This is #100 of a series of 115 Weeks until my son goes to college. It’s a collection of short essays of partly grieving, partly celebrating, and partly enjoying. To read the first post – click here.
Last Friday night Jordan and I experienced the movie, “Boyhood.”
“Boyhood” is a ground breaking never-done-before movie by director Richard Linklater, that has the exact same cast over the course of 12 years. It includes Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as the parents and Lorelei Linklater and Ellar Coltrane as the children who grow up from age 4 to going to college.
Visually stunning, heart wrenching, almost documentary, not necessarily a movie. It was breathtaking.
One of the most impressive features of this movie is the incredibly seamless scenes where the characters turn around a year older, in a different scene altogether.
They age. They grow.
They come of age. You blink and they are older.
You wonder, When did that happen? What did I miss? trying to recollect their age in the previous scene.
Art imitated life…
I’m blinking and my son is 16, leaving for college in 100 weeks.
I’ve dreamed for him, believed in him, hoped and parented toward this letting go that is currently happening. The letting go that needs to keep happening although my heart is tearing with every post. If it were paper, words would be smudgy, wet, and unreadable.
With each post, and each week that passes, every dream I had for him is being surpassed. He is an amazing human being.
I face having to find new dreams for him and for me. To find new ways of cheering him on, while honoring my looser grip. To celebrate his fluttering while giving compassion to deep soul groaning for the coming empty nest.
This post is in the spirit of Boyhood, taking Jordan from 5th grade to the present, with humble gratitude for every day he’s still home.
100 Wednesdays left.
— Vikki
Comments