Household Word: Ready or Not

When the nurse in the delivery room handed me my newborn son, my first reaction was “Ewwwwww … He’s not finished. He’s so tiny and floppy and slimy. Put him back in for a few more months. I don’t think he’s ready.”

Now, 18 years later, that baby is a newborn high school graduate. In just a few weeks, he’ll be out of the house and off to college.

I don’t think he’s ready. He may be tall and hairy and registered to vote, but under that Led Zeppelin T-shirt lurks a child, an infant, a mere zygote.

Sure, in 18 years he’s made some progress. Now, he can hold his head up (except before noon on weekends). He has learned to communicate by using a system of primitive grunts, and his friends assure me that he is able to hold his own bottle (“Mom! It’s Dr. Pepper™!”). But, like the newborn who seems to need more time in the womb, my high school graduate isn’t a fully formed adult and I can’t send him out into the world without some additional preparation. There’s just three weeks to transform my young barbarian into a civilized and – dare I hope – semi-sophisticated collegian.