We picked up Eliza from Aldersgate camp in late July. We had dropped her off for several days at her Granny and Grandads and then she had gone on to camp. So we'd been apart for a week and a few days. Now we'd made our way through Richmond and Irvine and wound are way to the camp that has been a part of Cameron and Eliza's lives from the time they were each about four for the purpose of picking her up. A few days later we were off to Murray Kentucky to pick up Cameron from his five week stay with the Governor's Scholars Program where we'd dropped him off in the waning days of June.
Dropping off and picking up are a primary part of the skill set for this parent. I like doing it and I'm mostly okay at it, although I'm late more often than I should be. Dropping off and picking up has been going on since the days of the day care across the street from our house in Prestonsburg (Cameron was there briefly), preschool at the Baptist Learning Center in Prestonsburg (a gloriously blessed place), Mountain Christian Academy in Martin, Kentucky (Cameron's school K-5 and Eliza's K-1), Mount Washington Elementary (Eliza 2-5), Mount Washington Middle (Cameron for three years and Eliza entering her third) and Bullitt East High School (Cameron entering his fourth and final year this very day).
Dropping off and picking up is what we parents do. School, friends houses, dance lessons, soccer practices, basketball practices, we deliver our children, they learn, play, grow and we pick them up and bring them home. I especially am fond of the bringing them home part. I truly enjoy the moment when they emerge from the school, even on the grumpy mood days for the most part, the moment when they come into view and climb into the car and are ours again. For a while.
The routine worked a little differently this year. Cameron's friend picked him up and took him for his first day of his Senior year of high school. It's a movement which Eliza mitigated the effects of a bit by assuring me that I could take her to school. She was playing, but she also knows how emotionally fragile her dad is with things like this, so it was an appreciated gesture.
All of it points to a time when in some figurative way we will drop them off at the next phase of life and the picking up will be a thing of the past. So a word from a fragile dad to any parents reading these words - savor the picking up and dropping off. Don't become frustrated when the task becomes necessarily complicated by laborious comparing of your schedule and your spouses schedule and your in-laws schedule and your friends schedules to see that all the ports (both of exit and entry) are covered. Enjoy the rhythm of the dropping off and picking up. It is a gift. Every time.
