A day with my kids

As a homeschooling Mom, it used to be that every day was a day with my kids. No longer. Now it is a red letter day if we spend a few hours together. At 17 and 19 years of age, my kids have a life separate from mine. And I realized not so long ago, that I needed a life separate from theirs, as well.
The older son, our crown price, so to speak, is a college student. His younger brother, the beloved baby of the family, will graduate high school this year and probably go on to college next fall. Saturdays, they usually spend the day on the slopes. Weekdays, I’m out working. So as you can see, we aren’t even in the same building that much anymore.
But Tuesday was different. We dragged them out of bed early, made the hour drive to the mall, where Dad dropped us off and then went off to his doctor’s appointment. We shopped together some, split up and met again, then spent half an hour waiting in a seating area to meet Dad. Not that we talked much. The wee darlings carry their portable game systems everywhere so they played some competitive and cooperative games while I people watched.
When Dad picked us up we went to lunch…all you can eat Chinese-American-Italian-Japanese buffet. We all ate our fill and then sat talking for awhile. I love the way their minds work. Even though the 17 year old is experimenting with political positions that are polar opposites of his family tradition…or maybe that makes him even more interesting. The 19 year old is studying psychology, and it seems he has a good level headed teacher. Monday’s class was about Phineas Gage. Fascinating but gory stuff.
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage ]
They also discussed seizures, which dear son found he had the most firsthand observational experience with, thanks to his late Grandfather.
Well, our next stop was kind of obvious-since I like the way their brains work, and we were discussing brain trauma, we went helmet shopping. My older dear son is a skier, his brother is a snowboarder. Their Ski Patrol friend has been telling them horror stories of his own, mostly from training but one or two from personal experience. So we went hunting helmets and found what we needed at our second stop. Something to soothe Mom’s worries while protecting their “cool” image. Tomorrow morning they will test drive the new equipment, and I will worry about my part time son, who was getting another kind of hardware [braces] while we were hunting helmets. We will get him fixed up soon…