My youngest just got early acceptance to her top choice college for next fall. And an academic merit scholarship chopping 40% off the tuition! (Yeah, I’m bragging. Deal with it.) If she goes, she’ll be over 1000 miles away. I expect she will. There’s a chance she may go to a school 100 miles away, but I doubt it. So, when Coryne goes, she’ll be about 1100 miles away, about 5 hours south of my oldest, Leigh, who is 900 miles away!

How did I get here? How did this happen? How did I get to be 51, married to a guy who will be 60 (!) next spring, with a 20, 18, and 18 year old? I won’t say “it seems like only yesterday they were in diapers,” because, frankly, it doesn’t. Seems like a long time ago. But it does seem… sudden. I know those two things don’t go together but nothing about parenthood is what you expect or makes perfect sense so perhaps that’s appropriate.

Each of my 3 girls is absolutely unique. I remember looooooong before I ever met their father, that I thought of my children up on a cloud, sort of peering over, like the cherubs in the Sistine Chapel, chubby fingers lightly curled over the edge, waiting to alight into my arms. I never felt like they were entirely a surprise to me, rather that I had merely waited to “meet” them. That from a power far beyond our understanding, on a clock far beyond our imagining, they’d know the right time. It’s not a feeling of helplessness to fate, merely that we’re in it – this fate thing – and to just keep calm and trust it. That’s not to say we’re not captains of our own ships. I believe we are. But we can either sail into smooth waters or crash into the rocks. That we are ships at sea is the fate part. The captain part is mine.

That’s all for now. Just feeling a bit wistful.