I am a very proud dad this month. My oldest son just graduated from college. I have many reasons to be proud; he graduated from a good school, with multiple awards, and even got to be one of the speakers at his graduation. I am proud because of all the hard work he has put in over the last four years to get to this point. As it turns out, I am also proud of us as parents. It wasn’t as easy to get to that point as you might think. You see, Kyle was born two months early, and complications ensued because he was born with cerebral palsy. It has not been a smooth road we have traveled, and we have faced a lot of fear and trepidation along the way. I can look back now at many of the things we agonized about and wonder: why were we so worried? What were we really concerned about? Now, of course this doesn’t mean I have stopped worrying. Today, I worry about what he will do after graduation. Nevertheless, many of my past fears were boogeymen I created, not real problems. Was I worried my son would starve to death? Was I worried he would get lost under a pile of his own dirty clothes? We chose the school based on many of our concerns: we looked for the major he wanted, but we also needed to ensure his ability to get around to services and classes. We picked the school which gave us a certain level of comfort and assurance that he would not get lost in the crowd.
I can still remember his first day as a little preschooler, as we watched strangers load him on a bus. My heart sank in my chest as I feared something bad would happen to my child. Nothing bad did happen, but that didn’t stop us from being afraid. We had the same knot in our stomachs when we drove off the college campus leaving him behind. He is still my son, and I am not sure I will ever stop having those feelings.