Senior Moment: No. 1 -- "The Photo"

Note to Readers: This is the first installment of what will be an occasional series chronicling my son Greg's last year of high school (the above photo is Greg at 18 months).

My son is officially a high school senior. What was my first clue? Was it the last day of the school year? The final grade report from said school year? Acquisition of his first car? The designation "Senior '10" on his Facebook page? No, none of the above. It was his senior portrait, which was photographed last week.

The photographs were taken on Thursday; on Saturday the proofs arrived in the mail. Never mind that Greg wasn't thrilled with the yearbook proofs (although he liked the "casuals"). As I stood there looking at the proofs, my son's beautiful smile beaming at me from five different angles (thanks to $4,000 in orthodontics), it hit me -- this is the beginning of my only child's last year of high school. His last year of public school. His last year of childhood. In less than a month, he will celebrate his 17th birthday. In less than a year, he will enter the realm of adulthood.

Now, I'm not going to get all sentimental and cry, "It seems like only yesterday he was a baby!" That's not really true. I've been a parent for nearly seventeen years. And you know what? It feels like seventeen years! But I do remember when seventeen years seemed very far in the future. I used to reflect on that idea a lot when I was giving Greg those 3 a.m. feedings. I'd sit in the rocking chair in his room, my sleep-deprived eyelids drooping as I stared out the window while he nursed. I would imagine what he would be like at different ages -- 2, 6, 9, 10, 13, 16. I imagined what he would look like -- his dad (which he does, but with straighter teeth). I imagined his personality -- cheerful, thoughtful, funny (pretty close, though often goofier than I expected). I thought he would be very smart and scholarly (well, I was half right -- he's very smart, but not very studious). Somehow, I never quite imagined my son as an adult.

Oh, intellectually, I fully expected Greg to grow up. That's what the last seventeen years have been about, after all -- preparing our offspring to leave the nest. But now that we're in the home stretch, all of a sudden I'm wondering if we've done enough. Have we left something out? Did we forget anything? Parenthood doesn't come with an owner's manual -- how would we know?

I'm beginning to compile a mental list of regrets. They come into my mind at random, so here are a few, in no particular order:

1) We should have bought a camcorder. Who in their right mind -- in this day and age -- spends half their lives raising a family without even once videotaping their kids? We do, that's who. I've always had an aversion to home movies. During my childhood, my dad spent our vacations taking movies of the scenery with his 8mm; the only actual moving pictures were of our backsides walking away from the camera. So I was never eager to invest in a camcorder. Neither was my husband, Steve. Still, it makes me sick now to think of all the missed You-Tube opportunities! Who knows? We could have sold ads to pay for Greg's college!


2) We should have kept the Legos. Ebay. Again -- college money.


3) We should have kept the G.I. Joes -- Oh! Never mind! We did! (Hmm. Ebay.)


4) Should we have made Greg play french horn all the way through high school? The jury is still out on this one. He quit at the end of his sophomore year because he was simply burned out. He never embraced music the way his career musician parents would have liked. Instead, he pursued a keen interest in -- and talent for -- photography and graphic arts. He's passionate about computer art in a way he never was about playing the horn. And yet, he was (is) a natural musician. Seems like such a waste of talent, especially horn -- SCHOLARSHIP INSTRUMENT! Still, we try to keep in mind that Greg is not a carbon copy of his parents. He has his own interests, completely separate from ours. Still, he's a horn player!


5) We should have taken more trips. Our goal, as soon as Greg was old enough to travel without being a total pain-in-the-butt, was to take a trip somewhere every summer. Our first official family trip was in August, 1997. Greg had just turned five; we took him with us to the National Flute Association Convention in Chicago. While I attended the convention, Steve had the arduous task of keeping a precocious, fidgety five-year-old entertained. Everywhere they went, Greg insisted on calling Steve "Batman" (his favorite super hero at the time). He also insisted on being carried everywhere, even though he was really too big for that. At one point, we became so exasperated, we made Greg stand for five minutes facing a corner in the bathroom of our hotel room. After that, he quit asking to be carried; instead, he wanted to ride to all our activities in a taxi.


Ten years later we took our last family trip with Greg. Once again, we included a visit to the NFA Convention in our itinerary. This time, though, we took a car trip to the Southwest. The convention was in Albuquerque; along the way, we stopped in Colorado Springs, Mesa Verde, Monument Valley, and Santa Fe. Greg, now 15, spent most of the trip plugged into his iPod, looking bored. In the years in between, we took trips to the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Tulsa, Memphis, San Antonio, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Hannibal, MO. We also spent several summer weekends at the Lake of the Ozarks. Honestly, there weren't very many summers we didn't travel somewhere. But we never made that trip to Yellowstone or Mt. Rushmore, the Smoky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest. And I went to Washington, D.C. for the 2002 flute convention without my family. I can't help feeling a tinge of regret for the trips not taken. We should have taken more trips.


So, back to the photo. As I mentioned at the beginning, Greg wasn't happy with his yearbook photo proofs. Today he did a retake. His hair looked better, and he seemed more relaxed, more natural. I'm confident that this time he'll be satisfied. And so will we. After all, it's his one and only senior year -- it's perhaps the most special year of his life (so far), and the official photograph should reflect that. He got a do-over on the photo, but he won't get one for his last year of high school (or his last year of childhood). Neither will we. This is the only time in our lives that Steve and I will experience that senior year with our child. Of course, being our only child, every year, every childhood experience has been the only one for us. But this year is different. This year is special. That's why I'm going to faithfully record each "senior moment" -- as it happens -- in this blog. And while I'm at it, maybe I'll go out and buy a camcorder.