Time In A Bottle

Okay, time can slow down now, please.

When I was a kid, I remember my mother saying that the days were long but the years were short.  I didn’t understand then, but dear god, do I understand now.

No more elementary schoolers in the house anymore.  Petunia will be in sixth grade next year, Thing Two in seventh.  And worst of all for this mama’s heart, Thing One in tenth.  Sophomore year already.  How did we get here so quickly?  Answer: one long day and short year at a time, I guess.

Thing One is going to a couple of soccer camps this summer.  They are called ID Camps...the idea is that multiple college coaches get together and offer one camp at one college so that kids who are potentially interested in attending/playing at a subset of those colleges can meet a bunch of coaches at once.  I’m struggling with this, partially because it means that in order to pick camps, he has to think about where he’d like to go to college already.  He has to make up the biography that players give to potential coaches.  And since these are sleepaway camps, one five or six hours away in another state, I am finding myself doing the same shopping that friends with college-bound recent graduates are doing right now: XL-sized twin bedding, towels, fans for unairconditioned dorm rooms, laundry bags and quarters and detergent.  I am so not ready for this.  I don’t care HOW big the kid is, he’s still my baby.  I will let him go, and I will try to smile about it, but that’s all I can promise right now.