A Week from Today

A week from today my baby will graduate from High School. It seems like just yesterday that he was devouring his first birthday cake. He seriously holds the McGiven family record for the most cake consumed by a baby. Some say the twins gave him a run for his money, but there were two of them. My baby did it all on his own...with a little help from Grandpa.

Wes is a good kid. Self-Absorbed as all get out...but what almost high school graduate isn't? Here are some highlights from Wes' life.

1 - He holds the McGiven Family First Birthday Cake Crown

2 - He won the elementary school Dare essay contest when he was in 4th Grade

3 - He won the most awards in a single award ceremony in B. Everett Jordan Elementary history

4 - He made the Principal's Honor Roll all three years of middle school and was named the 7th grade English Student of the Year

5 - He was voted Hawfields Husky of the year for athletics the top sports award in the school

6 - He was recently voted most likely to succeed and class clown in high school...go figure?!

7 - He lettered in varsity soccer

8 - He was named to the state academic all-stars and a North Carolina Merit Scholar

9 - He is one of only 5 North Carolina varsity soccer players to have maintained above a 3.7 GPA during his season of play

10 - He is a member of the National High School Honor Society

11 - He has yet to have a motor vehicle ticket...only because he is lucky as all get out. He drives a Volvo station wagon that is as old as he is and he LOVES it!

12 - He will be attending the University of North Carolina at Wilmington this Fall

13 - He did not finish his Eagle Scout project and I think at some point in his life he'll feel some regret about that. All he lacked was the project.

14 - He is passionate about the environment.

15 - He has never had a steady girl friend and I think that might be a good thing.

16 - He still loves his Mommy...he told me so just the other night.

After this summer things at my house will change. I'm beginning to HATE change! Actually what I'm doing is grieving the end of childhood. Both of my boys are semi-adults now. I'm hoping as we get past these turbulent years of them forging out their independence that we'll get to the other side and be friends.

I wonder how many of our griefs are like that, the payback for our knowledge of time. If we lived in three dimensions we would still suffer from momentary pains and discomforts, but how much true suffering is contingent on our awareness of the future? Last summer I sobbed my way through Up and recently I reflected that the melancholy in that film is attached almost entirely to the passage of time. Time is simultaneously the most mundane and the most startling aspect of life. C.S. Lewis argued that the jolt we feel at the passage of time suggests that we were created for some other condition. None of us have ever known a static existence. Change is the most omnipresent, unavoidable aspect of our lives and yet we never quite get over the shock of it.