We're Really Roughing It

My son and husband are celebrating Senior Week by camping and hiking in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina.  I received this picture in a text message yesterday, along with the caption "We're really roughing it!"

Senior week presents a special challenge for parents.  I live in the Mid-Atlantic, and the kids here head to the beach for the week after graduation.  Ocean City is the biggest destination. Thousands of eighteen year olds descend upon the beach every year, full of hormones, youthful energy, and a lack of parental supervision.  Every year, stories filter back of the horrible things that have happened to the kids.  Rapes, pregnancies, and alcohol poisoning dominate the stories.  Kids come back with stitches, broken bones, and STD's caused by bad decisions made under the influence of friends, alchohol, or drugs.

Years ago, when I graduated from high school, we were living in Virginia.  I wanted to go to Virginia Beach with my friends, but my father refused to let me go.  Instead, he offered to take me anywhere I wanted to go in the lower 48 United States.  With no hesitation, I told him I wanted to go to California.  Two days after graduation, he and I were driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in a rented convertible.

Now, here we are, twenty-seven years after my high school graduation.  I remember my Dad telling me when I was arguing about going to the beach: "I remember what I was like at eighteen.  There is no way on God's green earth that you are going by yourself to the beach for a week."  I look at son #1 with Dad's voice echoing in my ears.  Once again, I realize that he was right.

So, we offered our son a trip.  Anywhere in the lower 48 United States.   Just him and his Dad.  He decided he wanted to go camping and hiking on the back country trails of the Smoky Mountains.

We are not the only nut cases who have taken this stance.  I know of another family that pulled their younger children out of school for a week and are currently in Disney World.  I know of another family taking both children- 1 who just graduated High School and 1 who just graduated College - to New Zeland for two weeks.  Another family I know is headed out on a cruise next week as soon as school lets out.  The daughter is currently picking up tons of overtime at work, covering for all of the kids who are currently "Down the Ocean".

As I think through the last 18 years, midnight feedings, broken bones, homework, chores, sports practices and games, cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night, refereeing fights, and trying to figure out where to get poster board at 11:00 at night, it dawns on me:  Those were the years when we were really roughing it.

This post originally appeared in my now defunct "Mom's View" blog.  I moved it to this blog at the request of my kids, who wanted to have all of the various posts that accompanied their high school years in one place.  I've matched the publication dates here to their original post date.  If you're reading these posts, I sincerely thank you for taking the time to go back through them all!