notes, order forms, permission slip signing, etc.
• Deciding whether they are really sick or just don’t want to go to school
• Keeping track of late starts, early dismissals, and random “faculty development” days off
• Driving Lessons
• Asking where they’re going, what they’ll be doing and with whom
• Listening patiently to all the school, friend, and boy drama
• Waiting up

I Will Miss

• Choir performances and other special events
• Our late-night fast food and convenience store runs
• Watching mildly inappropriate movies and TV shows together
• The stream of teens coming through our house, and trying to keep all their names and stories straight
• Having someone to give me the 411 on the latest tech gadgets and slang terms (like 411—okay, that’s an oldie, but LOL, you know what I mean)
• Listening patiently to all the school, friend, and boy drama
• Waiting Up

Okay, so maybe I’m feeling just a tiny bit sentimental. Still, I will not cry at her graduation!

I’m saving those tears for when we drop her off at college. I’ll fess up to having sobbed as we pulled out of the dorm driveways after leaving her sisters, too. I wasn’t sad that they were growing up. But I knew I would miss seeing those faces every day, and I knew that as excited as they were, a part of them was wondering what in the world they’d signed up for.

But after a few minutes of once more indulging in those therapeutic farewell tears, I plan to pull myself together and head home to begin our new empty-pond adventure, wondering “how-cool-is-this-next-phase-going-to-be?”

Train the young in the way they should go; even when old, they will not swerve from it.”  Proverbs 22:6