WOW, sometimes I sit back and ponder, how different of a parent would I have been if I had taken that two-word statement more literally. Don’t blink. Nothing fancy but packed with power. This week we will watch our second daughter walk across the stage graduating from high school. If you’ve followed my blog, you may realize this is one hell of an accomplishment, something that some days we didn’t believe would ever get here. We all have those days as parents where we sit back and wonder if we will ever get our time back, if those crying kids will ever stop, if they will every clean up after themselves or MOVE OUT! Well…. I’m still wondering about a lot of stuff with both our girls but that’s what makes the world go round. If we knew it all how boring would it be!
Graduation for most kids and their parents is a huge deal. You’ve geared up for this for 13 years, you’ve done all you can to this point and as your child crosses the stage you too feel that accomplishment. For us, it’s been a long time coming. Parker, our graduate in 2019 has been in special education of sorts since her third birthday in the public-school system. We have had our share of incredible teachers, one horrible one that set us back quite a bit and some that are lifelong friends. We’ve done projects that cost us more than our groceries and kept us up till the last minute the night before it was due. We’ve gone to school lunches, bought teacher gifts with meaning, dealt with bullies, bought year books, (good lord they are expensive), we’ve washed that one shirt she had to have before the roosters got up. We’ve made sure they had what the needed and some of what they wanted, we watched them drive away to school for the first time after turning 16. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve prayed, we've lost sleep, we’ve screamed and cussed but, in the end, we’ve tried to teach them what they will need to know in life. Love God, know understand the importance of treating people right and how to respect yourself. Of course, a whole host of other things as well but these three seem to stand out to me.
The fact of the matter is when you’re busy doing all of that and then some, you often fail to slow down and take it all in. To relish in the moment, to take visual snapshots to store away in your bank of memories. These past couple weeks I’ve spent time looking through old pictures of my girls gearing up for the graduation party and find it fascinating how much I’ve buried so deep under newer memories that it took a picture to bring it back to the surface. Like when Presley was about 5.5 and wore this pink toboggan, she would fill it with her little trinkets and flip it on her head so fast they didn’t fall out. She did that in the middle of the summer for quite a while. Never know when you may want to have some Polly Pockets to play with, lol. Or the memory my mom had written in her journal about Parker wanting to remove her training wheels and I didn’t have time. What did she do? Went to her dads shop out back, got the necessary tools and did it herself, she was 5! Walking down memory lane lately has really given me a refresher of a good life. I feel like we’ve done an okay job raising these two amazing girls. Not only do we have one that has finished her second year of college but the last one graduating. Presley has already accomplished more than her dad and I ever did with school. Not sure yet what the world has in store for Parker but of this be sure, it will be in full force and the success of both our girls will be in the blink of an eye.