Yesterday my older son graduated from high school, following in the footsteps of his older sister, who graduated from the same high school five years ago. His twin siblings have another seven years before this day will belong to them. With an age gap of eleven and a half years between my oldest and youngest, my husband and I figured out we had a child in our local elementary school for seventeen straight years until the twins completed fifth grade and will start middle school this August.
Yesterday was a day when we celebrated the end of one chapter in MJ’s life and the beginning of another, and yet he will have us in his corner as he heads to college. His support system doesn’t end simply because he moved the tassel from one side of his cap to the other.
That support system includes his three siblings. For years, it’s been difficult to find things for all of us to do together. Even now, when we went on our first day trip in a long time to the Chattanooga Zoo, we could only take Cupcake and Chunk as MJ attended graduation practice and Kath has a full-time job (but she still lives with us). As I write this, MJ is at work, a job he’s thankful to have, happy to earn money for college and relieved he’ll be headed to college in the fall. So, family activities have required a bit of planning over the years. It’s like those logic puzzles from elementary school where you had to figure out who ate what, where, and with whom. Personally, I like hiking, but I don’t like camping; however, the three males of my family love camping although one doesn’t like hiking. Then there were places we visited with the two older kids before the twins were born, and then they didn’t want to go again with their younger siblings. Case in point, there’s a lovely waterfall near where I live. We took the two older kids, but then they’d seen it and didn’t want to go when we took the two younger ones. And then five of us love the Marvel movies, but only four of us wanted to watch WandaVision and The Falcon and Winter Soldier (or Captain America and Winter Soldier). Well, you get the idea. It’s been hard to find activities for six different people.
But we all love going to look at Christmas lights together. And we all loved going to see Incredibles 2 together. And we all laugh when we play Clue because inevitably one person (ahem, my younger son) will always forget about that one card….
Whenever Kath had spring break and Thanksgiving break and summer break, she’d come home. I don’t know what the future will hold with MJ, although going to college a mere two hours away gives me hope he’ll be home for most major holidays (inevitably with a big bag of laundry).
Until then family nights will look a little different. The twins are now each coming up with their own lists of movies they want to see, and they are quite different. Chunk is reading The Hobbit and looks forward to watching the Peter Jackson trilogy. Cupcake, however, loves all things Disney, and she loves a British television show called Doc Martin. We’ve watched eight seasons with her and we’re almost done with the ninth. Yet there are shows we all watch together. We all love the episodes of The Great British Baking Show featuring Mary Berry, and we all snap together through the theme of The Addams Family.
So yesterday when MJ graduated I thought about him in Athens creating his own memories without us as he should do. But he won’t lose his support system. Because we’re always here for him, complete with digital copies of Clue and The Princess Bride and Galaxy Quest (three movies our entire family loves) and our recipe for lemon cream cheese pound cake. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
What’s your favorite thing for your family to do together?