Whirling in the maelstrom of memory

A son graduates

My son has no nostalgia for his youth. He is too much in it, still.

In this, his last year of high school, the milestones announce themselves to me with thunderous music. He is deaf to it all.

When asked how he feels about graduating, he says, “I want to.” No equivocation there. No wistfulness for the halls he decorated with his artwork, or the drama studio where he met his first girlfriend and later grew into a leading man.

But for all his apparent ease with this transition, I am whirling in a maelstrom of memory.

Walking past the city park where he grew from infant to toddler to schoolboy, I am transported to the countless lazy afternoons on the lawn, where we sat together in a circle of mothers and infants.

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