Five More Mondays

Do you go to bed on Sunday nights and think to yourself, "oh, no, Monday morning already tomorrow and I have to get up for work again?"  My sister Kathy who taught school for 37 years used to get to some point in May and start to count how many Mondays she had left before the end of the school year.  It made it easier to deal with the kids getting antsy with the good weather and summer vacation just around the corner, and counted down her own time to relaxation and fun in the swimming pool at last.

My husband is not typically home for dinner on Monday evenings and so I enjoy dinner at Kathy's with her and with my son Justin.  Going to Kathy's is always mostly often a relaxing experience (just kidding, Kath; it's "always") and time spent with Justin is always (no strikethrough needed) entertaining.  Justin has been a character from day one and has more funny things roll off his tongue in two minutes than most of us can even think in two months.  Spending those few hours together is a highlight of my week.

Justin is getting married next month, and tonight I was suddenly struck with a sobering thought:  five more Mondays.  I have only five more Mondays before the wedding and before life will drastically change for us.  Justin will no longer be there for our Monday evening meals.  He will no longer be my little boy (not that he's been that for a very long time) but he'll soon be someone's husband.  That's a massive concept to grasp.  The four-year-old strategically maneuvering just enough of his chicken pot pie into the garbage when our backs were turned to make it "look good" starts to become smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror when I try to wrap my head around his being a responsible husband.  Not that he isn't a responsible adult, because he absolutely is, but it is he who will now be the head of the family and he who will one day (hopefully) be a father having the "almost clean plate sleight of hand" done to himself.

I am very much looking forward to the wedding and to having a new daughter-in-law to love, but it's hard to absorb all that will necessarily change.  Life must change, and change is good, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take a lot of adjustment on the part of a lot of people.  We will all be changed by not having him near us on a daily basis, but I dare say he will miss being near us on a daily basis too.  He won't be here to change the water bottle on the water cooler or take out the garbage or shovel the snow.  He won't be here to be the calm in the storm or the comic relief on a difficult day.  It's a little bit scary for me to think of all this change, but exciting too because I'll have a beautiful daughter figure in my life now, and, if the good Lord blesses us, one day grandchildren too.

So I'll savor my five more Mondays, and then once I've settled in after the wedding, I think I'll change my focus to the thought of a little grandson entering my life who can be a chip off the old block and carry on the shenanigans his father sired in him.  It certainly makes having only five more Mondays a lot more palatable when I consider what kind of pot pie prestidigitation the next generation will conjure up.

Copyright Priscilla Garamella 2011