Fast forward

We were already sitting around the table when our son walked through the door. Strode, more like, or so I thought. He seemed to glide into the guidance counselor’s office, leaning back on his heels. Effortless.

He smiled tightly before making a joke. “Fancy! Meeting you here.”

His father told a similar quip on our way through the parking lot, dodging raindrops and digging for our driver’s licenses. “I feel like we’re being summoned to the principal’s office.”

“I shrug my shoulders. If you were summoned here it was only by me,” I remind him. This meeting is for the boy, letting us sit in is merely a courtesy.”

After we handed over our I.D.s and were given visitors’ badges, I struggled to separate my sticker from its waxed backing, managing to get the adhesive tangled in my hair. This does not bode well, I think to myself. I feel self-conscious that I chose to wear comfy clothes in pretty colors rather than something more muted and presentable.

What would his counselor think?

I couldn’t read anything into her smile as she introduced herself. She asked a few questions before our kid arrived. Mostly we spoke about predictions about the rain.

The boy filled the last vacant chair and for a moment the room became silent.

This may be the last time we find ourselves in high school, talking about our son and his future.

The counselor opens a pocket folder and fans out papers. Organized by importance and collated for convenience, she tells us they include step-by-step instructions on how to navigate this next journey on the road to Higher Education: Applying to colleges. 

I watch my son’s expressions as he follows her finger down the page. Each line is something on his to-do list that he will need to research, register, and check off when completed. It’s meant to streamline the process. Make it less daunting.

He smiles and explains that he has already started the process … he may even be nearly halfway through the framework by the looks of it … and all with the help of a class designed for this purpose. 

He would use his last year of high school - three study halls and all - as a bounding board for whatever comes next. 

I only vaguely remember a similar meeting with his sister … that would have been four years earlier. 

Suddenly, I feel a little de ja vu. A recurring dream … the one where I am suddenly back in high school after a hundred years and I have a test that I am wholly ill-prepared to take, having not attended a single class during the last three decades, let alone the previous semester.

That’s exactly what this feels like. The thing we should have been prepping for, but failed.

I feel as if I should already know all the answers. At the very least I should understand the difference between Early Action and Early Decision. I should have the application deadlines committed to memory. I should certainly be more nervous than I seem.

A month into senior year, I finally understood this was the scariest season. Time is already short.

One career is ending as deadlines for a new one are approaching.

It almost feels as if I have slept-walked into this moment.