They Grow Up So Fast!

Reflections on a High School Senior

Anyone who has had a child graduate from high school knows that Senior Year is full of lasts — the last football game,  the last homecoming, the last basketball banquet, and the last prom. 

Two of my sons have had the opportunity to attend Montgomery Bell Academy, a private all boys high school in Nashville. It is a school steeped in traditions, one of which, the Mother-Son breakfast, I recently experienced for the final time.  

At this breakfast, all the boys in the 7th–12th grades, and their mothers, listen to six seniors speak about their relationships with their moms. The young men delivering these speeches spoke of their mothers with such love—the single moms who sacrificed so much for their sons, the mom who fought and won her battle with cancer, the mom whose kindness to everyone she meets inspires her son. A guest speaker, Inky Johnson, delivered a message both inspirational and humbling.

We're More Alike Than We Realize

It made me realize, yet again, that one never knows the circumstances others are living, that random acts of kindness do make a difference, and that moms, no matter how much or how little they have in common, want the same thing — to be the best mom they can be. 

Jane, for Hanner Clarke

Pictured above with her son and a Sky Blue Evelyn handbag.