This year marks the midway point between my college graduation and my youngest child’s high school graduation. In other words, halfway between right-out-of-the-nest and empty-nester. I graduated in 1993; Camryn turns 18 in 2025. (I figured this out all by myself. Who says I can’t do math?) 1993 doesn’t sound like it was all that long ago, at least not to me. But when you consider that most of us had never heard of the Internet and Bill Clinton was just beginning his first term, it seems a bit more remote.
I was telling my teenage niece and nephew recently about my one and only hitchhiking adventure. I was in college, driving from northern to southern California, when my car broke down. When they wondered why I didn’t just call someone for help, I had to explain that in 1992, no one but the super rich or the super eccentric had a phone in their car. Yeah, it was a long time ago.
But 2025 sounds even further away. It even sounds science-fictiony to me to write it. And Camryn 18? The child who still sleeps in a crib and regularly reminds us, “I’m a beebee”? Almost impossible to imagine her in a cap and gown.
When I was a little girl growing up in Akron, the nearest town was a half-hour away. It was another one-stoplight town not much different from ours except it was notoriously windy and it had a steakhouse that we occasionally visited. When you’re seven and never ride more than a few blocks at a time in a car, thirty miles is a long, long way. There was a little landmark halfway between the two towns called Midway, nothing more than a dilapidated house and some rusting farm equipment, but to me it represented progress. It took forever to get to Midway, but once we got there, the rest of the trip went twice as fast. We were there before you knew it.
I have a hunch my life might be a little like that. The 16 years since my college graduation were monopolized by one big job and four small children. (And you, too, my Big Handsome Stud!) The demands of the four little children have pretty much consumed every waking moment of the past 10 years. I’ve loved nearly every minute of it (some I’d choose to forget), but it’s not exactly like they’ve flown by.
And now I’m at Midway. Uh-oh.
I can almost hear Pomp and Circumstance now.
