Off She Goes Again?

 I don't like change. This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. It's time for change again, and I hate it, even though it's necessary.

Spawn is going away to college. When she left for a mission, that was hard. When she came home, I was very, very happy. I love having my kid home.

When she was released as a missionary, we had months and months of basically reliving her childhood again. She has had few responsibilities and little pressure and she's gotten to just be happy and do the things she enjoys.

And as every adult reading this knows, that doesn't last. You're always going to have to be doing something at some point. It's part of being an adult. So, that time has come. Spawn has had strong inspiration from the Spirit that the needs to go away to school and that she will likely meet her eternal companion there. I've felt the same praying about it.

That's good!  I want her to have the family she wants and for her to be happy in life. I also, very selfishly, want her to be a kid forever and I want to hang out with her and Bubbles and just have fun.

So, what to do? Well, you just kind of endure the change, I guess. We're driving there as a family, getting her apartment set up and then Bubbles and I will come home alone. This all happens next week.

I recognize life will never quite be the same again and there's some definite grieving happening about that. Other parents have told us you grieve the end of your children's childhoods very much the way you do the passing of a loved one, and that seems to be true for me.

I'm having memories of things she and I did over the years and it's very bittersweet.

I remember baptizing her as an 8 year old, and how happy she was that day.

I remember her sitting on my lap as we watched the show Survivorman. We'd pour a bowl of Cheeseit crackers and call it survivor food and discuss what he was doing. There was one in the swamps of the South where he caught and cooked a frog, and we created a song about it, called "Frogalicious Yum."

I remember going to her swim meets, setting up our giant EZ Up and timing for her team. Her fellow swimmers would decorate each other with sharpies, so we bought a big pack of colored sharpies and she once had them write "Eat my Bubbles" along with a lot of bubbles. It made me laugh, as I imagined her passing gas at other swimmers as they competed. This makes no sense, as each swimmer had her own lane, but my imagination is often nonsensical.

I remember our Disneyland trip. I even chronicled it here in this blog.

She's had so much fun with friends in the last few weeks, and there's an air of last minute reaffirmation of friendship and wanting desperately not to let go. I've loved watching her have that fun.

She will make new friends at college, but she's not the kind of person to forget her old friends. She'll find a great guy and get married and have kids. I want her to do all that and to not be alone in life after Bubbles and I are gone.

And deep down inside, I desperately don't want her to grow up and go away. We'll always be friends, I just don't want things to change. But it will, and it will be okay.