Another first day of school. As my last child is sailing through high school, I am aware that these “firsts” are numbered. Soon, they will be a memory.

This morning, I woke up and thought back to other first days of school:

When my eldest child started first grade, I packed her a lunch that would feed a lumberjack. And his cousin.

When my second child started second grade, he came home in tears because the big boy desks he had been looking forward to were not there. Instead, due to budget cuts and impacted classrooms, his class was still using tables. “Like those kindergarten babies used,” he complained.

While living in Hong Kong, the first days meant watching my kids, now in uniforms, climb onto gigantic buses that roared off in a cloud of diesel fumes, careening around the island to the international school.

This morning, Tad’s older brother, Gary, still home from college, took him to high school. A cooler delivery service than Mom.

But I still followed them into the car, snapping pictures, knowing I only have two more “first days of school” to go. Sigh.