[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olSyCLJU3O0&hl=en_US&fs=1&w=480&h=385]

In ten days our oldest will board a plane all by himself. We will hug him tightly at the security checkpoint and we will watch him walk down the long gateway entrance to board his red-eye flight to the continuation of a life, his life. A life we will watch through emails and text messages and phone calls too infrequent for my taste. And I'll try not to cry.

At least not too much.

On the other end of this journey he will make new friends and explore new things and experience life in a way that only he can, embracing the days and months and years ahead, the ordinary days that will fill the next four years.

It is a life we have prepared him for, at least we hope we have, with all the tools he will need, or at least most of them. The lessons of our ordinary days spent growing together, day by day, month by month and amazingly, year by year.

It went too fast.