No more lunches to pack for the rest of the summer. School is out, and graduation is behind us. When classes resume this fall, I will have one less lunch to pack, as the oldest of my three children will be away at college. We are moving to another assignment in Germany, but he will be in the U.S. to begin his freshman year.
Friends and readers of my column will know this has been much on my mind lately, as I've already written about the subject of children growing up and the process of preparing for a military child to go to college.
This week's column sprang to life when my oldest commented one night about his last lunch bag for school. Senior year, especially coupled with a PCS, is filled with so many "lasts" that it is easy to focus on it as only as the end of something.
For the graduation ceremony, I carried two packages of tissues with me, fully expecting to mourn the passing of the childhood of my first baby. I did shed a few tears, but I couldn't muster much sadness. Instead, the tears sprang from pride: Because he is our son, because of his accomplishments, because of the friends who surrounded him and our family, and because of their accomplishments too.
I sat across the aisle from my good friend, and we watched as her son and friends sang for the last time with the high school choir. Tears were streaming down her face, and she did not wipe them away. There was no need. They were not sad tears but happy ones for a son who completed his senior year in triumph.
Another sweet friend and her family -- who didn't have a graduate this year -- braved limited parking, snarled traffic complicated by the president's arrival at Ramstein, hours of waiting and three-hours of ceremony just to be there with those of us who did have kids in cap and gown that night.
Yes, it is an ending of some things. An end of high school for this child. Time to leave this assignment for us and several of our close friends. An end of getting together for birthday dinners, cross country meets, Halloween hotdogs, football games, a graduation party, or a midweek lunch ... But not an end of friendship any more than graduation is the end of parenting.
It's just another leg of the journey. Our friends might not be at the same assignment, but they are always with us.
Pack a lunch and let's get going. (Okay, maybe you better bring the tissues too.)
It's a bird; It's a plane; It's the president
President Obama was in town for our high school's graduation this year. He wasn't the speaker, or even in the audience. Although he was just passing through, his presence was felt. For one thing, his plane landed at the Ramstein PAX terminal not long before our commencement ceremony began, and closed the nearby autobahn, causing a traffic problem for many of us attending the other important event of the evening
He also put in an appearance of sorts. Just as we were walking into the hall where the graduation would take place, a father of one of the grads said "Look, it's Air Force One." We all looked up in the direction he pointed. There was the unmistakable blue and white plane, coming in for a landing and flying low enough to be easily recognizable. Not every graduation gets a flyover from Air Force One.