Can you relate to this?

My son called me a little while ago, from Newark Airport. Seeing his photo pop up via Caller-ID on my cell phone made me smile, then worry. “There’s a problem”, was my immediate thought. Unlike his brother or sister, Maxwell doesn’t usually call just to chat or report on something minor. But his first words were an unmistakably self-satisified, “Hi, Mom, I’m at the gate!”

He went on to relate how he packed up all his stuff from his year away at college, put it into two cases each weighing exactly 50 pounds (the maximum for checked baggage on Continental Airlines), and got to the airport an hour’s train ride away. How he has two carry-on bags, again the maximum allowed, containing books and other heavy items since carry-ons aren’t weighed. How fortunately it’s a bit chilly over there today, so he was able to wear his winter coat part of the time, “until I started sweating buckets, hauling 140 pounds of stuff”. And even how he and his friend who lives in New Jersey not only figured out that it would be best to leave his bedding and towel in her garage for the summer, but even that he remembered to wash it before sending it off with her.

I am astonished. My child appears to be a functional adult.

Other parents with grown children may have experienced passing this milestone as a signal event. Some, perhaps not. Our older son, Luke’s transformation into a capable grown man was more gradual – I didn’t have a rite-of-passage moment like this that I remember with him. Perhaps some of us had “Wow, I’m grown up!” epiphanies ourselves… maybe some readers are still awaiting that event, for themselves or for their younger children. I’m posting this in the hope that sharing this sentinel mother-son moment may trigger some memory or dream for you to muse on, as you finish the week.

And to process my own amazement. I feel like the script of a credit card commercial:
19 years of child-raising expenses, college application tests, going to Princeton – hundreds of thousands of dollars. Coming home independently: priceless.