My son, the fourth and final Field, is a delight to me. He makes me laugh, he keeps me on my toes as well as on my knees praying for him.
This year he is a junior at the public school. This year begins the two-year countdown for us until the last kid is done with his basic education. While I have massively mixed feelings about this, it is what it is.
But something is going right.
I made sure I was home after the first day of school. There would be papers to sign, course schedules to review and snacks to eat. Of course a few friends tagged along so his arrival was characteristically noisy.
When things settled down, I got my change to drill down to how his day went. I wanted to hear about the teachers, how they treated him, what he thought of the workload, whether he was going to like it and on and on.
He looked at me for a second and replied, “Mom, it’s too soon to tell.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It’s only the first day. It’s too soon to tell.”
Wow. That’s different.
In my brain, after the first day I would have everyone sized up, have strong opinions formed, have set my mind as to whether it would be a good year or a not-so-good year.
Yet, here was the son admonishing the mom that snap judgments were unwise and sometimes destructive.
“I can’t possibly make those decisions until I’ve been there for a while,” he said.
Sometimes I look at this tall man-boy and wonder if wisdom skipped a generation.
