My youngest child just graduated from high school and departs this weekend for a summer job more than 100 miles away. She’ll return for a few weeks in August and September, then move on to a university even farther away. Like her older sibling, she is about to become a visitor who does not remain.
After the great cacophony of childhood, it’s going to be awfully quiet around my house. Soon it will just be my wife and me, looking at each other across the table as the years go passing by.
The wheel of life is poised to take a major lurch forward.
I don’t often use the word “I” in these columns because it’s best to keep the storyteller out of the story. That’s a good rule, but I’m not following it today because, well, today it’s personal.
From a Darwinian perspective, my wife and I have served our purpose: We’ve passed our genes on to a successor generation, raised our young to, er, maturity, and launched them into the wider world. This transition is bittersweet because, for more than 20 years, our nest has contained a baby bird.
Looking back over the arc of their childhood, I’d say my kids couldn’t have grown up in a better place. This little corner of the world — with its rolling hills, thick forests and majestic rivers — has indelibly shaped them. Perhaps the greatest gift of growing up on the Palouse is the fact that Pullman and Moscow are education towns.
Our land-grant universities attract smart, accomplished people from all over the world, and their kids sat right next to mine in school. Together, this polyglot student body — so rare in rural America — pushed itself toward academic excellence. In the main, these young scholars are a reflection of the community in which they live.
From a selfish standpoint, I am indescribably grateful that my children were self-starters at school. They managed their schedules, did their homework and completed their projects with minimal assistance from me. Other parents I know, who weren’t so lucky, struggled to keep their kids focused and pointed in the right direction academically.
Just as kittens grow up to become cats and puppies grow up to become dogs, children eventually become young adults. The gangly fledglings who in second grade were all knobby knees, Band-Aids and braces now glide around like swans. As their buds unfurl and stretch toward the sun, their parents simply grow older.
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