Passing

I'm not sure who coined the phrase, "It seems like just yesterday," got their sense of the time/space continuum, but it does seem that they may have been more capable of ignoring certain ways in which days an months stack up on one another. I understand the initial shock of looking down and discovering that our babbling baby boy is gathering his things and preparing to make a trip across town to go to high school next year. I can relate to others' surprise that our son is now fully capable of making this transition. I think that maybe those people, and myself on occasion, are not ready for that to happen to themselves.
My son is being promoted to the ninth grade today. Previously, he had only been switching grades, but now he is gaining a title: Freshman. When he was still tiny, his mother and I watched as he got up and made the most literal transition of his life. At his preschool, where it was said that he always had good ideas in the block room, he walked across a bridge. Literally. It was that short trip, guided by the sure hand of his teacher, that he arrived at the next stage of his school life. When he finished up in Kindergarten, there was another ceremony, this one less literal, that presented him ready for first grade. It was a longer haul, but when fifth grade was over, he buttoned up his white shirt and made another walk down the aisle to sit in the auditorium to listen to some final bits of wisdom and appreciation from his teachers and classmates.
Now he prepares to make that trip once again. This time the auditorium is bigger, and so are the kids in his class. He has survived the bumps and flurries of middle school, and he tells us that he is anxious to move along the path toward higher learning. His mother and I will watch as we always have, from a distance, but we wouldn't miss it for the world. When I lay it all out like this, it seems like it took forever to get here. But then again, it took no time at all.