I can’t make a resolution this year. Most of them end up solidly under the category of best intentions rather than checked off the old to do list anyway. But my Pollyanna nature adores a clean slate and the hopeful cheery optimism that lies at the heart of every resolution.

Unfortunately, resolutions in any capacity are just not in the cards for me this year.  This past holiday season, I was a little nostalgic. My oldest son is graduating from high school this year and that seemed to make every twinkly light shine a little brighter, every Christmas song a little more meaningful, every moment a little more poignant.  Maybe my sister was right and I was not merely a tad sentimental, as I’d like to think, so much as splashing big buckets of sap everywhere. But, in any case, I tried to be present in a way that I usually am not for every bauble, bow, and baked good.

From the silly . . .

to the sentimental . . .

to the sweet . . .

to the aw, shucks . . .

. . . I was drinking in every moment and trying to burn every memory onto my post-forty-addled brain.

This is why there will be no resolutions for me this year. Resolutions say “I want to try something shiny and new” or “I want to be someone shiny and new” or “I want to go somewhere shiny and new.” I don’t really. Not this year anyway. I’ll be doing all these things this year even if I don’t want to and I’ll be doing them all as my heart alternates between breaking and bursting.

My son will be going to college—as he should, as we want him to, as he deserves to, as he is ready to. But that doesn’t mean I’m chomping at the bit to see him take this next step. It doesn’t mean I’m intent to see our time together in the easy, lovely cocoon of our family end so soon.

Such is a mom’s life, of course.  I have bucked and bent at some of the other big changes over the years. I was the mom who cried when he got on the bus in kindergarten and I wrung my hands as he started high school. But we both survived those and I know we will get to the other side of this too.

This year I will be trying on the label of mother to a young man instead of a boy.  I already feel the sea change starting within me that will have to happen to make it easier. I will learn to breathe and talk and just be when we are not sharing the same physical address even though the very idea of it right now seems hard to grasp.

So I just can’t resolve to be anything more than all that will be asked of me this year. It will be enough for all of us to see this amazing thing he will do, to see the beginnings of all that he will be, and to celebrate each little step along the way.

So I will try the shiny new things he needs me to try and be the new thing that I will need to be for him. I will go to the places he needs me to go, but that is all I can promise.

And that seems quite enough for this year.

—Erin

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