For Ethan's second birthday we hung large sheets of black paper all through our large kitchen and provided our guests with buckets of chalk. We did this so none of them would notice that we'd closed Ethan's toys off in his bedroom because he didn't want anyone touching them. On his fifth birthday, his friends all came in their Halloween costumes, though it was still early in October. On his ninth, groups of boys sat around the kitchen table glancing at their splayed Yu-Gi-Oh cards with the seriousness of poker players. When Ethan turned twelve, he and I stared with the wonder of first-time parents as our new puppy gingerly sniffed her way through each room. Recently, a few months past my boy's seventeenth birthday, he came home to the gift of a fat packet from Penn State and nearly leapt with joy.

This last, of course, means he's leaving, come September.[Read more...]