lump in my throat

As the school year draws to a close, there are numerous events held to mark the fact that Max and his classmates are graduating seniors. There has been senior ditch day, senior prank, the mother/son dinner and father/daughter dance, the final parent gathering, senior breakfast, prom, sports awards day and the senior processional at May Day. We still look forward to academic awards day, commencement dinner, final projects presentations, the final music program and then the mother of them all – the actual graduation ceremony.

Both of our children have attended this college preparatory school and both have officially been dubbed “lifers” – that is, they each made their way through all thirteen years of school there. I did the math while sitting through yet another may pole dance on the field hockey green last week, listening to the same scratchy Germanic folk music blare on the loud speaker, and it dawned on me that we have been parents at this school for twenty-one years.

I have adopted a tough guy kind of attitude about leaving this place. After all, I’m done with room parent meetings and fund drives. I’ve been on my fair share of field trips, worked at enough book fairs and sat through more than enough soccer games, lacrosse games, field hockey games, basketball games and wrestling matches. I’ve made plenty of cupcakes for Valentines Day parties and done my time as chaperone at school dances. I’m ready to bust loose, head for that freedom land where my empty nest is what I call home and my caller ID does not ever say Pembroke Hill School again.

So, why, when the seniors were parading across the green on May Day did I feel this funny protrusion in the way back of my esophagus – you know, the kind that makes it kind of hard to swallow properly? When teachers who know the eating, study and social habits of my children better than most of my friends came up to give me a hug, what was with that moist stuff that suddenly gathered in my eyes? I certainly did not understand the tug I felt in my chest when the little ones skipped - some more successfully than others, which is always very entertaining – across the field to present the May Queen with her flowers.

I started watching the young ones - the pre-schoolers, kindergartners and first graders. They hammed it up as their parents snapped just one more shot of them in their May Day clothes. There was one moment when I instinctively started to reach for my camera and look around for my little ones so I could make some pictures to stick up on the refrigerator.

And then, of course, I was forced to wonder where they went.