Time is limited...

I knew this time has been coming, for a long time.

Our son, CollegeBoy is finishing up his junior year of college in the next six weeks or so and we have not visited him at school in more than a couple of years. We see him, he comes home for his vacations and breaks and during the summer but we’ve always talked about going to see him there. A few weeks ago, when he was home on winter break and helping out with the bathroom remodel, I realized that my time with him is growing short. Soon he will be going to Manhattan for a summer internship and the usual 13 weeks of summer time having him home, will be reduced to just three. Who knows at this point when our house will sell and we will answer the call to move to Las Cruces. In his senior year he will get home the usual times but I expect he will be starting a job at some big Ad Agency in the summer and he will move to Manhattan or where ever his fancy takes him

This makes me sad but I must say I have been preparing for it for a while, maybe ever since he was born. Seeing him laying there in the bassinet, I’m sure I thought that one day he would be an adult and live away from us and so I have always thought of our time as limited. It’s just one of those things that dads do with their sons. Dads are protective of their daughters and work hard at relationships with their sons.

So we are going to visit him in 10 days and I want to spend as much time as possible with him. He has all sorts of plans – pizza with his roommates and friends that we have heard about but never met. Watching a Saturday afternoon baseball game over some beer and maybe some wings and talking about our team and our expectations. A visit to a brewery that he has been raving about for a year. Our annual Easter meal together. Last Christmas we all talked about how that could be one of our last Christmases together in out house, all together. We will celebrate holidays together in the future; they will just be in a different place.

I know we will have a really good time, all of us, his mom, his sister, his girlfriend, but in some ways this is the start of the big goodbye. He is getting ready to start on a long, rewarding journey. We are getting ready to say our goodbyes. But not just yet.

Soon, but not for a while yet…