DOWN HOME: TP can’t wipe pain of ‘lasts’_80904

Posted: 8/06/04

DOWN HOME:
TP can't wipe pain of 'lasts'

Within the week, we'll pull out the camera, pose our “baby,” Molly, beside a dining room chair and repeat a ritual we began 15 years ago.

Since her big sister, Lindsay, started kindergarten, their mother and I have taken pictures of the girls standing beside a chair every year on the first day of school.

When they were little, the chair provided a useful object of scale. By comparing their height to the back of the chair, we could tell how much they grew from year to year. Long after their steady height rendered the comparison moot, we maintained the tradition, just to keep a chronicle of the passage of time.

Our first-day-of-school portrait gallery presents a chronological panorama of our daughters' lives. The photographs remind us of favorite clothes, braces, glasses, contact lenses and hairstyles, all of which changed from year to year. And they also reveal to us bright eyes and familiar, somewhat-anxious smiles, all of which remained essentially the same.

Now we begin the lasts. Molly starts her senior year at Lewisville High School. And since she's our youngest child, we're embarking upon a school year of doing things for the last time. Last football season, last rounds of exams, last spring break, last honors programs, last prom, last-last-last.

You probably know me well enough to appreciate the fact I don't like this one bit. Raising our daughters has been the greatest joy in this daddy's life. I get misty-eyed when I watch a father with his preschool daughters, and I ache to start the process all over again.

Of course, I can't. So I'm prone to sappy nostalgia that–because it embarrasses Lindsay and Molly, not to mention their mama, Joanna–I try to keep to myself. It's hard.

That's why I'd like to thank Molly's friends Brayden, Justin and Mitchell, who recently reminded me about all those aspects of fatherhood I won't miss when they're over.

They TP'd our front yard. And I've got to admit, they created a work of art. Ray, my across-the-street neighbor, said, “That was the most thorough, symmetrical TP job I've ever seen.” But, hey, these guys are experienced.

So, when Molly's gone and our “nest” is empty, I won't miss cleaning toilet paper out of our trees. Here are some other things I won't miss when we send our youngest off to college:

Pulling hairballs the size of small rodents out of the upstairs shower drain.

Tripping over flip-flops and sneakers when I walk through the kitchen in the dark in the morning.

Waking up tired because I couldn't get to sleep as long as a kid o' mine was out.

Well … that's it. I'm done. Can't think of any more. Through my children, God has blessed me beyond my imagination. I love being a dad, and I'm going to miss the girl when she goes away next fall.