But Who's Counting? (Spoiler Alert: Me.)

A few weeks ago, in a moment of wry melodrama, I calculated the number of school lunches left in my mothering career – at the time it was 19. I’ve been checking the count ever since, sometimes with tender gratitude, sometimes with grim relief, sometimes with a kind of out-of-body detachment, as if I were a fly on the kitchen ceiling, looking down at the mayonnaise and mustard jars and wax paper sandwich bags arrayed on the counter, trying to puzzle out the meaning of this groggy morning ritual. This week is the final countdown and I wanted to finish strong, so on Sunday I stocked up on granola bars, and on Wednesday I picked up a couple more apples at the farmers market because I noticed the ones in the fruit bowl were getting a little soft, and this morning I carefully arranged the penultimate ration of smoked turkey on a slice of lightly toasted bread, making sure there was enough left for tomorrow, which really would be the Very Last Lunch.

Now, I haven’t been the kind of mom who rises at dawn every day to pack adorable bento boxes with crust-cut sandwiches in the shape of zoo animals. Indeed, I’ve thrown together my share of desperate improv meals (cream cheese and jelly on pita bread, anyone?) and there have been months when my kids racked up serious slackers debt at the school cafeteria. But since Josie started preschool it’s been a fairly regular, mostly pleasurable parental responsibility.* When they were small I’d sometimes add little love notes, or draw telephone buttons on the banana so they could give me a call from the lunchroom. As they got older I quit writing their names on the brown paper sacks because one of them told me it was dorky. And now, after nearly two decades, it’s all coming to an end. It’s not Armageddon, exactly, but it does feel like some kind of milestone.

This evening Andrew and I sat in lumpy theater seats to witness our son's last high school band concert ever. We strained to find his face among the row of trombones in the back row, and watched him smile and raise a sardonic eyebrow as the band director gave a sweet, sentimental farewell to his graduating students. In the car on the way home Simon told me I didn't have to wake him up for school tomorrow because it's Senior Skip Day, or Pre-Prom Ditch Day, or something. I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it again. (Honestly, there's not much of an argument to be made against this time-honored tradition, which was definitely on the books at my high school back in the '80s.) Then my brain put two and two together, and I opened my mouth again: “Wait wait wait,” I said, in not-quite-mock panic. “Does that mean today’s lunch was actually the Last Lunch, and I didn’t even know it?” He shrugged. “I guess so. What, have you been counting?” Me, sheepishly: “Well, kind of. Did you eat it?” (Once in a while he'll forget, or go for teriyaki with his friends.) “I think so? I don’t really remember.”

And that’s the whole thing in a nutshell, isn’t it? These final weeks are flying by – the AP tests, the yearbook deadline, the capstone presentation, the last band concert, prom photos, senior awards ceremony, cap and gown pick-up, and so on. I’m trying to hold each small marker in my hands like a polished pebble – maybe as a way of holding on to my own fading relevance? Maybe as a way of processing this massive transition a little at a time? (That feels right, that second one.) But Jeezum Crow, they’re coming so fast now! There’s way too many to savor, or name, or even count. I’m staggering back, slipping on the shifting scree, trying not to get buried as gravity rearranges the ground beneath my feet... And meanwhile there goes my sweet six-foot boy, riding the avalanche like it’s the perfect wave, hanging ten as he swoops past me, eyes on the wild unknown horizon where his life is about to begin.



*Shared with their dad, I should acknowledge -- this whole endeavor has been a joint project, before and after we split up. Many thanks for that, Andrew!