All the small milestones culminated this June in the first of our big ones: Emma graduated from high school. When people say it happens so fast, they’re not kidding.

I couldn’t tell you how many people asked me how I was holding up through all the “lasts.” I probably disappointed them a little, because I honestly wasn’t sad – I wasn’t very emotional, at least not the way that some of my other parent friends were. I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on that. Here are a few observations I have from this moment in our lives.

I’m not sad about high school ending for Emma. I don’t wish for more of those days. High school was all the things high school is; it was good for her sometimes, even great. It was hard for her sometimes, even terrible. She had some really wonderful moments and some that she wouldn’t want to revisit for anything – but that is what high school is. I’m not sorry for any of it – it built her into who she is, and she is ready to move on from here and take those gifts into the next adventure.

Lucky for me, I get to go with her into the next phase and experience all the highs and lows of what is coming next. She’s always going to be mine, so I am not afraid of her new things – they’ll become my new things too. And whoever, whatever, she becomes in the next phase – I will be next to her the whole way. She isn’t doing it without me, she is doing it next to me, and I get to see it, I get to be part of it, I get to love her through it.

The part that maybe does give me a little heartache is the part attached to all the people and events that Emma was part of that we won’t be experiencing any more. I will miss my backseat filled with ball players and duffel bags and stinky shoes. I will miss the surrounding cast of her life – the faces and laughter from her friends and their families. I will miss watching her throw together class projects on the upstairs table the night before they are due. I will miss the late nights of pizzas with her friends in my kitchen or my backyard.

I will miss our softball family terribly – those people feel like my own. Not setting up my chair in front of Matt & Eric, next to Pam and Jamie and Melanie and Karen and Anna and Loretta and Angel and Connie and LaRae, and not hearing Tracy all the way from the third base line, and not harassing Terry whenever he is behind the plate – that part is gonna be really hard. I would have been Cory’s parent rep forever and ever, if I could have been.

But already, Emma is transitioning to the next phase. That love of playing ball has gradually shifted into the coaching of the game – she took on coaching an 8U team this year and I get a whole other kind of thrill from watching that. This is maybe the heart of what is keeping me going. She’s not leaving anything truly behind, it just adjusts, shifts, morphs, changes into the next thing. The cross-country days will continue, just on a college team, where I will learn all kinds of new things, I am sure. Softball will be in her life forever, in some form. She is still a little tender about basketball; I asked her to come with me to a summer league game for fun and she burst into tears. That one is gonna be the one that sticks the hardest, maybe, because it was such a gorgeous season for her in so many unexpected ways. But her friends will always be her friends, and she will make new ones next year who will add to her already wonderful life and give us even more memories.

This is the lesson, I think. Nothing is ending…just another beautiful beginning.