Rachel Brougham: Did someone speed up the clock?
I watch him sling the backpack over his shoulders. It’s heavy these days, weighed down by notebooks and folders, pens and pencils and a laptop. I had to buy him a graphing calculator that I watch him put into a special pocket on the inside. He uses his body weight to get the seemingly giant backpack into a comfortable position.
It doesn’t seem like all that long ago when my son’s small backpack with a monkey on the outside just contained a change of clothes in case he got dirty playing outside.
He fills up his water bottle and loads it into an outside backpack pouch. I ask him if he has everything. He insists that he does.
We step outside and I hand him his sign. Every year on the first day of school since he was 3 years old and starting preschool, I’ve asked him what he wants to be when he grows up. And every year I write on a sign, noting it’s the first day of whatever grade and he wants to be whatever he just told me when he grows up and we snap a photo. We’ve gone from policeman to firefighter to pilot to bass player. Over the last couple years, we’ve progressed to software engineer and aerospace engineer. My favorite was when he was 4 and he wanted to be a “Nothing! Stop talking to me!”
I remember thinking in those early school years of learning to read and figuring out simple math that I couldn’t wait to see who he’d become. Would he still like art when he’s older? Would he start leaning into books and writing like his mother? Would he follow a path of math and science like his dad?
My son spends a lot of his free time reading about space, physics, aviation, and other things I just don’t understand, so I don’t need anyone to tell me the answer to those questions.
During those younger years, I was always waiting for him to reach the next milestone, but now as he’s heading off to his first day of high school I desperately want time to slow down. Where did the last 10 years go? I’ve heard over and over again that I should enjoy every moment but did someone actually speed up the clock?
My son is already thinking about things such as where he wants to go to college, where he’d want to work and what part of the country he’d like to live. When I was 14, well, I was not doing any of those things.
But now when I look at my son who towers over me in height, I wonder where did that little boy go?
I give him a hug, tell him to have a great first day and that I’ll see him when he gets home. And as he walks down the sidewalk on his way to his first day of high school, I can’t help but feel immense joy at who he has become and all he has yet to accomplish. But there’s also some tears as I struggle with just how fast time can fly.
— Rachel Brougham is the former assistant editor of the Petoskey News-Review. You can email her at racheldbrougham@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Rachel Brougham: Did someone speed up the clock?
