the last year

The days become cooler. Summer is nearing its end.
The fall semester began today and Ray started classes in the school of Engineering. He was taking tests for placement, what, a week or so ago? He will not need to take college algebra but can jump into calculus this semsester, his score was high enough to get him out of a number of introductory courses, college algebra being one.

And Dylan naps in his room. It is just after five p.m. He talks about joining the Navy or Air Force this next year with an eye to having college paid for, to getting away, to, who knows what? They are enigmas, these children of mine. They keep their lives to themselves and infrequently, open the door to me, their mother. But when they do open the door, it is, suprising. How very different it was to have younger men in the house, to have, teenagers. Dylan will be eighteen the twenty-ninth of September. He and Alayna have been, if not fighting, then disagreeing recently. He thinks she is 'unrealistic', as if the primary female example (me) has always been uber realistic...well. I suspect I've had to be, to a degree.

There are dreams we each carry around within us. Where do these dreams come from? I've often asked myself that and wondered, what really do my children dream? When I was their age, could I have imagined my life being what it is today? Truthfully, I didn't ever really think about a future life when I was younger, yes, there were things I wanted to do but the imaginings must have been brief, pushed out by reality, or, the reality of the moment (and yet the dreams persist, how is that?..and then, some become reality, weird).

Nonetheless. This is the last year, of the last child who is in highschool. Ray is more often at his dad's house which is walking distance from campus. Chuck is with Natalie and their baby boy (so very sweet). Dylan is really the only one at home.

And next year? I cannot imagine. It isn't the reality of the moment.