We (Okay, “She” Did It)
Last month we celebrated a family ‘first’ and ‘last’. Our daughter Molly finished college in May month, so we celebrated our first college graduation as parents. It was also my last (at least as best I can tell) commute from Washington DC to Boston, driving the family car jammed to the roof with Molly’s college belongings.
It was a wonderful week celebrating all of her hard work and seeing Molly’s amazing group of friends one more time. It was bittersweet though, enjoying the graduation week festivities while thinking that this would be the last time we’d be visiting the local sights. Four years ago I envisioned visiting every Smithsonian museum at least once and my favorites hopefully twice. I think we visited three or four at the most, with the pandemic partly to blame for that. Although I heard a rumor you can visit DC even if you don’t have a kid in college.
With Molly out of school I’m looking forward to a parent-child dynamic where I can better relate to her day-to-day routine. For example, sometime in her last semester they celebrated ‘hundreds night’, with only 100 days of school remaining. Molly was starting to think about finishing school and leaving all of her friends; a milestone that was not necessarily cause for excitement. I attended the Air Force Academy, and hundreds night was a huge celebration, with the seniors enthusiastically counting down the days until graduation. Slightly different experiences between a service academy and a traditional college.
Heck, Molly even asked for some help with budgeting last week. She starts a job in New York city at the end of the summer and she is trying to determine how much she and her roommate can afford to spend on rent. I am rather proud that I showed some restraint not scaring her away by immediately opening the laptop and putting together a spreadsheet.
So on to summer! I hope your season is off to a wonderful start and you have something fun planned for the July 4th weekend.
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