Life Changed This Year | A Son Leaves for College

Welcome to Real Life. Believe it or not, kids do grow up. Life changes. So, enjoy them today! 

I wrote this in September of 2005 after my first son went off the college.

Dennis's senior picture
by www.cavanaughphoto.com 

After twelve years of homeschooling, my oldest son Dennis graduated and left for college this fall. Looking back, I was so busy his senior year that the reality of him leaving did not sink in until the end of summer. Strong emotions began to surface. I was washing dishes and Dennis was sitting at the kitchen table on his computer. Suddenly, my eyes welled with tears. He won’t be around anymore. Not that he was always home. With work and friends and responsibilities, he was often on the run. But, I knew he’d be home in bed each night. I’d see his sleepy face each morning. After homeschooling all these years, I was used my sons being around me and I liked it. That was about to change.

In my early years of homeschooling, as summer would end my feelings of anxiety would begin. Oh no! Soon we have to start school again. By late September, anxiety would melt into comfort as we settled into our fall routine. Somewhere along the years as summer ended, I stopped feeling anxious at all. I actually started looking forward to school in the fall … until this year. This year life changed. As summer ended, I realized I’d only be teaching one son. I felt strangely sad. Isn’t this what I looked forward to when I counted down the years until Dennis graduated? Back then, it felt like homeschooling would never end. I should celebrate. Teaching one son is half the work. Besides, Dennis graduated well. He won a half-tuition scholarship and was a pre-med major. By the grace of God, he was a homeschool success story. So why wasn’t I celebrating? Because all these wonderful things meant he’d no longer be home with me.

Last week it happened. We dropped Dennis off at college. We walked through an orientation designed to reassure clingy parents like me. Even so, when I hugged him goodbye, I cried like a baby. My husband seemed unfazed. That is, until bedtime. With tears streaming down his face, Terry knelt next to the bed and prayed for our boy who was becoming a man.

Life changed this year. And I changed, too. I no longer say, “Only three years left until Calvin (my younger son) graduates.” Now I say, “Thank you, Lord, for three whole years left to homeschool with Cal.”

Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him. 

Psalm 127:3

Dennis is now in his final year of a graduate
program in Optometry at Ohio State University

(This article was published by Homeschooling Today in July 2011.)