Firsts and Lasts as My Daughter Graduates High School and Goes off to College

I joined a Mother's Group when my daughter Madeleine was a few weeks old. We met around the blankets, nursed our babies, talked about the challenges of being a new mother and going back to work, and made lifetime friendships. In a few weeks, our children will be graduating from high school, and we will celebrate again as we have so many birthdays, halloweens, holidays and just being together. One of the Moms wrote a beautiful piece in the SF Chronicle for this Sunday, Mother's Day titled "The Great Letting Go," which prompted my teary thoughts this afternoon ....

When we first got to know each other as new mothers, our lives were all about our children's "firsts" - first time sleeping through the night, first real smile, first tooth, first word, first steps, first Halloween, first Christmas, first night in the big bed, first visit to out-of-town relatives, first day at pre-school, first day of kindergarten, first new friend, first field trip, first baby tooth lost, and on and on through first overnight school trip and first day of high school.

Now I find our lives are filled with "lasts" and every one of them makes me tear up: last Halloween (I insisted on taking her annual costume photo), last family birthday at home in October, last Christmas, last soccer game, last family ski trip to Yosemite, last Revels performance and our last time doing that beautiful duet together onstage, last chorus concert, last drama performance, last Easter, last time I take her to school in the morning, last time I make her lunch for school, last Mother's Day this weekend here at home together (and that afternoon our last performance together for a long time, the opera Acis & Galatea, and you can bet I'll be a wreck after that one), last, last, last. The whole year has been a long string of these lasts.

A friend pointed out to me that soon she'll begin a new string of firsts - first day at college, first college class day, first college romance first time home from college on break, etc. But these will be firsts that in we will no longer be a part of ... they will be her firsts alone, no longer a shared and treasured part of our lives. It's all part of growing up, but yet I know for me it will be hard to let go. I found myself thinking about how we could possibly celebrate her 18th birthday on the 3rd of October from 3,000 miles away, and then checked the college schedule and found out that Family Weekend is the 3rd & 4th of October. I think we'll definitely be going there for her birthday. Maybe we can still have a few more firsts ...