The Last Week of School

Does this ever get any easier? These milestones.  Do you ever get jaded and become capable of sitting through a graduation without crying? 

Just when I think that this year I can handle it, I realize that my youngest will be the last child I will ever have in preschool. I realize that my niece is going into high school! How can I not cry? 

For privacy let's call her KK. She has always known me as Auntie Charlotte, but when I first met her she was my boyfriend's niece and she was 2 years old.

Now she is 14 (going on 20) and will be going to high school. She isn't that big-eyed baby girl anymore. I remember being in a toy store with her when she was a toddler and I picked up a stuffed toy, a goat, and I asked KK what it was, she looked at me with her big hazel eyes and said, as if I was the dumbest person in the world, "A mammal." I gently put the goat back on the shelf and thought happily that this is a girl nobody will ever have to worry about.

But that won't stop me from crying. My tears aren't for her, but for me, as I let go of yet another phase of my life. No longer the Mom of preschoolers, no longer the Auntie of an 8th grader. 

Ouch.