It's already starting.

Within a year after graduating from high school, nearly 30 years ago, I was married.  Getting married was as liberating for me as for many graduates today.  I would go weeks doing my own thing and not going to visit my parents.  Or calling.  I look back now and regret having done that.  I didn't I intended to cut my parents from my life as much as I had.  But I did.  

Why am I thinking about this now?  Our new graduate is exercising his new wings.  He's spreading them out and making choices, even though they're not choices we want him to make.  Our first reaction is to take it personally.  

Through my conversation with my husband this evening, I remembered how I felt those years ago, and how I just wanted to make my own decisions.  How my choices were affecting my parents or my sister didn't matter to me back then.  I was just thinking about myself and what I wanted to do.  I eventually caught on and and began keeping in touch more with my parents.

I guess as the new adults have to transition to adult life, holding jobs, paying bills, and either going to the military or college, parents do too.  We need to get used to not having them around, not knowing where they're at, where they're going, and what time they'll be home.  It's not always an easy transition.  

As for our youngest?  He'll have to adjust to not having his brother around all the time.  He won't be able to count on him for rides to school in the fall, or to bring him to their mom's if he forgets something there.  I can relate to our oldest, but not to our youngest.  I'll have to pick my sister's brain about how she felt all those years ago when I moved out.