I’m too young to have a child taking the ACT.
I’m too young to have a child taking the ACT.
I’m too young to have a child taking the ACT.
I just dropped my son off for the ACT.
I got my eyebrows waxed. Stopped at Panera for a scone and some coffee. Did my makeup. Listened to the news. And now I sit outside of a testing room in a science building on a very large college campus. Waiting.
Two hours to go.
Then I subtracted my year of birth from 2011.
I am 34 years old.
Too young to have my baby taking the American College Test.
Or am I?
I call him my baby. I call them all my babies. I always have. I probably always will. They are my babies. He is my Valentine until he meets the love of his life. (Which, coincidentally, he does almost daily, now.)
But really, I never knew him as a baby. He was eight years old when he became my son. He lived eight years as someone else’s baby. Someone else rocked him. Saw him off to kindergarten. Put bandaids on his knees. Held the bucket when he threw up.
And judging by the child study inventory we received at the adoption finalization, he had quite a few “someones” who did those things in those first eight years.
But here I sit. On an uncomfortable bench, in a very long, white hallway of classrooms staring at a clock. Wondering when he will walk back through those doors. Praying with every cell in my body that he is able to calm his nerves and his brain enough to just do his best. Holding his coat.
Remembering the eight-year-old boy I fell in love with. Recalling all the life that we have lived in the last six years. Mourning what precious little time we have left.
I want to tear through that door, kneel in front of him, and tell him just one more time all the things I’ve told him 1000 times.
Instead, I sit on this bench. Listening to Bruno Mars and John Mayer. Watching the clock.
I’m hopeful.
More hopeful than usual. That someday we’ll be able to cross some of those acronyms for the disorders he carries off of the list. That someday I will stand at his high school graduation. And college. And boot camp. And whatever else he decides he wants to do with his life.
I will be the one sitting there. Waiting. Watching. Anticipating. Proud.
Because it is my baby doing those things.
My baby. Even though he never was. He is now.
From now on.
For the last six years. To today. And every day after today.
I’m just the right age to have my baby taking the ACT.
I’m just the right age to have my baby taking the ACT.
I’m just the right age to have my baby taking the ACT.
