Spring Brings Changes

Spring Brings Changes

By John W. Vander Velden

It seems that spring has really arrived and with it comes changes.  A sure sign that the weather has changed is the grass.  It’s green for one thing and it’s growing like crazy for another.  It seems to be making up for the time it waited dormant.  If you don’t like mowing you would have been pleased with April, but May has sent us into extra innings already.

The trees are filling with new leaves, fresh and green, the fruit trees are in bloom.  I see lilacs in full flower, yes, spring is bursting out at last, and it brings changes.

But nature is not the only thing that announces that the summer grows near.  Sunday is not only Mother’s Day but also Nick’s graduation.  Our son has completed this stage of his education, and a university degree is something that set’s his parents’ minds reeling.  But I remember when he graduated from John Glenn High School.  I remember facing the changes that meant.  Certainly Nick faced significant alterations to his life, but to me his father it seemed more of an ending than a beginning.  For though I was proud of the accomplishment, and I was rooting for his future successes, I understood that my day to day involvement was ending.  My little boy, the child I had watched enter the world, learn to walk, whose hand I held as we braved the Atlantic Ocean’s waves, the boy I cheered from the stands, was becoming a man.

When we settled him into his dorm, it was more than his leaving for the first time, I understood he was never coming back…not in the way things had been…always had been…again.  Now he has lived on his own for five years.  Between time at Purdue, and his five rotations of Co-oping he has proved his ability to “live” on his own.  I am proud of that too.

It has been a difficult five years for our son.  Achieving a degree in engineering from Purdue University is not an easy task.  Learning and negotiating a way to live under the pressures of campus and classes, is a difficult education of its own.  But it has not been easy on those left behind either.  We have watched from two hours away, seen only the snippets he has shared with us.  We had worried as much about his grades as he did.  But parents worry about other things as well, about diet, about the amount of sleep he’s getting, about the friends he has.  We worry if all the “stuff” that makes up college life isn’t too much for a young man to face.  Parent’s worry.  That’s in the job description.

He’s graduating on Mother’s Day.  It is easy to see the success but not easy for us to ignore the significance.  A parent’s purpose is to prepare their child for life.  Graduations are a symbols of success in that area.  They are also a signpost of changes.  I am proud of my son…but I miss the child of my memory.  But that’s OK.  It’s a good sign that I have those special memories.  It is a good sign that I am forced to watch Nick take flight.  It is a good sign that he will soar beyond my vision.  But though his wings will take him far from me, he will never be beyond the reach of my heart.  That’s a good sign too. It is a good sign that he is capable of independence, but always knows that his mother and I will be available…to talk…and when the need arises…to help.

I know that Nick is no longer a child…that the boy that once rattled about in our home has become a man…and I am proud of the man he has become.  The man that will be moving even further away to a new career and home out of state.

Pride and tears…there is a place for both…this weekend…  As we are once more reminded that spring brings changes…

(675 Words)  5-11-2018