Being a parent is hard, yo!

As I prepare to begin my oldest's last year of high school and my youngest's first, I can honestly say I'm filled with so many different emotions:

Fear: What if my oldest doesn't get into a good college and is forced to continue living at home and working at Dairy Queen? Free Blizzards aside, it would be awful for both her AND me. I love that girl, but she needs to learn the responsibility of getting up on her own, getting out the door on time and becoming a mature, responsible person. She is almost 17 and is too old for me to be her personal alarm clock. When I was finishing up my senior year of high school, my mom had moved up to Atlantic City from where we lived in Wildwood because she took a casino job and the 2 hour round trip commute was just too much. She came home on her days off, but I was left with the responsibility of getting myself to and from school, on time, every day. If I made a mess, there was no one else in the house to clean it up. Me thinks almost-17 needs a taste of responsibility.

Sadness: So many of my friends have high school graduates who are either going off to their first year of college or returning for their second year. Those young adults are spending less and less time at home. Some have on-campus jobs that require them NOT to come home for the summer. Forgetting everything I've written up there in that first category, how can it be that in just a year, my oldest will be leaving me, possibly for longer than I'm ready to have her gone? Last week she was a curious 5 year old running up and down the soccer field chasing a soccer ball with 12 other 5 year olds. Just this weekend she was an awkward middle schooler with glasses and braces. And wasn't it only yesterday that she was starting out her freshman year of high school, curious about making new friends and enjoying her time as one of the only 2 freshman on the varsity basketball team? What happened??

Pride: I could NOT be more proud of this child if I tried. Sometimes I'm so filled with pride I feel like I could explode. She's become such an amazing, beautiful and talented young woman that sometimes it's hard to get mad at her for missing the bus. I said sometimes. She's funny as hell, she is helpful to those around her, she's great with kids, patient and kind (kids who aren't her sister, that is). There is another reason that I'm so proud of her that I will talk about another time, but suffice it to say, she's pretty freaking awesome and I wonder how it is that we've raised such a great kid. She didn't come with instructions, yet we've managed to do something right, because she continues to make me proud almost daily.

Excitement: Am I scared to death? Yes. As her mom I'm frightened, since the future is so unknown, but she's smart and will do wonderful things. When she puts her mind to something, there's no stopping her. So I'm excited for her as she enters her senior year in high school and I know that this will be a year full of crazy fun memories for her, and I'm so excited and happy for her that she's as outgoing as she is, with a fantastic group of friends whom I love. Knowing what a great year she'll have definitely leaves me excited for her. But then come graduation, go back and read this list in order. Then repeat.

Being a parent is hard, yo.

Fear, served with a side of guilt

When the phone rang yesterday morning at 8:53 and my husband was on the other end telling me "I just want you to know that I'm okay" I'll admit, I had no idea what he was talking about. I was in the process of getting ready for work, I had no TV, no radio, no social media going on. Just me and my hair dryer. I was like...."okayyyyyy, why?" He told me there had been a shooting on the base. The base where he works in DC. At that moment, 10,000 thoughts went flying through my head. None of them made any sense, other than he was okay. He was safe. And that's what I held onto.

The shooting occurred in a different building across the base from where he works. There was one shooter. No, there were three. There were 4 people dead. There was a guy lying on the ground in front of CVS who had been shot. There were 2 gunmen. There were 6 people dead. The gunman was dead. There were 2 other gunmen on the loose. No, the guy in the picture by CVS had a heart attack. I heard more inaccuracies, more misinformation. The only thing I held onto was that my husband was continually in contact with me. I sat at my desk at work with an uneasy knot in my stomach. I knew he was safe, he reassured me throughout the day that he was in a brick building, away from windows, completely safe. But the media was just running rampant with crazy stories that they HAD to put out before anything was verified, which in turn, scares the hell out of the public, who rely on them for facts. Sadly, facts don't matter, getting the story out before anyone else matters, regardless of how inaccurate the story turns out to be.

He was finally cleared to leave his building at 7:15 last night, long after the last train for home had gone. So he took the Metro and I drove to pick him up. The relief I felt when I saw him was unmatched by any relief I've ever felt. It was only then that I allowed myself to think about all those folks whose loved ones weren't going to come home. I thought about those family members who were not in touch with their loved ones all day. How frightening must that have been for them? The whole not knowing what's going on scares the daylights out of me. I was lucky. But others were not. I felt guilty for not thinking about others all day. Real guilt, because my husband was with me, and others were without their spouses, their sons or daughters, their grandfathers or grandmothers. Their neighbors. Their friends. I felt terrible for those who lost loved ones, but I was thankful that I was not one of them.

Guilt is a strong emotion. So is fear, and I tried to imagine the fear of the unknown. And it made me sick. My mind wandered, during my drive home with my husband safely in my car. It wandered back to that Tuesday 13 years ago. That beautiful September day when we were attacked by terrorists. The fear that family members must've felt not knowing if their loved ones were alive or dead. Phone reception in NYC was spotty at best that day. My husband was able to get through to his sister who worked several blocks from the World Trade Center. Others weren't as lucky. And so they waited and wondered what had become of their loved ones. As I drove home last night I could not even wrap my brain around the fear of NOT knowing that my loved one was safe. It was just something I cannot imagine going through.

My heart goes out to all who lost a loved one yesterday and to those who face an uphill battle in their recovery from gunshots. And an unbelievable amount of gratitude goes out to all of my friends and family who called, texted, Facebook'ed, or emailed to check in on us, to make sure we were okay, to see if I needed help with anything. I'm lucky to have an amazing connection to everyone who helped make yesterday a little easier to bear. And I'm lucky that I had my husband home with me last night.