The Last Time

When your kids are babies, the milestones are all about "firsts": first tooth, first step, first word.  When they get older, especially at the end of high school and college, the milestones start being about "lasts": the last cross-country meet, the last basketball game, the last concert, the last night of the last musical,  the last night at home before college, the last time your child comes home for the summer . . .  If you're like me, you kind of brace yourself for these big lasts, but there are a lot of smaller lasts that slip by almost unnoticed: the last time you held one of your kids, the last time you felt your child's little hand in yours, the last time you read a bedtime story, the last time you packed a school lunch, the last time you signed a permission slip, the last time you all went somewhere together in the family car . . .  Maybe it's just as well that we don't always know it's the "last time" while we're in the midst of living it, but I think there is a lesson in there about being wide awake and present as we move through our days and about not wishing any time away, regardless of how tired we are or how hectic life is because big or small, first or last, we don't want to miss any of the moments.