To My 18-Yr Old on Your Last Day of School

I remember chubby hands grasping thick crayons, and us singing your name to the tune of “Bingo was his name-oh.”

I remember reading The Sign of the Beaver and building teepees and soft leather moccasins.

We’ve painted medieval family crests; flooded mini Nile Rivers; constructed mud ziggarats; embalmed and  mummified toys; and chipped chicken bones out of frozen dirt like archeologists.

Our countless hikes in the woods on leaf and nature hunts were as much fun for me as for you, and I love the songs we made up to thank Jesus.

I remember the butterflies’ curling proboscis tongues (they liked cantaloup best), our panic in remembering that frogs can’t swim nonstop once they’re no longer tadpoles, and your instant rush home from the party to give them land.

We discovered that goldfish can jump higher than we thought, and sadly practiced subtraction. Ants crawled through blue goo, caterpillars hung upside down, and we moved from fungi to a cell’s plasma membrane, from dissections to differential equations.

History timelines marched across our living room, dining room and kitchen, and you and your sister and I read for countless hours on that couch throughout the years.

I’m so proud of the man you are, and are becoming. I see your love for Jesus, and for your family and friends. I see the way you interact respectfully, kindly, and confidently with others, and I see your intentionality. You are a man of schedules and watches and punctuality; a backpack-carrying, purple-cabbage-eating, consistent Bible reading, water-bottle-swigging, guitar-playing young man, with grass-stained toes.

We love you. We’re proud of you, and we’re cheering you on in this next chapter. You’re going to love college.

Love,
Mom