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It’s not theoretical anymore.

When you bring them home from the hospital, your days and nights are filled with feeding, diaper changing, soothing, and laundry. The cadence of it is exhausting, and the sheer relentlessness of it keeps you ‘in the moment,’ as it were. In fact, so much of parenting is ‘in the moment’ even those adult conversations about work, school, personal responsibility, finance, consequences, and even plans for the future are just theoretical. They are things you say and talk about because a growing person needs guidance.

But then, those moments ebb past – all of them – it creeps up on you. You make plans at every step, follow through, and keep the arrow pointed at launching a functional member of society. Then, one day, suddenly, as if you hadn’t been working toward it for 18+ years, you’re waiting for that last load of laundry to come out to finish the packing. It’s not theoretical anymore. It’s happening today, not tomorrow, not some as-yet-undetermined date, but today.

This part of the journey is over with our first kid. The start of a new journey begins as soon as that last load of laundry pops out of the dryer and makes its way into a suitcase.

It’s very hard, but I reckon it’s a good day for it. I’ve always regarded the fall time, or at least the turning of the leaves, as the start of a new year. I’ve never held with the January New Year thing. New years and new beginnings always happen in the fall, and this fall is a good one – As I write this, the sky is gray, the air is heavy with tepid rain and the trees are slowly molting in a light breeze. As far as fall goes, this is as typical as they come, but as a new year … it’s a big one.

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Are you FREAKING kidding me?!?!

The last time I posted was in January, just ahead of our eldest child’s 18th birthday, when I whinged about a new strange ‘milestone’ that was more in the first of a series. Now, it’s about eight months later and the speed at which the transition from a teen to a young adult occurs is stupendously more rapid than anyone would ever tell you.

When I wrote the post in January, our oldest didn’t have a job, didn’t drive, hadn’t picked out a college, and really, really still seemed an awful lot like a kid still. Today, he finished his 7th day in a row “a little early” at just after 3:30; for reference, he’s typically on the job from 7:30 – 6:00 and sometimes much, much later. He’s building fences (and other general labor activities), which involves a hell of a lot of physical exertion. Today’s adventure involved driving around work trucks, trying out some new tools — and digging even more bloody holes. While he did that, I dug around on the Oregon State University website for more detail on logistics for move-in day (late September). Yesterday he was telling me about a high-school friend who graduated last year and is now going to have a baby and get married (don’t ask me the order of operations, I don’t know and it’s not anybody’s business).

All of that to say: inside of 8 months, I went from seeing a weak but meaningful milestone pass to ACTUALLY seeing the milestone pass. It’s real, just stretched out a bit. Not only does he have a job, but he’s also driving (quite a lot), has college all squared away for the fall, and is now going through what a lot of us went through after our senior year of high school – friends getting married, having kids, and becoming “real” adults.

In all, the chain of events over the course of the past eight or so months has been pretty ‘chill,’ punctuated with odd bits of drama here and there. We went to Oregon to check out schools, ticking the parent box of ‘touring schools’ that I was pretty damn sure was not a thing I’d ever be doing. We finished up driver training and got his license. He managed to find a job that offers as many hours as he can stomach (If I ever hear the words: “People just don’t want to work anymore,” someone’s getting punched in the nuts — the problem is PAY and DIGNITY, not ethic – if you feel the words spill out your mouth, maybe just stop watching fox news.) In any case, it’s all becoming very, very real. In a little over 1 month’s time, he’s leaving home, and while he’ll be back to visit, maybe even to live for a while, our little guy is launching, and that’s permanent.

While leaving home is a huge deal that’s not what got me today. What got me is that I was looking through ‘care packages’ you can buy your kid through the school and one of the things you can get is a birthday care package. That’s when I realized — he’s going to be there by himself on his birthday this winter. The first time ever. Not home for his birthday. Now, it’s FEELING real.

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Another milestone – or is it?

Today, my oldest kid turned 18, and just like that he’s an “adult”.

I can remember when Owen was still a little guy. We’d come home from work, pick him up from Grandma’s house and I would sit him in his chair, feed him dinner and sing songs, read stories, or tell him poems. I can still nearly remember “Mooses come walking” by Arlo Guthrie, and at least the intro to goodnight moon. It was so dang long ago. These days, conversation over dinner (when we can manage all having dinner together), revolve around grown-up things. Or at the very least, more ‘mature’ endeavours. Lately, we’ve spent rather a LOT of time talking about college, scholarships, student loans, cost of living, jobs, career, and so many related topics. It’s not at all the same, and yet, nothing has really changed, not in ways that matter, at least yet.

It’s funny how we think about age and coming of age. Yesterday, Owen was 17 – technically still a kid. and today, by some arcane legal magic, he’s technically an adult. As of this morning, he can vote, be drafted, work whatever hellish hours an employer can dream up, more or less make actual legal decisions on his own behalf, and 100% from now on be accountable as an adult for everything he does. All that and yet, tomorrow he’ll go to high school just the same as he did yesterday, as if nothing at all has changed. A huge mile-stone is on us, and it feels simultaneously like a big deal and yet just another day in the usual grind.

Over the past few days as we’ve been trying to figure out college and how to pay for it, it’s occurred to me that while he’s earned the label ‘adult’, he’s not really an adult, is he? He can’t rent a car (technically can’t drive yet, but that’s another issue altogether). He can’t support himself, even if he went out and found a full-time job tomorrow he’d still be dependent for some time. The kid can’t go for a beer, buy a cigar, or try recreational marijuana (not that I’m advocating for any of that, mind). I suspect if he tried to book a hotel or a flight, he could not. There’s no possibility for renting his own place, buying a car, or getting a credit card. Even opening a bank account is going to take an adultier adult.

I’ve been dreading this milestone for a while now. I thought I’d be freaking out, maybe crying a lot or seeing to it that at least one freshly opened bottle of whisky doesn’t see the light of day. I don’t know, it’s supposed to be a big deal. Instead, I’ve found it to be a pretty normal day, all things considered. I went to work, called a plumber in a panic while shovelling poo out of my front yard, fretted about taxes a bit, ordered dinner, and went to Target. About the most substantive thing that happened today (outside of the poo thing) was that we lit some sparklers in the kitchen and sang happy birthday over some birthday ice cream.

As bedtime closes in on what is supposed to be one of the biggest milestones of my kids life, and a huge one in mine, I’m realising that turning 18 isn’t really a milestone, it’s the first in a series of steps in a years long transition. We still have a lot of time before our kid truly launches into independence. There is much work to be done yet and perhaps more beyond. I don’t really know, I guess we’ll just have to see.