Victory Lap

I am currently in the process of raising a high school senior. I understand that I share this distinction with millions of other parents, but has only dawned on me over the past week or so just how significant this experience is for me. My wife, by contrast, has been working feverishly on all matters related to this new phase for several months. She has been looking at college brochures and financial aid packages. She has attended meetings and engaged help and assistance in all manner of things that will help prepare our son for the future. His future.
It's not as if I was ignoring this particular growth spurt. Every day I struggle in from the mailbox with another dozen flyers from educational institutions that are clamoring to get their hands on the next four years of my son's life. And the next four years of our paid tuition for that privilege. Then there's the conversations I have with my son about girls and courses of study and insurance. These are not the conversations I had with him when he was in middle school. Or elementary school. They are even distinct from those we shared in his freshman year of high school. The future was something we acknowledged, but spoke of in the same manner that we might have chatted about unicorns or Big Foot. This is no longer a mythical or legendary beast. The future is now.
I suppose this lack of focus on the impending transition shouldn't surprise me. Before our son was born, I attended a great many birth classes and was instructed in great detail about what to fear when we were expecting. I have already apologized for not paying better attention at the time. That glazed-oversight was my way of dealing with the incipient life change that was headed my way like the freight train that I would spend the next six years staring at while my fresh-faced progeny looked on in awe. Inside I was the same person I was before, but the reality that surrounded me shifted dramatically. We went from a pair to a trio. I had to tie shoes other than my own. Food was spooned and just as often picked up off the floor.
These days I don't have to spend as much time looking for deals on tickets for Disney on Ice. I can delete episodes of "Transformers Prime" from our Tivo with impunity. I don't have to cut anyone's meat for them, but I do have to shame the enormous forkfuls that get shoveled in that ever-expanding mouth. He's a growing boy, and will be for some time to come, but I won't be watching it happen on a daily basis for very much longer. I'll still spend time in the aisles of Toys R Us, but the purpose has shifted once again.
When my son came out to my school last week to help me set up teachers' classroom computers, the first thing that I noticed was that he drove there. Then it was apparent that he had been paying attention all those years before, when he was able to go from room to room connecting this and that, without my constant supervision. When it was time for him to leave, he did just that. He drove away. It brought back the image of my year and a half old son who came to my second back to school night and tottered into the doorway of my computer lab and proceeded to do a face plant there on the unforgiving tile floor.
I know that eventually my son will be cutting up my meat for me and watching out for my periodic lapses of balance, but right now I'm focused on the moment: My son is a senior in high school.