GRADUATION 2001:
For seniors and their parents
___By Terry Cosby
___Dear Seniors,
___You’ve been waiting for this for a long time, haven’t you? Your whole life, you say. Congratulations are in order, as this is quite an accomplishment. You have reason to celebrate.
___But before you run out the door to your college, your career and to conquer the world, may I have a moment to remind you that you are not the only ones who have been waiting? Hard as it is to believe, when it comes to waiting, you’re still in kindergarten. You see, your parents and grandparents and caregivers are graduating too. No, not from high school, but from one kind of waiting to another.
___Your folks have earned post-graduate degrees in waiting by now. They made you, then they had to wait nine months for you to get here. But the waiting was just starting. They waited for you to get home from the hospital. They waited on your bottles to heat up at 2 a.m., and they waited for you to burp and quit crying so they could go back to sleep. They waited for you to grow enough for you to sleep all night. They kept at it, waiting for you to learn to walk, only to find you’d learned to walk into their bedroom, wanting to sleep in their bed. They waited for you to learn to talk, and they’ve been waiting for you to hush a little ever since. But they were still just starting to wait.
___They couldn’t wait for you to start to school, but cried and felt depressed when you did. Something changed drastically that day, but not waiting. They started waiting in lines to sign you up for soccer, basketball and baseball. They waited in doctors’ offices by the hour to get your shots and medicine. They waited in the emergency room with you during X-rays and casting. They waited at McDonald’s for those Happy Meals when they had rather been sitting in a nice, quiet restaurant. But those times would have to wait. They waited in lines for the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. They waited in line at school to pick you up and waited until the wee hours of the morning on cold parking lots for the team bus to get back from an away game. Still, the waiting was just starting.
___You couldn’t wait until you got your driver’s license. They thought it would be good, so you could drive little sister to her stuff. They ended up waiting up or at least pretending to sleep until you got in at night. It seems life just kept on thinking of things for them to wait on concerning you.
___They waited for you to give your heart to Jesus. They prayed and waited for it to mend when your first love dumped you. Some even waited and prayed because that first love never materialized, and they were just as anxious for the phone to ring as you were. They waited on test scores. They waited on that new car, second honeymoon and new golf club because you needed braces, contacts and your own second-hand junker car. Thus, they earned their master’s degree in waiting.
___They will graduate to a different level of waiting when you graduate. They will wait on that first call from college. They will wait to see what you did with that first paycheck. They will wait on more test scores. They will wait on your first trip back home with a trunk full of laundry. They will wait and hope you decide to spend Thanksgiving at home instead of with your roommate’s family. They will continue waiting until they get a call that you’re bringing someone "special" home for supper. They will wait for cards, calls, weddings, summers and grandkids. They will wait for holidays to see you and vacations to see the grandkids. They will learn to wait all over again and earn their Ph.D. in waiting.
___So, could you wait a minute in all your celebration and tell them "thanks" and "I love you"? They may have waited all their lives to hear it.
___It’s been a lifetime of waiting that now seems far too short. We’re not sure you’re ready for this. We know we’re not. May God help us both.
___By the way, you were worth the wait.
___God’s blessings,
___Terry
___Dear Senior Parents,
___You will notice the big things easily enough when they leave. It’s the little ones that sneak up on you and grab your heart, that stop you in mid-thought. And it’s to those that you never quite adjust.
___ After the boy has been gone awhile, you notice the basketball goal doesn’t have a net anymore. You used to change that thing once or twice a year. Then he got big enough to do it. Now, no one does it anymore.
___The tires on the mountain bike in the garage are flat. Who are you kidding? They always were flat. But they stay that way now.
___You find that you haven’t said, "Clean up your room" in months. The room is as clean as the day y’all cleaned after he left. "Turn that down" also is seldom heard, and that’s not so bad. But neither do you hear the back door open and him yell, "We got anything to eat?" You kind of miss that in an odd way and hope he’s eating some vegetables and salad.
___He’s not around to ask, "Can I have some money to get a haircut?" "Can I have some lunch money?" You’d try to correct him and say, "MAY I have some lunch money?" to which he would reply, "Sure, take all you want; it’s your money. But can I have some for a burger?"
___The back door doesn’t open quietly at 1 a.m. anymore, as he tries to sneak in. You don’t check under the car seats for beer cans. (There never were any in his case.) Now, you just wait for the e-mails, the phone calls and the holidays. You think of new things to talk about … "How’s the car running?" "How’d you do in chemistry?" "What does your girlfriend’s daddy do?" "Anybody gonna stop the Lakers?"
___ It’s a big production when the girl leaves home. You are almost too tired after getting her moved for it to sink in--she’s gone. Almost … Then, maybe because you are so tired and you tried so hard to keep it together when you said goodbye that coming back home you lose it. It happens on that road home, and you have to ask your wife to drive, but she can’t either, so you just pull into the Dairy Queen and order a Dr Pepper. That lady at the drive-in sure looked at you funny, didn’t she?
___Or maybe it happens when you pull in the driveway and her car is not where it used to be "when she lived at home." Maybe it happens when you lay down at night, and those familiar sounds coming from her bathroom and bedroom have grown silent. There’s no more hair dryer at 11 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. The hissing of the hair-spray can is gone. You didn’t think you’d notice that, but you did. The toilet paper expense has dropped dramatically. You don’t have to move bras out of the hall bathroom when company comes over.
___That kid who liked to hang around her and whose pickup spilled oil on the driveway hasn’t been seen for a while. The oil spot has about dried up. The phone doesn’t ring as much. You wish it did a little.
___ There is a debate whether girls or boys are louder. At the coffee shop, conventional wisdom says boys make a bigger boom or one-time noise when they do something, but girls are consistently louder. All you know is with her gone the silence is deafening, and the only thing you can hear is your heart aching.
___ So, what do you do when they’re gone? Do you wish they were little again? No that wouldn’t be right. … Yeah, you do wish they were little again--at least for a moment cradled in your arms or cuddled in your lap or giggling at such a "silly daddy." Then reality snaps you back, and you realize the best you can do is learn to pray better, and more often, and more intensely.
___ And about the only thing you can do when they take little pieces or big chunks of your heart is ask God to make your heart bigger so there’s plenty of it to go around. And he will. And you will survive. And you will rejoice with what you had and what they’ve grown to be and the relationship you now have.
___ Until you have to do it all over, when you start to notice those little things again …
___God’s blessings,
___Terry
___Terry Cosby is pastor of First Baptist Church in Hereford.
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