This has been a time in my life to celebrate lasts. With my last child graduating from high school I have enjoyed all the lasts as thoroughly as possible. In the fall we had the last high school football game. There was the last marching band competition down Tabernacle. I enjoyed attending the last parent-teacher conferences, which allowed me to thank teachers who have worked with my kids over the last five years. They became like family. I will miss them.
This winter I enjoyed my last road trip to judge at region and state debate tournaments, despite riding through near whiteout conditions on a school bus coming home from Cedar City. I had to hold myself back from hugging the bus driver when I stepped off of that bus with wobbly knees.
If it hadn’t been so cold I probably would have darted to the ground screaming, “LAND!” like the little girl in Vin Diesel’s “The Pacifier.”
Spring brought us the last music department pops concert, and this week brought the last of our children to graduate from high school and look forward to college. We have brought our two children successfully to adulthood.
My eagerness to be involved in these experiences to the nth degree could stem from surviving kidney cancer. Though I lost a kidney I gained a refreshed perspective on how important it is to enjoy each moment of life. And to have mountaintop and valley experiences.
When I am having a mountain top experience and know that the valley is just around the corner. And when I’m in the valley I know that all I have to do is look up. Like the country gospel song says, “God of the mountain is still God in the valley.”
Enjoying the lasts also brought me to a time of reminiscing about the firsts. When I dropped my oldest child off at preschool for the first time he darted off to play with barely a wave goodbye. As I slowly walked back to my car I waited for that little, “Momma, don’t leave me.” It never came. Instead I sat in my car until my tears dried enough so I could drive home.
Excitedly I picked my son up after three long hours of waiting for school to end, only to have him cry to stay longer. I was devastated.
I thought about the first time I could go grocery shopping by myself after my second child started preschool. Thinking of all the things I could get done while she was at school. Things get easier with the second child.
I thought back to the first note my son, now a music education major at Dixie State College, played out of his rented trumpet when he was in the sixth grade. I remember yelling from the kitchen, “Who let the elephant in the house?”
As we move to the next phase of parenting adults, as opposed to children, I’m reminded of Proverbs 22:6, which reads: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”
In time we will again experience those firsts. Though I’m not pushing it, we will someday have a child get married, and have a first grandchild. It’s called the cycle of life.
Rhonda Tommer is a resident of Santa Clara and a member of The Spectrum and Daily News Writers Group. She can be reached at r.tommer.writersgroup@gmail.com
